The proliferation of “classic” features at GoComics is another thing that I definitely dislike. There’s simply no reason to waste menu space on re-runs and zombies.
I don’t understand the title. Do people not use the term “date” anymore?
WW, I thought this was today’s new strip; and since Wally and Joan have been married for several years, “date” seemed like an odd choice of words. Which led me to conclude this was actually an old strip. Which of course it was, but justifiably so because it’s a Stone Soup Classics strip.
I wondered about this one too. The sad thing is that I get both the classic and new strips in my email from GoComics and didn’t even realize it was the second Stone Soup I had read in a row. I think what threw me off was that the classic strips didn’t used to run on Sunday.
“There’s simply no reason to waste menu space on re-runs and zombies.”
Except that there are people who HAVEN’T already seen old those old strips. Should they go unserved? Should we take all those Calvin and Hobbes books out of the bookstores, since we’ve all already seen them?
That’s not really a valid comparison: nobody’s talking about taking anything out of bookstores, but rather not running dead strips on perpetual daily repeat.
In fact, the existance of collections in bookstores is an argument AGAINST the perpetual daily repeats.
Now this being said, I can understand making exceptions for strips like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes: but repeating long-running strips as a matter of course is like electing Horace Clarke into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I don’t see anything wrong with providing the option for rerun strips. I have a few of those in my lineup, like Calvin, The Boondocks, and Foxtrot Classics.
Bill: My wife and I have been married a good while, and we still talk about going out on dates.
“That’s not really a valid comparison”
It’s not supposed to be. It’s a logical progression.
You’re starting with the statement “I don’t want to read that, therefore it shouldn’t be available to read” about ONE thing, so I generalized it to something else.
I’m not arguing “hey, Bill (or anyone else) somebody wants this so you have to read it, too”. I’m saying the world is better off if more ‘stuff’ is available to people who want it, even if it’s stuff that I don’t necessarily want for myself.”
Bookstores have limited shelf space. They give that space to 20 copies of each of the Calvin and Hobbies books, while several strips I’d like to own collections of can’t get shelf space (or, in some cases, even get published in the first place.)
“Now this being said, I can understand making exceptions for strips like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes”
I assume that rerun strips that don’t generate clicks (ad revenue) don’t or wouldn’t stay available. If someone IS clicking on them, that’s their business, and I have no business arguing that they shouldn’t be allowed to because I don’t want to click on those things.
Don’t want to read old (whatever strip)? Then don’t. Problem solved. Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t (on gocomics? I don’t. But that’s a different thread.) But, as an example, I’d LOVE it if rerun strips of Fontaine Fox’s “Toonerville Folks” would show up online. Or original “Thimble Theater”. And back when I still got a daily paper, I could have listed at least a dozen strips I’d have rather had than “Apartment 3-G”.
Yes, but would Granny have said that?
Discussing zombie comic strips, nobody is saying they shouldn’t be available to read, but rather they shouldn’t be taking up space that could be given to new strips.
Good God, NOBODY’S talking about censorship here.
It’s one thing for newspapers, where having such strips means that others with new content can’t be shown. With GoComics, it just makes for a larger listing page. I’m not seeing the problem.
That is true to some extent: but it’s the better-known strips and the zombie strips that get the promotion.
One thing I learned from About.com is while there’s room for infinite content — or BECAUSE there’s infinite content — nothing gets noticed unless it’s promoted.
(and, of course, the newspaper aspect is not nothing)
I have to confess that I don’t pay a lot of attention to GoComics’ promotion efforts. Mostly I see, “Recommended for you”. Some of which are pretty farfetched.
When I see comments from someone with the Creator label, I’ll usually check out their effort. So, creators, get out there and post on strips where I might read comments (Hint, always Rip Haywire).
Winter Wallaby – we still call the weekly Saturday night out a date.
It seems to me that last week (4/1) I noticed a classic Sunday for the first time,which would make this the second.
“Discussing zombie comic strips, nobody is saying they shouldn’t be available to read, but rather they shouldn’t be taking up space that could be given to new strips.”
One hand giveth, then that same hand taketh away. How can they be “available to read” without “taking up space that could be given to new strips”?
