» Tundra has been picked up by the News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) replacing F-Minus.
» Over in RACs, a Philadelphia reader noted that the Philadelphia Inquirer added a page to their Sunday comics after readers complained that an earlier reduction in the size of the strips made them unreadable.
» Also from RACs, D.D.Degg notes that The (Oneonta, N.Y.) Daily Star added a comic strip called The Sweet Home Adventures of Scoop to their free weekly advertiser. The comic itself is an advertising comic strip (see examples here and here).
» Darryl in Chicago tells me that after an email exchange with the editor, he has learned that Lio will not be brought back to the Sunday comics, but will continue in their daily selection. – Thanks for the tip Darryl.
Correction #1: Tundra was not picked up in the Tacoma News Tribune as reported above, but the Tri-City Herald.
Correction #2: I failed to mention that the paper in Chicago who isn’t bring back Lio is the Chicago Tribune.
It’s the Chicago Tribune that won’t reinstate Lio on Sundays!
and why not
Congratulations to the Tundra guys!
I actually stopped buying the Inquirer due to the new small size Sunday Comics. I started reading The Norristown Times Herald who prints the Sunday Funnies full size still.
I heard from Philadelphia readers telling me the same thing, that they were dropping the paper and just reading my strip online.
Really smart business move by the editors, eh?
The Inquirer’s Sunday comics are the most depressing comics section you may ever see. And for some reason, the inks seem to be consistantly misregistered, making readability that much more difficult. It’s almost as if they went out of their way to create a comics section that nobody will want to look at.
Knowing more than a half of a million people see my work look like crap on Sundays would drive me crazy.
“I heard from Philadelphia readers telling me the same thing, that they were dropping the paper and just reading my strip online.”
I’m guilty of doing that as well.
Also: The Chicago Sun-Times recently dropped Frank and Ernest which used to run for several years on the Sun-Times classified pages.
Mark, it’s not just the Inky. Newspapers have been creating comic sections no one wants to look at for years. By continually reducing comics in size, and be picking up comics that would often drive readers away rather than invite them in. Hearst and Patterson understood the value of comics to their papers and worked with creators to develop attractive, eye-appealing comics that captured the imagination to keep readers coming back for more. Newspapers are killing themselves by no longer offering readers something they can’t get anywhere else.