It was only a matter of time before someone started scanning and posting [geeklife.com] Opus.

i've heard that's happening with a lot of online comics.

Excellent. I don't get the paper, and I've been falling behind. It's really starting to get interesting now. Makes me wish I was old enough to find it funny back during its original run.

In Response to FeldmanSkitzoid (#14647):

So, how old are you, 12?

In Response to Deathalicious (#14699):

22. It was at the tail end of its run when I started to become interested in it. I think I was just ignoring it because I hadn't been reading it in the past (because I was too young to understand its humor). That was just before I began to realize that most of the strips in the newspaper are crap.

In Response to FeldmanSkitzoid (#14712):

That was just before I began to realize that most of the strips in the newspaper are crap.

Depends on the paper. I grew up with the Guardian, which at one stage had Doonesbury, Bloom County, Austin, and Steve Bell as the cartoons. Okay, Austin is normally shitty, but that still might be the highest average quality of comic strips for any newspaper, anywhere, ever.

Cheers,
Graham

In Response to albionsoft (#14716):

Am I the only one who likes Foxtrot? [uclick.com] I mean, a few of the strips are a little predictable, but I like it nonetheless.

In Response to Deathalicious (#14745):

Foxtrot may sometimes be predictable, but that's true of so many comics. I'll keep reading it as long as long as Bill Amend still comes up with an occasional winner.



He's obviously aware that some of his fans (like me) are also big fans of Calvin and Hobbes.

In Response to Deathalicious (#14745):

Am I the only one who likes Foxtrot?

Nah, I quite like it too, but as far as I'm aware it's never appeared in a UK paper. Which means it showed up in my awareness as a webcomic.

Cheers,
Graham

In Response to AsphaltBuffet (#14646):

It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Yo. We don't do that anymore. Questionable quality of meat'n'all. Sorry.

In Response to mcgrue (#14752):

i've heard that mad nerd disease is nasty...

In Response to Deathalicious (#14745):

I'm a fan of Foxtrot and Get Fuzzy [comics.com]. Off the Mark [comics.com] is the best replacement for the Far Side that I've read in a long time.

In Response to Rich (#14763):

In my local paper, the only strips worth reading anymore are Doonesbury, Non Sequitur, Zippy, and Frank & Ernest. The rest are those irritating "funny because it's true" family strips about families. Shudder. We actually have TWO Brian Basset strips. As if "Adam" wasn't bad enough, we also have "Red & Rover". Gads. I wish they would at least pick up Boondocks or something.

As far as syndicated newspaper comics have been concerned, I haven't been a huge fan of reading the comics ever since production of Calvin and Hobbes had ended. Now all I do is ocasionally read the paper and check out Zits and possibly Get Fuzzy. But ever since Bill Watterson stopped producing, I've just been reading more and more online comics.

Man... I'm glad I still have all those treasuries and book collections in my closet. I might have to rip one of those open just to see how well they've aged, and what I can learn from them as a cartoonist.

In Response to FeldmanSkitzoid (#14764):

In my local paper, the only strips worth reading anymore are Doonesbury, Non Sequitur, Zippy, and Frank & Ernest.

What interests me is that in the UK that would be all the strips carried in a paper. Including the editorial ones.

Just how many strips do American papers carry?

Cheers,
Graham

In Response to albionsoft (#14773):

No funnies page for you? :(

I've seen it vary from a daily full page to two full pages, depending on the size of the market and whimsy of the editor. And on Sundays there's usually a 4-6 page color insert.

These days it's not uncommon to see Doonesbury packed in the editorials section, which is usually in the first segment of the newspaper, along with 2 or 3 more traditional political cartoons.

Even the americans that like to read still have a fetish for looking at teh purdy pictoors.

In Response to mcgrue (#14776):

I've seen it vary from a daily full page to two full pages, depending on the size of the market and whimsy of the editor. And on Sundays there's usually a 4-6 page color insert.

The Washington Post's Sunday Edition has 10 pages of comics, although 1 entire page is devoted to those serious, soap opera style comics. During the week, I think it's at least 3 pages of black and whites, which actually is more strips, since they're printed at a much smaller size during the week.

In Response to Deathalicious (#14780):

Wow. 10 pages! I don't think a UK paper ever got to ten strips. I wonder why the difference?

Off the top of my head :

Britain doesn't produce cartoonists. I'd guess anything up to half of all the comics appearing in British papers are American imports. That's gotta be significant. Though I'm not sure what it means...

We have more papers. America has lots of papers, but they seem to be mainly fairly local. I mean, if you go to buy a paper, how many titles can you choose from? We have (I think) 9 national dailies, plus another 3 Scottish papers. Does that seem a lot compared to you?

Lots of overlap? How many papers carry the same strip? In the UK no strip appears in more than one paper. Is that true in the US? I mean for papers with overlapping target areas.

Cheers,
Graham

In Response to albionsoft (#14781):


We have more papers. America has lots of papers, but they seem to be mainly fairly local. I mean, if you go to buy a paper, how many titles can you choose from? We have (I think) 9 national dailies, plus another 3 Scottish papers. Does that seem a lot compared to you?


Technically, we only have one major daily paper that I know of that is strictly national (that is, it has no pretensions of being printed from a given location) which is USA Today. I don't know of any others off of the top of my head. I suppose you could also count the Christian Science Monitor, although it has a much smaller readership.

