The Anchorage Daily News informed readers of changes to their comics page today:
Readers of the comics pages are going to notice some changes this week. A couple of these occurred at the first of the year, but we’ve added several features — and cut some — starting this week.
The new comics to the paper are
Between Friends by Sandra Bell-Lundy
Big Nate by Lincoln Peirce
Candorville by Darrin Bell
Crabgrass by Tauhid Bondia
Nancy by Olivia Jaimes
Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller
Cut were: 9 Chickweed Lane, Get Fuzzy, Mother Goose & Grimm, Pooch Cafe, and Zack Hill. The Daily News noted that they “stopped running Funky Winkerbean at the end of 2022 when its creator, Tom Batiuk, decided to retire the strip.”
The syndicate tally is Andrews McMeel with a draw (plus 4 and minus 4),
King Features is plus 2 (unless we count losing Funky, then it’s plus one),
and Creators Syndicate is minus one (Zack Hill).
Not sure of the current lineup but they note in the article that “the ADN last made changes in the comics … somewhere around a decade ago.” So the 2019 survey that showed 31 daily comics and 26 Sunday comics should still be applicable.
They also note, with justifiable pride, that Tundra by local talent Chad Carpenter remains a hit with readers:
“Tundra,” by Wasilla’s Chad Carpenter, was the most popular strip when we surveyed readers, and it moves to the top of the first page. The strip started its life in the Anchorage Daily News in 1991 and is now featured in hundreds of newspapers.
That seems like a decent lineup, all things considered.
Get Fuzzy should be cut… haven’t had a new one for years.
Pooch I like.
“Chickweed” ran a rambling story with plot holes galore and included an ethnic slur that had them dropped by the LA Times. Then, during Pride Month, they ran a story where a gay character was “de-gayed” by finding the “right woman”, a story that included several scenes of the new couple copulating in a bathtub with the woman having an obvious orgasm. Two year-old twins are frequently seen commenting on the wet dreams of the couple. The ongoing jokes are on a par with the average Beavis and Butthead episode where sex abounds and the strip’s fans snicker like they’ve never left 7th Grade. Now the paper drops the strip? There must be some line that McEldowney crossed but it’s hard to imagine what it was, other than being poorly drawn and written.
Take a chance on Co. A, a single panel Civil War cartoon which pokes gentle humor at the mid-steps, impossibilities, and absurdities of the soldiers’ daily lives.
Even touches base with Civil War reenactors (of which the cartoonist is one).