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The last panel goes dark: The death of America's funny pages
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The blogosphere is filled with predictions about the looming death of newspaperdom. With that demise comes the downfall of a different cultural touchstone – the comics page.
Comic-strip creators have grumbled for years about the arduous grind that is their routine, and the lack of respect that comes with it. It’s hard to keep churning out a joke for Garfield every day that isn’t focused on his yearning for lasagna or what a dope Jon Arbuckle is. It’s tough to find some calamity that Brenda Starr hasn’t already overcome, or a tricky family situation Mary Worth hasn’t mediated at least once in the last umpteen decades. And it’s thankless to keep doing so even as newspapers drop comics or decline to pick up new ones, favoring old, shadow-of-their-former-selves standbys like “Shoe” or “B.C.” – virtually run by a committee of old hands and associates of the original now deceased creator – over fresh, innovative strips by buzzy young upstarts. All this takes place as newspapers continue to squeeze more strips into smaller amounts of space, making readers squint to look at the drawings and captions that once were showcased, not sequestered.
Now it’s getting much worse.
Witness Village Voice Media’s recent decision to suspend popular syndicated comics like Tom Tomorrow’s “This Modern World” from its pages. Shudder at the precarious situation now fomented by the decision by the partnership that oversees Detroit’s News and Free Press to halt delivery of ink-and-paper editions on all days except Thursday and Friday (and Sunday for the Free Press). To follow a favorite comic day in and day out, a reader will have to make a conscious decision to go to the computer and look the thing up.
I suspect there’s more of this to come. Newspapers will have to be judicious about the space they allocate to everything, from a table of contents to stock tables. Count comics as one of the features they’ll scrutinize. And with good reason. We’ve discussed this before –and on the face of it, it sounds really hard-hearted - but one can make an awfully good argument that there’s little reason to continue to run “classic” strips from Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts” or Lynn Johnston’s “For Better or For Worse.” At a time when space is at a premium, why devote fresh space to what are essentially reruns that can be perused in collected editions?
The same holds true for strips that exist simply by dint of inertia. Is anyone really served by reading “Shoe” now that creator Jeff MacNelly is no longer with us? Hasn’t “Cathy” been on autopilot for years? With the exception of a very few (as we’ve noted in the past, “Blondie” is taking new steps to seem more in step with the world of today), many funny-page vets are there because they’ve built up a little bit of rolling-stone momentum, not due to innovation or effort on the part of the creator or his or her heirs.
My guess is that papers will be harsher about their comic-strip picks. Maybe they run funnies that have more relevance to their particular geography or audience. Maybe they start to do more audience-specific placement – slipping “Dilbert” into the business pages, placing “Doonesbury” and “Mallard Fillmore” near politics coverage, running “Tank McNamara” in the sports section. As more papers shift to the web, readers may not seek out comics as much as they do topics of interest; inserting a topic-themed comic into relevant coverage might give it a better chance of being seen - though I hate to think what such a technique might do to strips that are simply there to entertain.
Whatever the fate of the funnies, I predict they simply aren’t going to have the same roost they once enjoyed. Syndicators might want to bear down more deeply on Internet distribution, or cultivate fan bases outside the comfortable nest of newspaper distribution. Creators will have to do more with storylines and surprises, to generate the viral buzz that raises eyebrows and snags web surfers with far too many destinations to visit.
With fewer papers, and more readers of certain informational niches, the funny pages simply won’t have the audience they were once guaranteed, so the talent behind them will have to spend as much time marketing their three-panel masterpieces as they do thinking of funny punchlines for them. There's little about this situation that sounds terribly humorous or solveable, and my guess is it means the end or a severely diminished presence for everyone from Popeye to Mark Trail to Snuffy Smith.
More About:
comic strips ·
funny pages ·
For Better or For Worse ·
Funky Winkerbean ·
Doonesbury ·
Shoe ·
Blondie ·
Peanuts ·
Bloom County ·
Comics ·
garfield ·
Mallard Fillmore ·
Mark Trail ·
Popeye ·
Snuffy Smith
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