This is a (very) long post, and I hope that it will generate an equally large amount of discussion. Everyone here is of course free to express their own opinions, and while I do not expect that everyone will agree with everything that I have written, I hope that you all will continue to observe the customary standards of decorum that have become a hallmark of CIDU.
Over the past few months the Daily Cartoonist has reported extensively about the way that Gannett has “restructured” the comics for all of their newspapers. A more recent TDC report theorized that one motivation for Gannett’s microscopic menu was misogynistic chauvinism, and Georgia Dunn adapted this hypothesis into Breaking Cat News:
It is undeniably true that newspaper comics have been a male-dominated business for over a century, but I think it both misses the point (and weakens the argument) to ascribe Gannett’s motivation exclusively to chauvinism. Gannett has simply selected old, reliable, and non-controversial mainstays. The average age of the strips on their “approved” list is approximately half a century, and back then virtually every single comic author was male. Gannett is not discriminating directly against “women”, the company is discriminating against all new authors, no matter whether they are women, men, or transgender.
As I already commented at TDC, “Gannett has selected a tired collection of dull, ancient (mostly zombie) strips, and has presumably negotiated a massive volume discount from the syndicate, because they are in a position to impose this lame collection onto dozens of defenseless editorial offices, in complete disregard of what readers would actually prefer. This is just window dressing for the sake of being able to claim that the Gannett papers still offer a comic section; the corporate leadership doesn’t care one iota whether anyone would bother to keep a subscription to read any of those features, and Gannett would probably prefer if all of their papers dropped the comics entirely.“
In addition, I also do not think that it is fair to assume that only a woman can create a convincing female character. Although female authors have always been in short supply, there are nevertheless a number of strong, positive girls in the comics, each of which goes a long way to dismantle the antiquated stereotypes set by “Blondie“, “Momma“, and “Nancy“, or (even worse) in “Andy Capp” and “The Lockhorns“.
Here’s a selection of some of my favorites. Most are written by men, but there is one woman and one trans author in this collection:
First and foremost, there are both Amelia and Rose in Will Henry’s “Wallace the Brave“:
Then we have Henrietta (Enriqueta) in “Macanudo” (by Liniers, not to mention whoever does those brilliant English translations; his only translator’s name that I was able to discover was – not surprisingly – a woman: Mara Faye Lethem):
Cynthia in “Barney & Clyde“:
Danae (and her sister) in Wiley’s “Non-Sequitur“:
The last BCN panel shown above refers to “Phoebe (and her Unicorn)”. Personally, I preferred Dana Simpson’s original title (“Heavenly Nostrils“), but I guess it just wasn’t marketable:
Making an exception for a re-run, there’s Alice in Richard Thompson’s “Cul de Sac“:
Making another exception for a zombie, especially because it was inherited by a woman, there’s “Heart (of the City)“:
P.S. The bottom line is that the only thing that publishing companies care about are their own bottom lines. If we are ever going to get an inclusive (multi-gendered) set of new authors in newspaper comics, it will be necessary for the readership to change their fossilized habits and to start petitioning for papers to drop all the reruns that are currently cluttering (even choking) those comic sections. That doesn’t just mean “Cul de Sac“, it also means letting “Peanuts“, “Calvin & Hobbes“, and a number of other popular “zombie” strips go. I regret to say that for obvious reasons, I don’t think this is going to happen any time in the near future.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I’m not entirely sure where you are going with this, Kilby. It would seem that there should be no reason, taking into account either natural abilities or historical experience, why men should be any more successful than women at cartooning, yet the gender imbalance on the comics page is extreme. Gannett has only exacerbated that. And while it is true that male cartoonists have created some great female characters, female cartoonists are equally able to create great male characters.
