Cranky, pt II
Sunday, the prime time of newspaper comics. Expanded space, full color, exclusive section away from TV listings and bridge tips--it's time to show off the best you have to offer. So how did the comics use that space today?
With five silent penultimate panels:
Between Friends by Sandra Bell-Lundy
The Born Loser by Art and Chip Sansom
Heart of the City by Mark Tatulli
Nancy by Guy and Brad Gilchrist
Opus by Berkely Breathed
And seven SPSes (single panel Sundays)
Brewster Rockit, Zits, Candorville, Mallard Fillmore, Mutts, Frazz, and Non Sequitur.
These SPPs were all in print in my Los Angeles Times. Out of the twenty-seven Sunday strips published, 26% were a simple, single panel. What sort of reading experience is that?
Under it's penny-pinching Chicago owners, The L.A. Times quality is visibly falling every day. The editorial staff and news staff are now skeleton crews, we get movie reviews reprinted from the Chicago Tribune (we're Los Angeles for God's sake, we make the damn movies right the hell here, and we get reviews out of Chicago) and the sports writers barely know the rules of football. The only thing that keeps me subscribing is the comics. And they do this to me today. Just what am I going to do?
posted by Matt Gill at 7:52 PM
5 Comments:
Yeah, but really - do you want more panels of Mallard Fillmore?
To be fair, I felt that the Non Sequitur was very effective use of space for being one single really big panel, and it absolutely had to be a Sunday strip because the splash of colour in the middle of the dreary grey city is absolutely essential to the story.
The Baltimore Sun is also owned by the Tribune Company and it's being eviscerated even faster than the LA Times.
My local papers had 3 more SPPs- Crankshaft, Sally Forth, and Stone Soup, as well as 2 additional SPS- F Minus and Rhymes with Orange.
Unfortunately, I think SPS are so appealing to cartoonists because their usual working space, and print size is so small.
"F Minus" is generally a one panel toon, so I don't think it would count.
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