Said Hilary Price, creator of the comic strip “Rhymes With Orange,” quoted in "Female artists are disappearing from print comics at chain newspapers/Creators are thriving in other mediums. Are print comic strips nearing the end?" (WaPo).
Something I learned from the top-rated comment over there: The Washington Post website offers lots of comic strips, but they're so hard to see: "With an online subscription to WaPo, you have to scroll allllll the way down to see the link for the comics. Then you click each comic title, and there are dozens, to see each individual daily strip." Here's that link.
It's been so long since I've followed any comic strips, I don't know what to click on. I'm sort of (but not really) surprised to see many names that I read when I was a child: Andy Capp, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois, Prince Valiant, Mark Trail, Mary Worth. With a webpage, I have the sense not to click on any of them, but if I had a real newspaper with "funny pages," I might read them because they were there.
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The local classical music station early this morning announced that long ago people thought that women couldn't write large works like operas and symphonies but today at 1pm there will be works by women composers. It seems to be part of an anti-white-male campaign, which is surprising since all of their music is by white males.
Make readers an offer they can't refuse.
The best way to consume comics, like everything else of course, is through someone-else's curation and comments.
The Comics Curmudgeon is a daily read.
I stopped reading the funny papers many decades ago - because, even when I was a kid, they were never funny.
Just wonderin', did I miss any funny stuff in the interim?
"Comics are the opium of the people."
Reading the daily comics was something I started doing in college. SF Chronicle. I can’t remember if they had one or two pages. When I moved to DC, I think the WaPo had three full pages, which I also read daily along with doing crossword puzzles in that and the NYTimes. My main memory is that serial comic strips moved extraordinarily slow. Spider-Man was my favorite. But Mary Worth was kind of oddly fascinating.
The 2021 Australian comedy series Fisk (now on Netflix) has a first season subplot featuring an artist who uses his phallus as a paintbrush to create portraits of the law firm's founders. Very funny. As were the first two seasons.
And for those who say women's sense of humor is comparatively impoverished, I'm pleased to report that the writers are Kitty Flanagan and Penny Flanagan, who are reportedly possessors of XX chromosomes.
I quit reading the comics page when Bill Watterson folded the tents of "Calvin and Hobbes". I didn't start reading comic strips until I was a teenager, and the big three were "Calvin and Hobbes", "The Far Side", and "Bloom County". I read "Garfield" and "Cathy" for a while in high school, but dropped them before I graduated. I read "Dilbert" for a while, but only because it ran in the business section of the newspaper I read.
and the big three were "Calvin and Hobbes", "The Far Side", and "Bloom County“
Yancey and I are same era. The first two bypassed sensibility and went straight to the funny bone. Bloom County was a bit of political yet apolitical cut up of the kind I had with my friends. Without even looking I expect most of these women creators are uninterested in entertaining an audience because Joe Biden needs to be elected- the most important vote in our lifetimes!
My wife and I are convinced that the writer of the "Pickles" strip is in our house, watching us to get more material.
We would love to have a grandson like Nelson, but alas we do not. I think we can file the newspaper strip under the "Twentieth Century Artform" heading. It was great while it lasted.
Remember when Andy Capp went on a bender, passed out by the docks, and a bunch of gamins tried to burn his body?
In just 4 PANELS.
My favorite "Andy Capp" stop showed Andy laying on a couch watching an exercise program. You could hear (see) the exercise leader's instructions but only see Andy on his couch. The third panel had the instructor telling the participants something like "OK now the other side." The last panel shows Andy laying in the other direction! Not quite sure why that one has stayed with me for 45 years or so. I think it was a rerun even then.
Comic strip industry collapsing; women, minorities hardest hit.
"Zits"... The surrealistic life of a 16 year old and his parents. I go to the WP to see it free everyday.
There is a blog devoted to extracting humor from comic strips, mostly via snark, here.
We have a local paper with comics, but they simply aren’t funny. They are not even up to the standards of the old Nancy strip. They have to bend the knee to political correctness, which kills comedy. George Carlin probably couldn’t even book a small club today.
names that I read when I was a child: Andy Capp, Blondie
I wonde if it means anything that these are your first 2 examples, Ann.
Both featured domestic physical violence pretty much weekly or more often. Not just any domestic violence but one spouse beating the other with a blunt object (umbrella, handbag)
Did you find that funny? It made you smile?
You didn't mention if Maggie and jiggs (rolling pin) make you giggle. Or if you chortled at snuffy Smith and loweezy (frying pan)
Meade: you might want to sleep with one eye open.
John Henry
Trots and Bonnie
John Henry
I always thought Mr Snoid deserved more play on the mainstream comic pages
John Henry
So print cartoons are disappearing... women hardest hit?
Ain't it always the way.
""The unfortunate effect of these consolidations is that whether or not you can draw well with it, you must be in possession of one.""