When you look at the comics pages today, it is basically all legacy strips with the same old, gags day after day. Nothing new. I have written more than once about having “seasons,” like tv shows. What if comics ran in seasons and they switched out every few months like tv shows do? So you may have legacy strips run like that, rather than maybe new strips, or maybe all strips, who knows. Peanuts would switch out with Beatle Bailey and Blondie every few months, and then the cycle would start again. It’s a way to fit everything in on the shrinking comics pages.
While The Daily Cartoonist did directly ascribe Gannett’s motivations to misogyny, I should point out that Georgia Dunn has explicitly not. She said (on Facebook I believe) that she did not think Gannett did it on purpose, rather, that the exclusion of female cartoonists outside of Lynn Johnston was a symptom of carelessness rather than actual malice.
That is, that due to systemic misogyny, no one making the decision about the comics to include even noticed they were excising all the active female and queer cartoonists.
Georgia has also pointed out that if you’re looking at popularity and saying “oh well these are just the popular ones, they just happen to all be men” — that doesn’t explain why they dropped Phoebe and Her Unicorn (whose title, yes, the syndicate required to be changed from Heavenly Nostrils), which sells more books than just about any comic out there.
More concerningly, though, Kilby seems to be taking the position here that we don’t need diversity on the comics pages because one does not have to be a woman to write good female characters, but I think that’s missing the point somewhat. Firstly, it’s not just about the characters; it’s also about the authors. But secondly, as we have discovered with racial diversity, it’s not that white males cannot write good diverse characters outside their experiences; it’s that non-white and non-male authors have additional perspectives and experiences that inform their artwork (and not just the characters who look like the authors).
In looking for solutions, though, I think calling to “drop all the reruns” is misguided, or misunderstands the situation. There are only two rerun strips in Gannett’s 34 (not counting Pickles which has seen long stretches of non-obvious reruns lately). One is FBoFW, without which we’d have no female cartoonists at all on the list; the other is Peanuts which is a bona fide classic with 50 years of strips many people have never seen before. I have zero problem with either of these continuing on the comics pages, and they can hardly be considered to be “choking” the comics.
The zombie strips may be more of a problem. But how do you determine which ones are worthy to stay (like Heart of the City) and which ones must go (like, presumably, Dennis the Menace)? Blondie is coming up on 100 years soon; it’s an institution, even if some people find it banal and hackneyed. It’s not an easy answer, but I also think it’s an oversimplification to simply blame the readership for being too “fossilized”. Gannett should have considered if they want the fossilized readership or to generate new readers by including new voices that speak to those potential customers.
Isn’t part of this simply that the younger folks don’t read newspapers at all? If they are being market-driven, the average newspaper comic reader is probably 55 or 60 years old.
I’m thinking what Mark H. said. Except I’d include we 70 and older folks in the newspaper-reading cohort. I may be an outlier of sorts though, since I read a bunch of online comics, and have for a while, and the newspaper comics I read are in the online versions of WaPo and MacPaper. I don’t get a paper newspaper and haven’t for about 10 years.
As I said, I didn’t expect everyone to agree with my ideas, but I do reserve the right to correct inadvertent misinterpretations and agree with some excellent observations:
1} As Usual John pointed out @1, “…there should be no reason … why men should be any more successful than women at cartooning…” – there isn’t any at all, and there are a lot of excellent women cartoonists (now). The problem is (or was) that the newspaper business was run (for a century or more) by a lot of grumpy old (white) men (mostly in old, dingy, smoke-filled newsrooms). To get in the door, a prospective cartoonist had to be able to fit in with that kind of crowd, and women were not likely to try, nor did the publishers have any interest in seeking them out.
2} The male domination of modern comics pages is not a result of popularity, and is certainly not an indication of quality: it is simply a throwback to that earlier era, and a direct result of the geriatric age of many of the zombie strips still cluttering the printed page.
3} I am emphatically NOT saying that we do not need diversity. We definitely do need it, to get rid of “the same old, gags day after day“, as Tom Falco put it @2. I simply do not believe that the best argument for more women artists is that only they would be qualified to write good female characters. We need them (and also other new male writers) for all sorts of reasons, but not just for that.
