The Shrinking Comics Page

The New York Times never saw fit to add a comics page, but now chronicles how papers across the country are cutting down on the funnies.

As ad revenue drops and the cost of newsprint skyrockets, features like the comics and TV listings are vulnerable to the ax. Unfortunately, as the NYT notes, many papers are relying on reader polls to determine what lives and what dies.

That's often the death knell for edgy new strips, as older readers vote en masse to save "Family Circus" and its ilk. (Here's the biggest horror: Dallas Morning News readers were asked to pick one strip to save... and they brought back "Love Is..."!!! No lie! The unfunny cartoon featuring two naked cherubs foisting their cliched idea of love on the masses!)

The story doesn't mention the recent move by the L.A. Times to balance the political leanings of its strips by adding the terribly unfunny "Mallard Fillmore." (At least the paper's other new conservative strip, "Prickly City," exhibits actual narrative and character development.)

Local boy Lalo Alcaraz, whose newer strip "La Cucaracha" recently lost a few papers, is frustrated by the number of strips that carry on, despite their cartoonists' deaths:

“If only science had not found a way to revive dead cartoonists and keep them alive, that would be helpful to me and a lot of guys coming up,” he said in a veiled swipe at, among others, “Peanuts,” which remains in syndicated reruns more than four years after the death of its creator, Charles M. Schulz.