Seriously, unless they’re publishing reruns this week, this should have gone live more than nine years ago.
And if it is a rerun, I’ll repeat what I’ve said before (my own rerun): syndicates should respect their comic strips enough to pay somebody a few bucks to sift through old comics scheduled for repeat and pull out the ones that are either outdated or otherwise no longer appropriate.
Another idea: cartoonists can place some sort of “do not rerun this strip” notation in the margins of strips they know won’t be relevant ten years in the future (such as the many memorials for Anthony Bourdain).
Comics I Don't Understand 
I know this isn’t here as a CIDU, but I don’t get this. I know who Sully Sullenberger is, and I know he landed a plane on know he performed a “water landing,” which is similar to “wet landing” or I guess also similar to “wetlands.” But I still don’t get this comic. They guy retires, and buys a yacht, and then to remind people of his glory days he gives his yacht a name that has some distant similarity to something he did in the past?
Yeah, but by those rules, Gary Trudeau could never go on vacation!
larK: C(omment)IDU . . .
@ Andréa – larK is playing on Bill’s 2nd or 3rd paragraph above, thereby implying that Doonebury has a much shorter half-life than Trudeau assumed when he started his (apparently) never-ending weekday sabbatical. It depends on the reader, of course, but it is certainly true that not all of the stuff from the mid-80’s has been worth re-running.
I disagree – I’ve been reading all his reruns on GoCOmics, and they are as relevant today as they were when they were originally printed. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, and all that. (Dare I say that ‘Cathy’ has the same effect on me? Or would that put me into moderation?)
The reason I suggest having a person make the decision is that it really has to be done on a comic-by-comic basis — and it’s going to be more art than science.
Some outdated comics are interesting for their historical perspective. Some make absolutely no sense without annotations. Then there was the stunningly racist Mutt and Jeff panel that GoComics has re-distributed at least twice over the past few years (they didn’t get any complaints after the first time???)
What it boils down to is showing no respect for the comic strip and if I were a cartoonist, I’d resent this.
And while I’m at it, if a comic strip is clearly a repeat from decades past (as in Mutt and Jeff again), I’d like to see the original date: with so many outdated references, there’s no real pretense that these are 2018 strips.
And related to that (sorry, I’m on a roll), stop making little changes in classic comics, especially if you’re not going to do it consistently: I don’t want to see somebody in what’s clearly a 1951 comic complaining about having to pay two whole dollars to see Taylor Swift.
(And yes, you might feel two dollars would be too much to pay to see Taylor Swift even in 2018, but that’s not my point so I’ll save y’all the trouble of writing it)
Maybe the syndicates should hire Comic Strip Integrity Ombudsmen
Okay. After that harangue, i now feel safe in my harangue is that if something is in the public’s repertoire of cultural references ten years after the fact, I don’t see why the fact that it isn’t *current* means it shouldn’t be a joke. Okay, it’s surely not a “Ha! It’s funny because he said something I know about” of topical humor but it’s still as fair as “Ha! It’s funny because cows say ‘moo'” of basic puns.
I suppose it could be argued no body remembers Sullivan landing the plane but we still know that cows say “moo” except…. we *do* still remember Sullivan landed the plane.
Sorry, woozy, but I can’t resist that wide open invitation: while most of us remember that he did get the plane down (it doesn’t seem right to call it “landing”), not everyone remembers his actual name.
@ Andréa – From my own perspective, I would agree with you that the majority of the Doonesbury re-runs have been worth re-reading, but there have been a few sequences that I wish Trudeau had skipped reprinting.
Isn’t there a movie coming out, or already out, with Tom Hanks as Mr. Sullivan?
Hanks as “Sully” came out in 2016
Seems kind of slow, but did OK
Well, that shows you how far behind I am, movie-wise.
Kilby: no, it definitely was a landing. Water landings are notoriously hard, and he nailed it.
Occasionally, there’s a blank day on the Funky Winkerbean rerun strips. This is announced on GoComics.com (rather than just say it wasn’t updated that day).
This may be why; they may no longer be relevant. They actually say it’s not available, as if the comic was lost. But since the strip then was a gag strip (each day usually completely unconnected to the previous one), why not just substitute another 40 year old strip?
@ larK – The parenthetical aside was merely to note the incongruity of using the word “landIng” to refer to a touchdown on water. The main point of that comment was that the man’s name is not “Sullivan”, but “Sullenberger”.
If “Doonesbury” strips from 30 years ago are just as relevant now as they were then, then what’s the use of satire?
From my quotes file:
Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin'” is just as relevant today as when it was written, proving that the times are not a-changin’.
It appears Lynn Johnston has given up trying to “update” the old FBOFW reruns to present-day, as all sorts of anachronisms remain showing the original 80s setting.
Four or five years ago, I was listening to Arlo Guthrie with my son, and he was asking what it meant when the song said “I am changing my name to Chrysler.” I explained that it was about something that happened many decades ago, and then realized it worked just as well now. (Although the line about Iacocca was obsolete.)
“It appears Lynn Johnston has given up trying to “update” the old FBOFW reruns ”
Perhaps not completely, but she does still do some things. Notably bicycle helmets for the kids, and updated the house prices when Phil and Georgia were buying.