4} I am still (emphatically) in favor of dropping all re-run strips from the printed comic page, even including Calvin, Peanuts, and the daily Doonesbury or Foxtrot strips. That material is available online, and in all sorts of books, and does not need to be recycled in newsprint. Legacy and zombie strips are a much harder issue to solve, and I just don’t have a uniform answer for them.
5} I think Mark H. captured the entire issue @4: “younger folks don’t read newspapers at all“. Gannett may simply be responding to the average age of their own readership, and giving them the ancient material that they remember from their youth.
6} However, the issue is definitely not restricted to Gannett, it’s systematic across the entire industry. Even The Washington Post (with its billionaire owner) has gutted its once fabulous comic section. I remember when the Post used to print four full pages of daily comics, and an amazing 14 pages on Sundays (in two sections, which made it easier to share). The current Post comic sections are barely a shadow of their former selves.
P.S. On Monday The Daily Cartoonist reported that a third McClatchy newspaper was reducing its (physical) publishing frequency from six days a week down to two, specifically mentioning the adverse effects that this would have on comics, including possible lost revenue for the corresponding artists. The publisher claims that readers will not be missing anything (“Comics will be published daily in the eEdition“), but we all know that this is not the same.
This is just another sign that the newspaper comic industry is (irreversibly) changing; or as I commented:
“… Comic enthusiasts simply need to accept that daily delivery of fishwrap editions (especially for smaller regional newspapers) are losing whatever economic viability they once had, to the convenience of the Internet and ubiquitous mobile devices. People used to get milk delivered to their front doors, too, but nobody expects that old tradition to be revived.
“A century ago William Randolph Hearst had the financial muscle to champion artistic masterpieces such as “Krazy Kat” and “Little Nemo” in full page formats, but it would be irrational to expect modern venture capitalists to stick out their necks (or bottom lines) in defense of modern daily comic strips.“
Several years back, when I was still taking the Chicago Tribune, they used to have contests where they would run a relatively new strip (e.g. F-) for a few weeks, and then have people vote on whether to keep the new strip in favor of dropping a specific old (tired) strip. The old strips almost invariably won, and it usually wasn’t close.
Since then, as Mark H. notes, the demographics of newspaper subscribers have likely skewed even older. And are true comics fans really satisfied with the black and white, shrunken versions in the newspaper?
The real problem here is a common problem in the arts: people prefer the familiar, and the familiar is sometimes cheaper to produce. Classical music concerts are dominated by the familiar (and public domain) composers. Oldies stations dominate music – the hits from the 1960’s are still popular, even though that’s 60 years ago, and in the 1960s we weren’t listening to much pop music from the 1900s. The valuable art works you see auctioned off for big bucks are primarily from dead artists.
That creates a big problem for cartoonists working today – where can you get revenue streams?
Looking at an independent paper, the Boston Globe now has 16 comics, down from about 60 30 years ago. 80% of their subscribers are online only, and the only way to see the comics is to subscribe and open the EPaper, which is just pictures of the print edition. Of the 16 comics, 3 are by women – Arctic Circle, FOOB, & Rhymes with Orange.
I guess they figure – rightly – that any subscribers who want to read comics will go to the sites that we all do.
As far as stereotypes – Nancy? Not under Olivia James. And Bushmiller made her pretty lively.
Blondie doesn’t really have a character now. She has a look, a job, a family – but I can’t think of a single distinguishing character trait. Maybe Tiff & Bets can rebrand her.
Downpuppy’s allusion to Luann provides another example. We may not have a full account of how authority and participation divide up between dad and daughter, but she is definitely a full team member.
A very early Phoebe And Her Unicorn strip, before Dana Simpson decided that Marigold should never use contractions.
Personally, I look forward to Calvin & Hobbes and Peanuts each day. I’ve probably seen each of them before, but it was so many years ago that nearly all of them seem like new, and are nearly always funny. Some of the newer artists are good and funny, too, but some of them should go find a day job. (I was about to cite a couple of examples, but for each, there’s always someone who actually likes it.)