Could the troll draw a mouse?
There are surgeries 'she' could get now.
I think it's important that cis-women are able to draw with their penises.
If you read the online version of the print edition of the WaPo on an iPad or phone, it's easy to access the Style pages with comics. Unfortunately, the Post has execrable taste in selecting the comics to include on those pages. And for some reason, you can't access the print edition on a computer.
"Both featured domestic physical violence pretty much weekly or more often. Not just any domestic violence but one spouse beating the other with a blunt object (umbrella, handbag)"
Do not recall ever seeing Dagwood or Blondie beating each other. Maybe I missed it.
Comics are basically dead in smaller local papers.
Bus stop reading the funny papers when we stopped getting a paper newspaper. I have to say I do miss my role model, Alley Oop.
Oh dear. Anyone who thinks animals don't notice texture has never had a cat.
Here is today's comic offering from the female artist cited at the top of Althouse's post.
I'm sure she has some amusing ones too, but tough for her that this one came out the same time as the article.
Damikesk
Not Blondie beating dagwood. I don't recall that either.
I was speaking of Mrs dithers regularly beating the crap out of her husband with an umbrella.
Comedy gold.
John Henry
'I have to say I do miss my role model, Alley Oop.'
A Cave Man.
This checks...
So Althouse is suggesting there may be a market for an online funny page, where daily or weekly comics appear in an aggregated form from multiple authors. Not at all a bad idea, actually. I suggest THIS RIGHT HEREk for something close to this idea, although much more random in the posting order.
No matter how hard we try, one cannot lift a reversed print of a comic from the website using Silly Putty and then distort it beyond recognition, as one could do with printed newspapers. Entire minutes of fun on Sunday afternoons.
Josh reads the comics.
https://joshreads.com/
Stopped reading them when Watterson hung it up. Come to think of it, that's when I stopped taking a newspaper, too.
I highly recommend a gocomics.com subscription for the comic lovers in this audience. Currently the only internet service I pay for directly. I get the daily comics I want emailed to me daily. Far more than any newspaper ever carried. Every so often I visit the website to see if there are any new additions I should add. If you want to visit the site daily, or whenever the mood hits you, you simply read them- with ads. I'm not aware of any competition for them.
Then there's arcamax.com. some duplication with gocomics, some comics they don't have. You can have the comics you like emailed to you directly. Free. One email, one comic. With ads. Wait, didn't I just say I wasn't aware of competition for gocomics? Why yes, yes I did. It's an alternative, not at all competitive... At least that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.
Wait a moment, I recalled Kings Features and just googled it. It is a competitor to go gocomics, much more expensive, less choice.
Comicskingdom.com if you want to check it out.
Scott Adams took Dilbert to self-publish ages ago, surmising as you have that the newspaper business isn't worth having.
So many others self-publish on-line now. My favourites:
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
XKCD
Cyanide & Happiness
Oglaf (NSFW!)
The Oatmeal
Perry Bible Fellowship
Wondermark
Adventures of Dr McNinja
And of course Achewood was essential back when Onstad was doing it.
Does the Althouse blog have a tag for "winter sports"?
"?
About the only positive thing about subscribing to the Seattle Times was the comics page. That's not enough positive value to make the subscription worthwhile. Now, the ST is nothing but barbarian propaganda.
It was too time consuming to read the comics online. Too many clicks to go from one comic to the next.
"A long time ago, I got an email from a troll saying he could draw better than me with his penis."
Maybe. But his penis can't do art with menstrual blood.
What the heck is the matter with the characters in Judge Parker?
Schlockmercenary.com by Howard Tayler. The entire 20 year run is online, free. Best dialogue and plotting, ever.
I have 3 comics that I go to a few times a week.
A.F.Branco
Mallard Fillmore and Gary Varvel. Pretty on mark with what is happening in the world.
Comics were one of the premier attractions to readers in the beginning and century-long heyday of daily newspapers, and they're treated now like a vestige of another time, the space for them maintained begrudgingly, at best, by the comics-blind editors and journalists. It seems to me that if good new strips could be found and cultivated, they would still be attractive features to stimulate sales...and would justify more space added to the papers for news.
They way they're going, print news organs are dying away, newspapers dying, and those left shrinking in size and content, a tragic end to an essential tool of maintaining public awareness of the local to global news, free of the bedazzling media eyeball kicks that are the norm of tv and online news outlets.
For those who are only familiar with newspaper comics of the past 40-50 years, there was once a time when the papers offered a cornucopia of comics of all types--comic, dramatic, fantastic, domestic, etc., and the drawing and writing was top notch, even at times, breathtaking, (e.g., LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND as one very early example). What is out there now are miserable, desiccated wisps of nothing, little more than excuses to maintain ownership of commercial commodities.
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