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Friday, March 2, 2012

Still Fewer Laughs for the Sunday Funnies



I've been chronicling the shrinking Los Angeles Times comics pages for years (see a whole host of posts dating to 2003 here, and it always saddens me when the paper shrinks the already downsized section.

Remember when the daily paper boasted more than four pages of comics? And 12 pages of color comics on Sundays? Those days are long gone. And now, the L.A. Times announced that it will further shrink its 6-page Sunday Comics lineup to an even smaller 4-page feature. And in the process, two more strips will be excised: "Stone Soup" and "Home and Away."

Here's the announcement.

In an age when kids don't read the newspaper, I've always thought that unique features like the comics at least stood them apart from anything else. But hey, I was a weird kid, so what do I know.

And yes, I'm still bitter that the paper dropped "Sally Forth."

3 comments:

Jon Weisman said...

It's your agonizing over Sally Forth that undermines your whole crusade.

Barry said...

When I was a kid growing up in LA, there was a Sunday radio show called something like "The Funny Paper Man". Every weekend my father would buy the Sunday Examiner with the Sunday comics for me (during the week, we subscribed to the Citizen News) and I would read along with the Funny Paper Man on the radio on Sunday morning. At a certain age, it was one of the highlights of my weekend and probably a help in my learning to read. Hard to imagine now I suppose.

Anonymous said...

Barry, I remember the Funny Paper Man too. My brother and I couldn't wait for Sunday morning to read along with him. Coincidentally I was reminiscing about him this morning. Those were great days to be a kid in L.A.