We discussed the prior event of this sort, which was Lee Enterprises coming up with a common slate of comics and games/puzzles for all their owned papers. It’s had a similar effect to Gannett.
In the Sunday paper (the only one I still get) there is just one strip with a female credit. That’s For Better or For Worse. My understanding is that Greg Evans’s daughter Karen Evans is involved in Luann and gets a co-writer credit on GoComics, but in the paper the byline is just Greg.
Prior to the mandate, the Post-Dispatch was a big fan of Breaking Cat News. The Sunday ran it at full size above the fold on the first page. In the dailies, they gave it one of the two larger spots next to the Sudoku.
Do you know how much it costs to subscribe to a daily printed newspaper?
It’s gonna run you $600 or so for the year.
Almost no-one under the age of about 50 is even going to consider paying that, at least not for something they can pretty much find 90% of on-line for free (or — if you want the top-tier premium content — for much, much less.)
Daily printed newspapers will be gone ten years from now.
I had the great joy of getting to read fresh off the press Calvin and Hobbes, Boondocks, and Peanuts. With that said, I rarely read any comic that is in reruns. I have seen many wonderful strips end, and I agree that they should all be removed from active print to make space for new ones.
Make room for the fresh ideas. When I want to reminisce, I can find most of my favorites from the past (except this one Doonesberry…). It also incentivizes people to buy the books.
ps I would love to see a Comics I Haven’t Seen page spinoff of this site.
I didn’t include Susie Derkins in my collection of notable female comic characters, partly because Calvin and Hobbes ended(†) nearly three decades ago, but mostly because she was a fairly minor character in the overall scope of the strip. Nevertheless, Watterson had this to say about her: “I sometimes imagine that a strip from Susie’s point of view would be interesting, and after so many strips about boys, I think a strip about a little girl, drawn by a woman, could be great” (emphasis mine, see the C&H Tenth Anniversary Book, page 24).
Here’s are two representative examples of Susie’s character (one very early, the second midway through the strip’s run):
P.S. (†) Colin Marshall published an “open culture” commentary about the longevity of Calvin & Hobbes on Monday. Unlike Peanuts, which ran for 50 years (as Powers pointed out @3), Watterson’s strip ran for ten (calendar) years, but that’s including a pair of sabbaticals, so the total archive is only about 8.5 years. Nevertheless, Calvin & Hobbes is still (by far) the most popular (quasi-flagship) strip at GoComics.
@ Bob (16) – If you are interested in obscure (including archaic) comics, try The Daily Cartoonist, which frequently features such material, although sometimes it does turn up as part of an obituary for the artist.
P.S. @ Y. Knott (15) – The reason that I do not subscribe to any of the Berlin papers is not because German papers do not publish comics, nor because of the money it would cost, but simply because I do not have the time (nor interest) to page through more than a fraction of all of that newsprint, and it’s a pain to dispose of it, even with free recycling pickups.
P.P.S. @ Daniel (12) – That was not an accident, I purposely went back to the beginning of the “Phoebe” archive when looking for a representative strip. The name of the GoComics image file shows that it was recorded before the name change.
P.P.P.S. @ Downpuppy – My reference was more to Bushmiller’s strip, rather than just the character. Nancy (the girl) may not have been overly laden with stereotypes, but her aunt Fritzi certainly was.
Gannett did include a selection of newer strips in their list, including the 2-year-old (and quite good) Crabgrass. So it’s not like they were totally given over to nostalgia. The question is why they couldn’t also include a selection of female cartoonists for balance’s sake if nothing else.
@ Powers (19) – Newer strips? There are only two strips in Gannett’s collection that are not already old enough to buy American alcohol. Crabgrass started in 2019, and Argyle Sweater in 2008 (so it is already old enough to drive). Everything else is at least 23 years old, and the average age of all 34 strips is (now) double that: 46 years.
