Penguins everywhere!

It looks like this Sunday I will learn something about the LA Times, since according to Berkeley Breathed:

Note to Opus readers: The Opus strips for August 26 and September 2 have been withheld from publication by a large number of client newspapers across the country, including Opus' host paper The Washington Post. The strips may be viewed in a large format on their respective dates at Salon.com.

I expect to see it anyway, will they disappoint?

Meanwhile, I'm absolutely giddy to find out that once upon a time, Pat Oliphant had a comic strip. Tom Toles and Mike Peters too, but you probably knew about Mike Peters. I wonder what Tom Toles' was like...

Old comic strips in new spaces

Can we please, please, please stop having Peanuts reruns in the newspapers? I know it's all well loved and generally timeless, but these are newspapers. The space should be given over to something that is actually new. Peanuts has already had its time in the sun and every few months is closer to being published in its entirety in book form. Should people want to read Peanuts, they are quite able to do so, start to finish. The space should be used to allow something new to be seen. If it is good, it will stay. If bad, it will once again make room for something new, but at least it hadn't already been published.

I miss Mother Goose and Grimm. I miss Rose is Rose. I miss things that aren't being written anymore like Boondocks and Calvin and Hobbes, but it is right that they no longer have space in the newspaper. But then there is Peanuts. Nothing published in that space cannot be found elsewhere and already dusty, it should also no longer have a space.

The Increadable Shrinking Paper

Ah Sunday. Time to retrieve the great big newspaper from the doorstep.

And it seems to be shrinking. It total, it's about the same, it's just the bits I like the best that keep getting pared down. Two weeks ago it was the Current that shrank and reverted to being called Opinion. The name doesn't matter, but the content reduction does.

I guess it's not an exciting section to some, but it is the section that sits down and thinks about the news rather than just reacting that there was news. If it bleeds, it rarely leads this section no matter how many front pages it covers. Still, it is a very important part and for me a central part of being a newspaper.

My parents didn't get the LA Times, but they always got the local. The section to attract my attention after the comics were those last two pages in the first section. They had silly commentary and serious commentary. They had world commentary and local commentary. Whatever they had, it was thinking people trying to express what they thought and why they thought it. So in high school when I discovered the grand spread that was the comics pages of the LA Times (Wasn't that section D? Why's it C now?), the most natural thing was to pick up the front section and turn it to the back few pages too.

So watching the Sunday section shrink is, for me, a death toll to the paper. Others will be happy so long as they have the sport page. They are welcome to mine. I just don't ever want to lose the pages and section of commentary.

LA Times funny pages

The LA Times has, um, enhanced the Kid's Reading Room by cutting it from the Monday-Friday pages and making it Sunday only. But Sunday is expanded! It's enhanced!

Of course, this page used to be the third page with comics, ones that kids (and a few adults) can relate to. Now I didn't have a Kid's Reading Room when I was little, but it did have six of the comics that kids tend to cut their teeth on and it did have something more for when they felt ready to read something longer. The jokes were dreadful, of course. All the same ones that we told on the playground, but they were sent in by kids who had just learned of this glorious new pun and wanted to share it. Sometimes it is fun to remember when the joke wasn't quite so familiar.

Now, in reducing this once fabled comics section just a little bit more, a couple comics had to go. One choice wasn't well made so one has already returned, but the rest would seem to be gone and they weren't really the bottom of the barrel for the most part. Missing: Heathcliff, Mr. Boffo, Mallard Fillmore, Candorville, and the empty space resulting from not shrinking Doonesbury. Returned: La Cucaracha. I'll allow the empty space, but Candorville?

I do have to praise the removal of Mallard Fillmore, though. No longer will I be subjected to, "This bit of conventional wisdom you suspect is true has been shown to be true! (* USA Today article! [A rag of note!]) Now don't you feel stupid, liberal scum?" I'm not sure that I'm the one who should feel stupid for repeatedly trying to challenge liberal world views and failing. But the rest of them it is sad to see go. I often wondered what conservatives (well, Republicans, more like) had done to deserve being represented by this one. At least there was (and still is) the great Prickly City to redeem it a little. Both came on in an effort to balance of the comics page, so even this removal can be questioned.

The comics page should be returned to its former glory when one could spread it out on the table and see nothing but comics and still have more comics to read! It's still a long way to the NY Times' idea of a comics page. Slippery slope and all that. It's getting hard to be a print newspaper.