Help us choose a new comic
Posted: Thursday, January 25, 2007 6:01 AM by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
Filed Under:
Comic strips
We'd like to ask you to weigh in on what should happen next on our comic-strip page now that "FoxTrot" has trotted off to Sundays only. MSNBC.com can continue to run "Fox Trot" reruns, which I have no problem with, since they're still hilarious to me the second time around. Or we can choose a new strip from the list of comics our supplier provides.
Here are just a couple of the comics we could pick up:
• "For Better or For Worse," which we know is heading for hybrid form eventually, but is obviously a hot topic with some of us. (Come on, Liz, pick Warren, he's much cooler than Anthony.)
• "Lio," a neat little strip with no dialogue and a kind of "Calvin and Hobbes" feel.
• "Red and Rover," another good one, by the same cartoonist who draws "Adam." I love how simple Red's childhood feels compared to our modern rush, and his crush on Marcia Brady cracks me up.
• "Bo Nanas," about a three-foot-tall talking monkey.
• "Ginger Meggs," a sort of Australian "Dennis the Menace"
• "PreTeena," about an 11-year-old girl stuck in that weird place between childhood and teendom.
• "One Big Happy," in which li'l Ruthie tells it like it is.
• "Liberty Meadows," where the talking animals are smarter than their human pals.
The list also includes such classics as "Cathy" (ACK!), "Ziggy," and "Shoe," as well as other strips that have more than one word in their names.
Strips we already run on a daily basis include "Doonesbury," "Adam," "Tom the Dancing Bug" and the others listed here.
Take a minute, scan the list we can choose from, look at the sample strips provided. I'm interested in your comments -- that's a long list to choose from, and I'm betting there are some undiscovered gems on it that I know nothing about.
I remember when I worked at a newspaper, nothing would draw more angry letters and phone calls than when the paper decided to change its comics lineup. Nothing -- not international news coverage, political commentary -- nothing made people angrier than messing with their funny papers. (Well, except for that one time when the newspaper threatened to drop the bridge column. Who knew so many people still played bridge?)
I'm happy to live in a world now that makes it easy to read your favorite comic strip online even if your local newspaper doesn't carry it.