Here are the six groups, as reported in The Daily Cartoonist, with the originating year of each (see below for the footnotes):
1: Blondie (1930), Zits* (1997), Beetle Bailey (1950), Family Circus (1960), Hagar (1973), Dennis (1951); average age = 64 years
2: Garfield+ (1978), PeanutsⓇ (1950), FBofWⓇ (1979), Baby Blues* (1990), Pickles* (1990), FoxTrotⓇ (1988); = 45 years
3: PBS* (2001), Jump Start* (1989), Ziggy (1971), Marmaduke (1954), Non-Sequitur* (1992), Crabgrass* (2019); = 37 years
4: Crankshaft+ (1987), Luann+ (1985), Baldo* (2000), Frank & Ernest (1972), Born Loser (1965); = 43 years
5: B.C. (1958), Wizard of Id (1964), Close to Home* (1992), Argyle Sweater* (2008), MG & Grimm* (1984), Rose is Rose+ (1984); = 43 years
6: Hi & Lois (1954), MuttsⓇ (1994), Curtis* (1988), Shoe (1977), (was) Lockhorns (1968) -> (now) Sally Forth (1982); = was 48 -> now 45 years
(*) Only 12 comics are still publishing new daily strips by their original creator(s);
(+) 4 more have an altered team including the original writer;
Ⓡ 4 strips are distributing daily reruns by the original author;
… leaving 14 legacy and/or zombie strips.
P.S. As I commented at TDC: “Gannett has made it perfectly clear that they do not care at all about what readers think, and they have offered virtually no bargaining room for local editors to make their own decisions. A microscopic number of papers have gone “maverick” to take an additional comic or two, but those comics are not allowed to appear in Gannett’s “unified” comic section. Readers are being fed a predigested pap of ancient zombies and re-runs, because Gannett knows that nobody subscribes to the newspapers for the comics any more. It would have been easier (and more honest) just to remove ALL the comics from ALL of those papers, and let readers who actually care about reading new material find it online.“
Has there been a practical point for us readers?
My purpose here has been to raise awareness about a number of uncomfortable facts faced by all comic authors, regardless of their gender. The business is changing, whether we like it or not, and both authors and readers will have to adapt.
For over a century, American newspaper readers have had the luxury of “free” comic entertainment, but publishers were not providing this for altruistic reasons: they were fighting for subscribers, because that is how the papers landed their advertising revenue.
Y. Knott’s prediction @15 (“Daily printed newspapers will be gone ten years from now“) is pessimistic, but this may happen. If it does, the primary revenue stream for syndicated comic authors will dry up, and both authors and the syndicates will have to find other ways to support themselves.
Both the GoComics and CK websites have already been forced to pad their paltry syndicate subsidies by reserving special features for paying subscribers. At some point, these sites may be forced to impose subscription fees for all readers, just like many newspaper websites already do.
The vast majority of comic strip artists cannot survive without some sort of supporting framework. Collecting piecemeal donations (either directly or via Patreon or Kickstarter) is time-consuming for the author and irritating for the reader. Only the most popular artists can generate enough traffic on their own sites to provide a steady stream of income, typically including ancillary sources (advertising, books, or other outside projects).
The current effects of the Internet on newspapers and comics are very similar to what happened to film studios and animated cartoons in the late 1950s. The success of television began to dry up theater ticket revenue, so that the studios could no longer afford to support luxurious, high-quality cartoon production, and budgets were slashed. Cartoons did not disappear entirely, but their quality deceased precipitously (both in theaters and on TV).
Therefore, if we want to continue reading new, high-quality comic strips, we will have to accept that there has to be some sort of mechanism to finance the whole operation (both for production and distribution). We cannot expect newpapers to foot the bill for us any longer; nor should we expect them to provide top-notch material, nor a balanced selection of authors. The newspapers just don’t care, and they have other problems to worry about.