“Good God, NOBODY’S talking about censorship here.”
You’ve circumnavigated it without making landfall. When you talk about what “shouldn’t be”, you’re implicitly suggesting that someone should make it not be, even if you aren’t interested in doing it yourself.
—
Here’s an analogy: Zombie comic strips are like TV episode reruns… TV stations play them because they think some people will watch them. But, if it’s an episode you’ve already seen and know quite well, you don’t want to watch it again. So running a rerun means that there’s less new, original content, right? Well, look at that a little closer. The networks invest in new programming, which is expensive. Because it’s expensive, only successful shows continue to get made, and less-successful (as measured by viewership) shows don’t. So the people that can make popular shows are making shows, and the people who make less-popular shows don’t. So if you want to make more new shows, it will be done by the people who aren’t already working making new shows… i.e., the people who made the less-popular shows. Do we need more of THOSE shows?
Thimble Theatre is only for premium members, alas…
I didn’t have any trouble viewing the comic.
The link worked fine for me, too.
When I was a child, I read Lil Abner and Pogo every day. Never understood the satire, but I liked the artwork. I was thrilled a year or two ago when I noticed GoComics had Lil Abner classics available. I figured I could read them again as an adult and actually understand them. Alas, only a few weeks’ worth were available on infinite repeat. This was worse than having none at all, and I quickly abandoned the strip. But I like the concept of rerunning long dead strips, if it’s done well.
I don’t think I ever read a real lil Abner strip. But Mad Magazine had a lot of parodies, and I saw the movie version of the musical once when I was probably around 10 or 12. And, when I was in school, there was a Sadie Hawkins dance every year.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I can’t read the copyright date, but the first digit doesn’t
look like a 2. The strip is marked 5/31. What year was it run?
Arthur is correct, the first digit is a 1, it’s probably “1996” or “1998”.
1998: http://www.gocomics.com/stonesoup/1998/05/31
Kilby & Olivier did the detective work to find the original date
of the strip. I’m wondering when Bill saw it, though, that he
made his comment.
P.S. A quick glance at a calendar revealed that of those two possibilities, only 31-May-1998 is a Sunday.
P.P.S. @ Arthur – The “when?” is presumably “recently”; I’d be more interested in “where?”. It’s not the current Sunday strip at GoComics.
My bad. It was the “Stone Soup Classics” (http://www.gocomics.com/stone-soup-classics) strip this morning, and I clearly wasn’t paying enough attention.
The proliferation of “classic” features at GoComics is another thing that I definitely dislike. There’s simply no reason to waste menu space on re-runs and zombies.
I don’t understand the title. Do people not use the term “date” anymore?
WW, I thought this was today’s new strip; and since Wally and Joan have been married for several years, “date” seemed like an odd choice of words. Which led me to conclude this was actually an old strip. Which of course it was, but justifiably so because it’s a Stone Soup Classics strip.
I wondered about this one too. The sad thing is that I get both the classic and new strips in my email from GoComics and didn’t even realize it was the second Stone Soup I had read in a row. I think what threw me off was that the classic strips didn’t used to run on Sunday.
“There’s simply no reason to waste menu space on re-runs and zombies.”
Except that there are people who HAVEN’T already seen old those old strips. Should they go unserved? Should we take all those Calvin and Hobbes books out of the bookstores, since we’ve all already seen them?
That’s not really a valid comparison: nobody’s talking about taking anything out of bookstores, but rather not running dead strips on perpetual daily repeat.
In fact, the existance of collections in bookstores is an argument AGAINST the perpetual daily repeats.
Now this being said, I can understand making exceptions for strips like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes: but repeating long-running strips as a matter of course is like electing Horace Clarke into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I don’t see anything wrong with providing the option for rerun strips. I have a few of those in my lineup, like Calvin, The Boondocks, and Foxtrot Classics.
Bill: My wife and I have been married a good while, and we still talk about going out on dates.
“That’s not really a valid comparison”
It’s not supposed to be. It’s a logical progression.
You’re starting with the statement “I don’t want to read that, therefore it shouldn’t be available to read” about ONE thing, so I generalized it to something else.
