A ways back , at the old home , MSA expounded upon the syndicated PEANUTS re-runs of early-60s strips and how he thought a " day of the year " one that ran a coupla days apart from that actual day showed how wrong this concept was , and also that the " Why didn't McCovey ?..." Peanuts strip did as well .
I know that permanent re-runs of no-longer-produced strips ran in newspapers at least as far back as the 1940s , but they've been more common both within newspapers and in (what I assume are) Web exclusives - Re-runs , for the latter , of recent , discontinued , favorites such as BOONDOCKS , CATHY , CALVIN AND HOBBES , and even MUTT & JEFF !!!!!!!!!!!
The newspaper re-runs of two different ( Literally " respective " ? ) " most popular comic strips in the ( North American , anyway . ) world " , Peanuts and FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE , have especially occasioned comment , and " taking space away from a new strip in the paper ' accusations .
One oddity about the Peanuts reruns is that there are in fact two different feeds of Peanuts repeats , though it appears that only the one of 60s strips is on the Web...Some newspapers reprinted 80s , now 90s strips by Sparky...
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I can understand the reruns on the Web, where space is limitless and the more hits they get, the more they can charge for banner ads. It's certainly the only way we could get C&H, as he hates merchandise and other uses of the characters. Considering how readily available the books are, I'm not sure how often I'd click over to those to see one strip per day, but it doesn't hurt.
I'm still surprised that PEANUTS has so many newspapers running it. OTOH, seeing the comics that the Chicago Tribune runs when a space opens up, it's hard to say it doesn't belong. I always hear that syndicates get 57 million submissions each year and only three are developed into strips. But then I see those strips, and I wonder what those rejects could possibly have looked like.
Speaking of which, the Tribune recently named another winner in its Cartoon Carousel, in which it pits two Sunday comics against each other with the loser in votes being banished. The latest round pitted BROOM HILDA against a one-panel gag (double-entendre intended) strip, FREE RANGE.
Not surprising (at least to me), BH came out on top, and now it's being pitted against one the Trib just picked up, DIAMOND LIL. So it's gone from two new strips, with one staying (but only until it got beat) to pitting two existing strips against each other, with one destined to lose. That's either strange or they just want to get rid of Broomy and want to blame it on the readers.
Meanwhile, the Trib added DOGS of KENNEL C and THATABABY clear and free. KOKC is an awful comic, but it's got that dog-owner demo wrapped up, while THATA is at least occasionally funny in its cultural references.
Except, this Sunday's joke was based on a newborn baby's parents dancing to their old mixtape which had the song Judy in Disguise (with Glasses) on it. I would guess that is a mixtape song for the parents of these new parents (ie, my era). The notion that parents who were teenagers around the 1990s were dancing to that seems a bit off for a strip that prides itself on its obscure cultural references.
This Sunday, the Trib added BARNEY & CLYDE, which has a little promise. But neither the joke nor the title give me an idea of what the strip is about, so it's hard to tell just yet what it will be.
BTW, does anybody else wonder why FOXTROT is still running? It's a Sunday-only strip, except the jokes are essentially a colored daily strip. There's nothing special about them and his regular cycle of jokes and stereotypes is wearing a little thin.
I hear about how daily strips are getting pushed out of newspapers, and I guess I see why if these are the best that are out there to use in the limited newspaper space left.
OTOH, the new Dick Tracy looks miles and miles better than the one that ended Saturday. I wasn't sure how well Joe Staton could do to pump some life into what was left of Tracy, but the first couples days has looked good.
-- MSA
Barney & Clyde is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group, and is written by Post humor writer and Washington Post Magazine columnist Gene Weingarten and his son and an artist whose name I don't remember. It's about the friendship between a billionaire mogul and a homeless man, and the contrast between their worlds.
I agree that it has a little promise; I like the art style, and it is a bit whimsical. However, it rather annoyingly takes the tack that the poor man is really rich because he's unencumbered with the trappings of success, which is so much rot. As Samuel L. "Ultimates Nick Fury" Jackson says, money may not buy happiness, but it can buy a damn good substitute. So the homeless man may appear to be modest, but he's a bit smug about it, and I hate smug.
