First – a little catching up from Rob Tornoe at Editor & Publisher last Fall:
Over at King Features Syndicate, President CJ Kettler doesn’t see comic strips going away anytime soon. In fact, Kettle said the company launched several new comics features this year, including “Break of Day” by Nate Fakes and “Never Been Deader” by Tommy Devoid.
“We think standardization isn’t good for the readers, the cartoonists or the industry at large. We see first-hand how every individual newspaper market has their unique set of favorite comics,” Kettler said. “Newspaper readers are avid comic fans, and in a world where the industry is transitioning its readership and subscriber base to print and digital, we believe in serving the readers first and foremost and continuing to support all cartoonists in their efforts.”Like Andrews McMeel, King is also working to diversify its online offerings, including an effort to update and modernize its online comics portal, Comics Kingdom. Details are slim at the moment, but it’s expected to launch in 2024 [emphasis added].
Now to the present where, earlier this morning, we mentioned Tony DePaul’s blog about The Phantom.
During Tony’s discussion of The Phantom he dropped a news nugget about King Features’ Comics Kingdom:
The Wrack and Ruin chapters, and every Phantom story published before the series and those to come, are about to get a whole lot easier to read. Next month, King Features expects to unveil the next generation Comics Kingdom site [emphasis added]. I’m told readers will be able to scroll through stories seamlessly, from 1936 through the present day. No more of this clunky click-reload-click-reload-click-reload from one day to the next.
That would certainly solve the space limitations we labor under…
If I’m reading that right we are about to get a whole heck of a lot more of King Features Syndicate archives at Comics Kingdom in a far better format to read said archives scheduled for February 2024!
C’MON! Since Gannett keeps cutting comics, bring on King getting long and deep with new and historical comics. At the very least, I won’t have to pay for a newspaper.com subscription to read Apartment 3-G or Judge Parker in the 1960s. Looking forward to it.
Oh, and Gannett still BLOWS.