The GoComics perks for premium members are not overwhelming. Mostly this consists of an email with all your subscribed comics that are linked to the version on the site and ad-free reading.
@ Brian (24) – Avoiding ads is a worthwhile perk, although that can also be implemented automatically in a browser. My understanding was that GoComics premium members can set up a page to view a whole set of comics without having to click through each one. If it’s just e-mail delivery of links, then I agree, that doesn’t sound like it would be worth much.
One problem I think is that comics are not being passed along from generation to generation. By this I mean – my dad read the comics to me when I was young and explained how some of them made fun of what was going on in the world by their use of different types of characters. (Yeah, as I aged I learned that my parents – especially my dad – did things/treated me differently than many other parents in general. I found this out when asking husband a question about when his parents taught him about the inflation/depression economic cycle and he said “Huh?”)
Robert does not read the comics (though he did read comic books as a boy) or the newspaper. I read them every day. I have had continuous subscription to our local regional paper since we married and before that I read my parents copy back to when I looked at the comics and made up my own stories as I could not read yet.
I currently pay for daily/Sunday delivery. I tend to read the papers online since the start of Covid. It would make sense for me to switch to an online subscription, but I actually prefer the print version and plan to switch back to reading as same, but keep not doing so. Plus – they are so desperate to keep readership up (I presume in terms of more subscribers/readers the more they can charge for ads) that when some years (at least a decade ago) when I telephoned them and said that I had to discontinue the paper due to the price. They turned the price back for me. Since then whenever they raise the price I do the same thing. I actually pay less for the print edition than they charge for the online edition – which is included with the print edition also.
I even read my home local paper – and its comics – online when traveling – which we have not really done since the start of Covid.
My understanding was that GoComics premium members can set up a page to view a whole set of comics without having to click through each one.
Oh, yes, you can do that. I guess I didn’t remember that non-premium members couldn’t. It can be useful on occasion.
My understanding was that GoComics premium members can set up a page to view a whole set of comics without having to click through each one.
Oh, yes, you can do that. I guess I didn’t remember that non-premium members couldn’t. It can be useful on occasion.
Further, the daily email from GoComics for subscribers who want that is not links that you have to click, but instead image links that will embed and display right in your email. At least, if you have set up your email reading program to allow that.
Today’s Lio seems to be offering some commentary :
Meryl A wrote, in part: >comics are not being passed along from generation to generation
That’s sad, but seems likely, since kids today sure don’t read the paper. I assume/hope they’re seeing things like XKCD and SMBC, but have no way to tell.
I know I indoctrinated my daughter to the comics early, but she was born in 1991, so she would be “old” by some standards.
And apropos of Mitch4’s Lio above: she used to read The Family Circus religiously, noting every time, “Still not funny”. She would have loved Dysfunctional Family Circus.
Further, the daily email from GoComics for subscribers who want that is not links that you have to click, but instead image links that will embed and display right in your email. At least, if you have set up your email reading program to allow that.
In my case, my email program is Hotmail in a web browser. The links open a new tab, which is my preference.
I used the custom pages more back in the early day (when it was UClick). I don’t even know if they had comments at the time, but at the time I only used the service to read comics. So I had (and still have) pages set up to be complementary to the newspaper daily and Sunday comic pages.
I also had a custom Chron page. Back years ago, the Houston Chronicle online had a lot of comics available, and allowed anyone to create a custom page of them. That went away some time ago, and now they just have the Comics Kingdom newspaper portal.
I have more than enough clutter in my email already, but I’m happy to pay a reasonable annual fee to GoComics and have one URL show all 75 or so comics that I peruse there.
I would be happy to do the same with Comics Kingdom, except that (1) they don’t offer that one-page agglomeration and (2) their whole site keeps getting worse and worse, harder and harder to deal with.
Brian, I had forgotten about the erstwhile times when the <i>Houston Chronicle</i> was a worthwhile source.