In any event, our billionaire mogul has a trophy wife and a precocious daughter whose granddad is an irreverent old coot, while the homeless man has a homeless friend who helps him scrounge for money. And, for no good reason, the strip also looks in on a couple people on the billionaire's staff.
With all that, the actual friendship of the two principals gets less screen time than one would think. It's based on the notion that, although they aren't social equals, they have a mutual respect for each other; the homeless man is the only guy the billionaire knows who doesn't want anything from him, so he likes hanging around with him.
Don't let the door hit you, Dave!.
OTOH, it COULD be about Linus' little brother, although he was way, way past my time (as well as the current comic, I think), considering how widely MSA threads have been known to stagger.Suggesting that they rerun Rerun strips would nearly be on-topic.
I'm hoping this one doesn't end up discussing Goody or the Prince, but usually such hopes are forlorn.
-- MSA
With all that, the actual friendship of the two principals gets less screen time than one would think.
That's way more complex than I expected, and none of that is apparent in the first one I saw, so they picked a bad week go get started. The style is more Mutts-like and whimsical. Maybe I'll go online and see what I can see about its past. It does sound like it's got its good and bad points.
That's also the way I feel about THATABABY. It's apparently about having a baby, but it's been more about the parents embracing cultural fads so far. It's pretty well drawn and has a different sense of humor (and a real sense of humor), so it's definitely the best new strip they've picked up for awhile.
-- MSA
Mr. Silver Age wrote:
I know exactly what you mean. About two weeks ago, the Washington Post dropped Watch Your Head for a new strip, Reply All. Watch Your Head, which is about a bunch of students at an HBCU (historically Black college or university) came about when Aaron MacGruder abandoned the Boondocks comic strip for the Boondocks TV show. It was fresh when it debuted, but now is kind of tired, so I wasn't upset when the Post dropped it.
However, I find it hard to believe Reply All didn't come from the reject pile. It's about a single young woman making her way in the world, I guess a Cathy for the 2010s, but it's so poorly rendered, it makes Cathy look like the work of Burne Hogarth or Alex Raymond. It doesn't help that it's clearly meant to be seen in color, but the Post runs its comics in black and white.
One thing I have to say that Watch Your Head did right: Every few months, it would run a series of strips introducing the characters to the readers. More strips really ought to do that.
Mr. Age wrote: it COULD be about Linus' little brother, although he was way, way past my time (as well as the current comic, I think), considering how widely MSA threads have been known to stagger.Suggesting that they rerun Rerun strips would nearly be on-topic.
Actually, I think Rerun van Pelt first came along circa 1972-1973, so that's not all that far past the boundaries of the Silver Age (not that comic strips really fit into the Silver Age boundaries anyways).
You're right, he first appeared in 1973, which isn't that late--some people date the SA that far. But I was gone from reading Peanuts by then, so that he showed up shortly after I stopped reading rather than many years later was lost on me.
Frankly, I think his addition plus those of Snoopy's brother Spike a little earlier and the growing role of Woodstock and those elaborations indicated the end of Peanuts' Golden Age. Or maybe I just wasn't interested any more due to my own age.
-- MSA
I can't imagine growing out of Peanuts.
I also can't imagine 57 million people (every year!) having comic strip ideas...
I find Snoopy's brothers Spike and Olaf to be quite tiresome. I don't mind Woodstock and the other little birdies.
I'm not surprised at the number of papers that continue to carry Peanuts; papers still carry Blondie, which at least makes fitful stabs at being contemporary and relevant within its framework. Just like some banks are too big to fail, Peanuts is too big to die.
After Charles Schulz died, the syndicate announced it would continue the reruns starting from circa 1974, which they said was Schulz at the height of his powers. I always took that as an inadvertent admission that he went downhill from there.
If they weren't going to start from the beginning -- and I can understand why not, because the look and tone of the strip was far different -- then I wish they had started from the 1960s, before the strip had ossified, and let the readers see it develop until it reached "the height of his powers."
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