Herb’s blog, Herbdate 16326-013:
Okay, so a ‘blog is supposed to be where you can vent your spleen and rant and rave and carry on, right? So let me tell you something that makes me mad every Sunday! Something so frustrating and aggravating words nearly fail me. WHY, oh why, do newspapers think it is okay to hide the comics section? Back in the good old days (that, by the way, is the phrase, not, “Back in the day.”) when i was a boy the funnies were on the outside of the paper. You could see what was going on in Peanuts or Dick Tracy (depending on what paper it was) right on top.
One of our papers divides the comics into 2 sections, then completely wraps one of the sections in an ad. If you don’t know that they do this, you discover that you have thrown away half of the comics section! The other part has one of those fold-out, tear-off ads that tears the paper in half instead and the punch line to “Dilbert” has to be fished out of the trash. Today the first section came wrapped in a full-page ad, then had another ad under that, plus the tear-away ad!
And whatever happened to “The Funny Papers,” anyway? When did adult humor become appropriate for the comics? There are times that even the strips that you would think are for children come out with the most risqué and sometimes downright nasty jokes! And who wants to know the political ideology of a cartoonist? Put the op-ed funnies on the op-ed page! I don’t care if they are left, right, middle or what, get them off the comics page. Particularly the ones that are blatantly and openly political like “Doonesbury,” “Boondocks,” “Mallard Fillmore,” et al. Maybe newspapers could start a separate op-ed comics page, but get all of the politics out of there. This would make room for funny strips like “Tumbleweeds” and “One big happy” and of course allow us to track Mary Worth and Little Orphan Annie much more closely also.
What papers should do, which will never happen because there is money involved, is not only go back to the days of putting the comics on top, but make the comics normal sized. Make them (and the weekly ones too) the size that they are when the comics come off the drawing board. This would mean a much larger comics section, but they could also generate more revenue from their ads. They could triple charge the rate for advertising in the funnies and make the funnies section as big as the front page for all i care. I can hear and read about death and sorrow and murder and taxes any old time, but i can only see the Sunday funnies once a week.
I have a hard question for all of you, my gentle readers. But, what is your all-time favorite Comic Strip? Why? Leave me some comments and i’ll try to reply to as many as i can. Is it possible that there is someone who DOESN’T read the funnies every chance they get? Could there possibly be someone out there who doesn’t even care??? If that’s you I would like to know if you are mainly a “Math” person or “English” person and are you right-handed or left-handed? Thank you all.
