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How Do YOU Read The Comics?
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Do you need to read the funnies EVERY day? Lately, I've been discovering that that isn't the case.
Let me give you an example. The New York Daily News - my primary source of daily comic strips - several months back decided to cancel "For Better or For Worse," one of my personal favorites. Perhaps creator Lynn Johnston's decision to semi-retire and run a mix of old and new strips contributed to the decision.
Either way, the strip continues and its characters are in the midst of the usual array of life challenges - a wedding, an elderly grandfather with physical problems, etc, etc. I need to know what''s going on.
But instead of reading FBoFW every day, I jump on to the Houston Chronicle's comics page - an extremely comprehensive collection - once every week or two, and read a bunch of the strips at a time. I get a better sense of plot development and don't have to wait another 24 hours before getting a dollop of storyline, as the average funny-pages fan must.
Technology lets us watch TV or listen to the radio differently. We can watch a favorite show hours or days later thanks to a DVR, or listen to a favorite radio program online, thanks to the Web. So why can't we consume comics in new fashion?
I suspect this "reading two weeks' worth of funnies" works best with comics that have an ongoing storyline - FBoFW, Funky Winkerbean, Mary Worth, The Phantom, Gasoline Alley, etc, etc. When it comes to the one-joke-and-we're-done comics out there, who needs to look em up? If you miss one, you miss one; so be it. Though I'll confess I gotta have my daily fix of "Blondie." Technology won't cure me of it.
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