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Newspapers are dying, and comics tell the tale
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There's less room for an ink-stained wretch in the comics
In a move that might have been unheard of in a previous era, the folks behind "Spider Man" are making a major change to one of the super-hero's supporting characters. Rather than mouth off about the dangers posed by Spider Man as publisher and editor of the fictional Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson will do so from now on as mayor of New York City.
It's something of a shocker. For decades, the bristle-mustached loumouth has complained about Spider Man as publisher of a feisty tabloid. At the same time, he also kept Spider Man's alter-ego, Peter Parker, in chips by paying the lad to get great shots of the webhead. No longer.
I'm not sure we should be that surprised. After all, being the publisher of a major newspaper isn't as influential as it might have been in, say, the 1960s and 70s when Spider Man rose to prominence. Papers are shrinking, shuttering, casting off and closing down. But the Mayor of New York can really make trouble for a costumed vigilante.
We've seen newspaper troubles cause change elsewhere in the funny pages. Brenda Starr got laid off by her longtime roost, The Flash, and is now on a sojourn in India. Rick Redfern, Doonesbury's veteran investigative newspaper reporter, got downsized from The Washington Post and now has to blog (in a recent strip, he said that he was "getting over not being a big deal anymore.")
It makes you wonder who else is due to be dropped. Will Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for The Daily Planet of Metropolis, find himself bounced from its bullpen (he's got a second job as Superman, of course). What about Perry White or Lois Lane? How about Vicki Vale, the glittery reporter who often tracks Batman? What of Mark Trail, who has long toiled for some unnamed nature magazine? And what about the feathered folks in Shoe who pound away at their keyboards for the Treetops Tattler Tribune? I guess the folks who used to hunt down gossip for Bloom Country's daily rag should be thankful the strip folded before their paper did.
Comics and newspapers are intertwined. Comics rose to prominence in about 1896 when "The Yellow Kid" appeared as a Sunday supplement in Joseph Pullitzer's New York World. So the daily drama that is a newspaper no doubt proves inspiring to lots of comic-strip and comic-book artists. But with newspapers becoming less of a presence in our daily lives, comics will have to find other plot devices - and other jobs for some of their more prominent characters
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