Stars and Stripes Sunday (Weekend) Comics Lineup
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It is looking more and more like the February 2, 2025 will be the last Candorville distributed to print newspapers. Stars and Stripes weekend edition for February 7, 2025 has been issued and the comics section does not include Candorville.
The Stars and Stripes Sunday Comics is a strange animal. Starting with the masthead that features Mutts and Get Fuzzy characters, though those comic strips haven’t appeared in the section for I don’t know how many years.
Six years ago they replaced Tank McNamara with a request for thoughts about comics to add to the 8 pages.
That request ran for five and a half years, running last on September 27, 2024 (dates will be the Fridays the section was published), and then replaced with, no, not a comic strip, but with a house ad.
During the time that the “Do You Enjoy Comics?” ad ran a few comics were dropped and replaced.
When The Knight Life by Keith Knight ended in September 2019 Stars and Stripes (S&S) replaced it with Scott Hilburn’s The Argyle Sweater. When Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott switched to Andrews McMeel Syndication in February of 2022 S&S stayed with King Features and replaced it with Tom Armstrong’s Marvin. When the last Dilbert by Scott Adams Sunday ran in S&S on March 3, 2023 it was replaced by Dave Blazek’s Loose Parts.
That is all normal activity, though one can wonder why they never brought back Tank McNamara as a replacement for one of those dropped strips.
But then…
When Fort Knox by Paul Jon ended its run in November of last year Stars and Stripes continued running the strip with the editor picking past strips from around ten years earlier, usually erasing the copyright date, and reprinting them without the permission of the creator or the syndicate. The Fort Knox reprints ended with the January 17, 2025 edition. On January 24, 2025 another house ad joined the one already running.
So now with Candorville by Darrin Bell last running in the S&S comics section dated January 31, 2025 they have lost two comic strips in the last two years without replacing them. But since all the Sunday comics run in third page format, except for the half page Doonesbury, they had space for three third page house ads. Rather than spread three ads throughout the section they have come up with a different idea.
The Stars and Stripes Sunday Comics section is accessible here.
Hmmm, a thought.
Fifteen years ago Stars and Stripes became a part of the Department of Defense.
It operates from inside the Department of Defense, but is editorially separate from it, and its First Amendment protection is safeguarded by the United States Congress to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers’ interests, regularly reports.
Wonder if the Department Of Government Efficiency will pressure the publication to drop the Never-Trump Doonesbury comic strip?
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