No dead comics society here

Editor's Notes

Twenty years ago, I studied the comic strips at the newspaper where I worked and set out to interview every artist/writer in the Sunday comics pages. I profiled each one in stories that ran every week for six months. I interviewed the beloved Charles Schultz right before I went into labor with my son, and then I wrote the story about him as soon as I got out of the hospital.

Last week — five years after the death of the Peanuts creator — we stopped running Schulz's comic strip reruns here at the Tracy Press. We also replaced the panel for Dennis the Menace, another nostalgic comic whose creator has passed on. And we said good-bye to some newer comics that seem to have attracted few followers.

For an editor, waking up to a typo in a front-page headline is painful, but cutting old comics strips to make room for new ones is torture. Change of any sort can bring on a barrage of angry phone calls from readers, so most newspapers avoid it.

For us, this time, only one caller has mentioned Peanuts. She said she's been reading about the antics of Linus and Charlie Brown since 1948, and although she knew she was reading reruns from the 1970s, she didn't care. She misses Peanuts.

A few other callers said they cared more about the disappearance of Dennis from our pages. One clipped out some old panels and wrote notes on them — “Bring back Dennis, please.”

Another left a message clearly stating her disgust with the decision: “It is most regrettable that someone replaced the adorable Dennis with a ludicrous, dimwitted cartoon, which I won't even look at.”

But the dozens of readers I've quizzed in the last few months say they're open to new comics. Some specifically asked for comics with an edge — like The Boondocks and Ballard Street. Some asked for a daily children's strip, and we found Slylock Fox. A few said they read Get Fuzzy in Saturday's Our Town and wanted it in the daily comics. More than a few said they really didn't like Six Chix and Franklin Fibbs.

And then there's Opus, requested by a 20-year-old who represents that non-newspaper-reading age group that editors long to reach. When I called the syndicate that distributes that cartoon, I found out that a competitive newspaper to the north bought rights that block us from using Opus, which is not funny at all.

Meanwhile, as we strive to be unique in Tracy, we've introduced quite a few new characters, and I'd like to know what you think of them. Some of the strips, like The Boondocks, offer more social commentary than comic relief. Author Aaron McGruder has been described as an unwavering voice of black consciousness, but he's also drawn criticism for being more “in your face” than “tongue in cheek.”

Ballard Street is a reminder of how strange people can be in Middle America with its women in large print dresses and men in baggy trousers. Get Fuzzy has Rob the human, Satchel the dog, and Bucky the cat. And Slylock Fox has a very witty fox, word and math games, visual mysteries and drawing lessons for kids.

So we've mixed it up a bit, in an effort to freshen up our Laugh pages, attract some new comics readers and keep the rest of you thinking and laughing. There's an array of talent out there in the comic strip kingdom, and we're not afraid to try something new — as long as we know you're reading.