Rerunning Thru This Past Week’s Comics

And we’ll start with the For Better or For Worse rerun that went through the after effects this week of Farley’s death that was shown the week before (originally from April 1995).

Even after occasional readings over the 30 years since it first happened it is still a touching story (start here).

Touching enough for one (new?) reader to write to her newspaper:

To the Editor: The comic strip is supposed to make one happy. I read with dismay the strip For Better or Worse. The dog Farley dies after saving the child’s life from drowning.

In the morning I have my coffee and one of my favorite things is reading the newspaper, especially the comic strips. Why would Lynn Johnston have such a sad strip?

It made my day very sad.

Mutts is also in rerun status for the first half of this year, but a second fourth new comic strip appeared yesterday. The new strip featured Sparky the Guard Dog of course.

Plans are for The Guard Dog Saga to be collected into a book later this year (partly the reason for Patrick’s sabbatical). That book is guaranteed to be a happier read (ending anyway) than the Remembering Farley book.

Also yesterday the Mutts Blog addressed the strip’s loss of newspapers due to corporate consolidation:

MUTTS — and so many other wonderful comics — still grace the pages of papers across the world, but there have certainly been changes in recent years. Many readers have written to us expressing concern that MUTTS has disappeared from their local paper, asking if there’s anything they can do to bring it back.

To understand why these changes happen, it’s helpful to know about the dynamics of the newspaper industry. While some local papers are still run independently or by small regional groups, most papers these days are owned by larger news networks, such as Gannett (which owns USA Today), Hearst Corporation, Tribune Publishing Company, and others. This structure means that decisions about content, including comic strips, are often made at the network level rather than by individual newspapers. And when these networks renegotiate contracts with comics syndicates or decide to change their offerings, it affects all papers within their network. 

Some have asked how they can best support MUTTS, now that the newspaper comic lineups are changing. We assure you we’re not going anywhere, but if you want to help, the very best way to do that is to subscribe to our emails. And if you’re already subscribed, we would love for you to encourage other readers to sign up for the Daily MUTTS, or to share the strip with friends and family. 

That advice applies to all the strips that are on our favorites list.

Now on to some short takes…

Prickly City started off the week with one of those”it’s funny because it’s true” gags. Prickly City also had a bit of good timing with the Tuesday strip not being placed at the end of the week and showing up today.

Awards!

Speaking of Blondie…

83 years after Chic Young held a contest to name the Bumstead’s newly born baby daughter, Dean Young is having a contest to name a soon-to-be introduced new character in Blondie.

The New York Times had the exclusive on the new character and the hierarchy of the legacy strip:

The introduction of the pastry chef includes fan engagement: Readers will be able to vote for one of five names for the character selected by Young.

Fans want to see more Blondie, said Dana Coston, one of Young’s daughters who works on the strip with him. “We want to show her in a real situation, not always in the kitchen cooking,” she said. “Most moms are out there working and raising a family. Let’s show her doing it and doing it well.”

Alexander and Cookie will also be the focus of more installments: They will take over the family’s basement to hang out with friends. “We’re going to see some fresh faces, some younger teens in there,” Coston said.

Coston is the lead writer on the daily strips and her father takes charge of Sundays. He and Coston review, edit and tease each other about their efforts — something of a family tradition.

Young’s other daughter involved in Blondie is Dianne Erwin, the head of social media and marketing.

Also noted in The Times article is Tuesday’s “the debut of a more vibrant color palette.”

Blondie’s Facebook page has some details on the contest:

Blondie’s Catering is cooking up something special just for YOU! Get ready to meet our newest character – our talented pastry chef! But wait, there’s more: we need YOUR creative touch to give her the perfect name!

One lucky winner will snag a framed, autographed comic strip revealing her name for the very first time!

The winner will be chosen on 5/23. Good luck!

Back to short subjects.

The lettering on the sign looks like they saw an opportunity and took it, but Karen Moy and June Brigman paid tribute to Ramona Fradon in Wednesday’s Mary Worth.

Too much information.

I think Guillermo Saldaña could have foregone the inset legend on Thursday’s Palurdeando panel. Give the readers some credit for figuring out what was intended. (Says the guy who ran a CIDU up above.)

Jim Scancarelli is bringing the ultimate authority, founder Frank King, into Gasoline Alley‘s name controversy.

Post Script:

The elders among us will recall the ubuquitous Saturday Evening Post and their Post Scripts page of cartoons at the back of the magazine and Hy Syverson‘s nebbishes features in the pages headers.

Younger people will no doubt remember the hedder of an office memo that was just as widespread in the latter 20th Century as the SatEvePost was in the middle 20th Century.

Clay Bennett brings back those memories with his recent Supreme Court political cartoon.

As Clay notes the characters are credited to Hy, but there are some who disagree.

More from Mike Lynch is a vast collection of Saturday Evening Post cartoons from a time when cartoons were king and not just relegated to The New Yorker.