However, there are many "regional" newspapers which are in fact distributed nationwide and are frequently read. These include the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and the Wall Street Journal (I'm including it in this list because Wall Street *is* located in NY, after all). Other papers tend to have a more regional reach: the Miami Herald is apparently a fairly major US newspaper, but it's not readily available around here.

However, there are something like 2000 local dailies throughout the US.

Keep in mind that the US is not, on the whole, a news-from-the-newspaper type of country. Americans get most of their news from TV.

I'd hazard to guess that the reason that there are so many cartoons in American newspapers is because there's a tradition of it in the US, whereas that same tradition does not exist in the UK.

In the US, many strips are carried in "all" papers with comics -- good luck finding a daily newspaper with comics but no Garfield! The "no overlap" rule seems only to apply to local independent weeklies, who generally do not carry the same (again, independent) comic strips. So, for example, the local C-Ville Weekly carries This Modern World [thismodernworld.com], while the Hook (another local weekly) carries Life is Hell [toonopedia.com]. This may have something to do with the various comic syndicates. I'm sure you can pull some info up on that through google, but I don't know much about it.

In Response to albionsoft (#14781):

Most papers in America try to present themselves as "local" concerns, but this is just a marketing ploy. The truth is, the vast majority of all american daily and weekly newspapers (somewhere in the neighborhood of 85%) are owned and controlled by no more than twenty-ish publishers.

So each of the many thousands of publications attempts to look like a local paper, but the actual content which is truly local usually winds up being way less than 20% of the overall text printed. For example: Gannett is a publisher which owns USA Today, some other big dailies, plus hundreds and hundreds of "local" papers. But if you look at today's copy of the Bellingham Herald (they bought out this newspaper here in my city in Western Washington state), compare it to today's copy of the Burlington Free Press (the largest daily paper in Vermont, where i used to live), and compare them to today's copy of USA Today, you will notice that three-quarters of their columns are virtually identical.

The first thing that Gannett did when they bought the Bellingham Herald a few years ago was to lay off (dismiss/fire/"retire"/transfer/etc.) twenty-six of the thirty-two local reporters. So now the remaining six "journalists" who work for the Herald are supposed to provide us with local content? What a joke. They almost never report on anything important here locally. I feel bad for the staff, because it's not their fault that the ownership chooses to be like this.

This whole issue is not limited to the print and publication businesses: it is even worse when you look at television and radio broadcasting. For instance, there is a regional corporation ("Belo") which owns many of the television and radio stations in the Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana). Northwest Cable News is their twenty-four-hour news network which is supposedly providing our region with coverage of local events. But any time you turn that channel on, you have about a 60% chance of finding no such coverage; instead, they just run a feed directly from CNN (which is AOL Time Warner's twenty-four hour news channel-- basically an extension of the Ministry of Truth).

These examples are not specific to my region. Heck, they are probably not specific to most countries. This is the way of the world, and we have already surpassed Orwell's description of totalitarianism. Unfortunately, most people have been sufficiently fooled by the veneer of social activities, they fail to realize what is actually being achieved by "the man behind the curtain." And even when people do become vaguely aware of how Orwellian the world has become, they are too afraid to admit it.

In Response to Teledildonix (#14792):

What a joke. They almost never report on anything important here locally.

This is the exact reverse of my complaint* about the local paper in Adelaide. They'll do a huge spread on page three about some schools' charity fuckathon or whatever where they managed to raise the princely sum of $23.50 for a help line for frustrated pomeranian owners, and the 'world news' gets compressed into two tabloid-sized sides, most of one of which will be taken up with a photo of whatever Nicole Kidman was wearing a few days ago.

Excuse the incoherence. I'm not drunk, (i think), I'm just terribly, terribly hungover. Man, I wanna puke.

*One of my complaints. One of my many, many, pointless complaints. Anyone who wants actual news reads the national paper anyway.

In Response to tynic (#14795):

Anyone who wants actual news reads the national paper anyway.

  Actually I find the drunks at the lawyer's bar&grille are not only relatively well-informed, but they're frequently drunk enough to buy you a round or two before they realize they don't know you from a hole in the wall.

Oh, and the bartenders keep the funnies page stapled to the bar front, just to come full circle.

In Response to Deathalicious (#14791):

(I'm including it in this list because Wall Street *is* located in NY, after all)

At least, until they outsource it.

In Response to Deathalicious (#14791):

However, there are many "regional" newspapers which are in fact distributed nationwide and are frequently read. These include the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and the Wall Street Journal

So about the same number of "national" papers in practice. Fair enough.

Keep in mind that the US is not, on the whole, a news-from-the-newspaper type of country. Americans get most of their news from TV.

No different from here. Even the broadsheets assume that you've seen the news on telly already.

In the US, many strips are carried in "all" papers with comics -- good luck finding a daily newspaper with comics but no Garfield!

That's a huge difference - no paper over here would take a strip it didn't have exclusive rights to. Which means that between them UK papers carry maybe 40 strips, which sounds like it might compare well with the US.

Cheers,
Graham

Well, I tried to go to a couple of the sites with the comics uploaded today, and all of them that I could find had to "cease and desist". Dammit.

You know, just once I'd like to see someone say "fuck you, come and get me" to one of these companies. I think it'd be pretty entertaining. Would they really waste their money suing some smartass geek? It would be fun to see.

In Response to FeldmanSkitzoid (#15631):

That is disappointing. I encourage any who care to write to Mr. Breathed [berkeleybreathed.com] and ask him to post his comic online. Hell, have the Washington Post Writers Group post it if nothing else.