Comments on: Modesto Bee shrinks their Sunday Comics

By: Quint Nelson

Quint Nelson — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:57:31 +0000

The Bee is pathetic and this a stupid move…and newspapers wonder why readers are leaving in droves.

By: Mick Mastroianni

Mick Mastroianni — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:03:59 +0000

Why don’t they just put the Sunday comics on a *%$#@! credit card

By: Dawn Douglass

Dawn Douglass — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:56:14 +0000

I was watching The Brady Bunch one day a few years ago and the father was reading the newspaper. You could see the daily comics page, and I was startled to see how big they were. (How soon we forget.) And that was just the early 70s.

By: D.D.Degg

D.D.Degg — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 16:54:08 +0000

The incredible shrinking comic strip.
The Modesto Bee, on Fridays, prints their daily comic strips in an entertainment tabloid section, with two columns of comics per page.
I went out to get the paper this morning just to make a comparision.
One hundred years ago, on November 15, 1907, this first “successful” daily comic strip was printed. “Mr. A. Mutt Starts in to Play the Races” was published in the San Francisco Chronicle. It ran along the top of the page for the entire width of the page. Making some conservative estimates (16.5 inches x 5.5 inches) I came up with that “first” daily strip taking up about 90 square inches.
Going for the extreme in today’s Modesto Bee I measured the “Peanuts” strip – barely over 4.5 inches wide and less than an inch high.
In 100 years we have gone from more than 90 square inches to less than 5 square inches!