I’m not arguing “hey, Bill (or anyone else) somebody wants this so you have to read it, too”. I’m saying the world is better off if more ‘stuff’ is available to people who want it, even if it’s stuff that I don’t necessarily want for myself.”
Bookstores have limited shelf space. They give that space to 20 copies of each of the Calvin and Hobbies books, while several strips I’d like to own collections of can’t get shelf space (or, in some cases, even get published in the first place.)
“Now this being said, I can understand making exceptions for strips like Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes”
I assume that rerun strips that don’t generate clicks (ad revenue) don’t or wouldn’t stay available. If someone IS clicking on them, that’s their business, and I have no business arguing that they shouldn’t be allowed to because I don’t want to click on those things.
Don’t want to read old (whatever strip)? Then don’t. Problem solved. Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t (on gocomics? I don’t. But that’s a different thread.) But, as an example, I’d LOVE it if rerun strips of Fontaine Fox’s “Toonerville Folks” would show up online. Or original “Thimble Theater”. And back when I still got a daily paper, I could have listed at least a dozen strips I’d have rather had than “Apartment 3-G”.
Yes, but would Granny have said that?
Discussing zombie comic strips, nobody is saying they shouldn’t be available to read, but rather they shouldn’t be taking up space that could be given to new strips.
Good God, NOBODY’S talking about censorship here.
It’s one thing for newspapers, where having such strips means that others with new content can’t be shown. With GoComics, it just makes for a larger listing page. I’m not seeing the problem.
That is true to some extent: but it’s the better-known strips and the zombie strips that get the promotion.
One thing I learned from About.com is while there’s room for infinite content — or BECAUSE there’s infinite content — nothing gets noticed unless it’s promoted.
(and, of course, the newspaper aspect is not nothing)
I have to confess that I don’t pay a lot of attention to GoComics’ promotion efforts. Mostly I see, “Recommended for you”. Some of which are pretty farfetched.
When I see comments from someone with the Creator label, I’ll usually check out their effort. So, creators, get out there and post on strips where I might read comments (Hint, always Rip Haywire).
Winter Wallaby – we still call the weekly Saturday night out a date.
It seems to me that last week (4/1) I noticed a classic Sunday for the first time,which would make this the second.
“Discussing zombie comic strips, nobody is saying they shouldn’t be available to read, but rather they shouldn’t be taking up space that could be given to new strips.”
One hand giveth, then that same hand taketh away. How can they be “available to read” without “taking up space that could be given to new strips”?
“Good God, NOBODY’S talking about censorship here.”
You’ve circumnavigated it without making landfall. When you talk about what “shouldn’t be”, you’re implicitly suggesting that someone should make it not be, even if you aren’t interested in doing it yourself.
—
Here’s an analogy: Zombie comic strips are like TV episode reruns… TV stations play them because they think some people will watch them. But, if it’s an episode you’ve already seen and know quite well, you don’t want to watch it again. So running a rerun means that there’s less new, original content, right? Well, look at that a little closer. The networks invest in new programming, which is expensive. Because it’s expensive, only successful shows continue to get made, and less-successful (as measured by viewership) shows don’t. So the people that can make popular shows are making shows, and the people who make less-popular shows don’t. So if you want to make more new shows, it will be done by the people who aren’t already working making new shows… i.e., the people who made the less-popular shows. Do we need more of THOSE shows?
Comics Kingdom has Thimble Theater: http://comicskingdom.com/thimble-theater
Thimble Theatre is only for premium members, alas…
I didn’t have any trouble viewing the comic.
The link worked fine for me, too.
When I was a child, I read Lil Abner and Pogo every day. Never understood the satire, but I liked the artwork. I was thrilled a year or two ago when I noticed GoComics had Lil Abner classics available. I figured I could read them again as an adult and actually understand them. Alas, only a few weeks’ worth were available on infinite repeat. This was worse than having none at all, and I quickly abandoned the strip. But I like the concept of rerunning long dead strips, if it’s done well.
I don’t think I ever read a real lil Abner strip. But Mad Magazine had a lot of parodies, and I saw the movie version of the musical once when I was probably around 10 or 12. And, when I was in school, there was a Sadie Hawkins dance every year.