Do comic strips still matter?

[Zorak Masaki]

Whil looking through my old comic strip collections it got me thinking, do comic strips still matter in this day and age? I mean, there are ones that have been revived online like Bloom County, but a lot of "legacy" strips seem just to exist, while others have either ended or gone to Sunday-only. Is there any current comic strip that's become a breakout hit? I like Lio and Brewster Rockit: Space Guy, but I'd hardly consider that to be as popular or well-regarded as say Calvin and Hobbes or The Far Side.

 

[khuddle]

Whil looking through my old comic strip collections it got me thinking, do comic strips still matter in this day and age? I mean, there are ones that have been revived online like Bloom County, but a lot of "legacy" strips seem just to exist, while others have either ended or gone to Sunday-only. Is there any current comic strip that's become a breakout hit? I like Lio and Brewster Rockit: Space Guy, but I'd hardly consider that to be as popular or well-regarded as say Calvin and Hobbes or The Far Side.

Now here's an interesting thread, at last. Yeah, comic strips were a big part of my life as a kid, back in the 1970s / 1980s. You remember the original, fresh, creative ones, like "Bloom County" and "The Far Side". You also remember the bizarre ones, like "Apartment 3-G" and "Steve Roper and Mike Nomad", where I used to wonder "do these comics actually have an audience?"

They certainly mattered back then. But that was when actual physical newspapers used to matter and were a part of most people's lives.

They've pretty much been relegated to web-comics now. And like any other form of entertainment (eg. TV shows, movies and books), they have to grab you and seize you, and somehow stand out from the crowd. In recent times, I would say the two that made an impression on me were "The Boondocks", because of its unique artistic style and because it centered around strong minority characters, and "Liberty Meadows", here again because of the striking artistic style.

They certainly matter much less than they used to. Which is probably the result of a brain drain: the talented people who were writing fresh and creative comics in the 1980s are now probably designing fresh and creative video games in the 2020s.

 

[LinusFan303]

I check many every day on GoComics (ones that come out in newspapers still) there have been new artists in paper/digital space for a years like Tauhid Bondia's Crabgrass that started online and then also went to newspapers a couple years ago, there's Phoebe and her Unicorn still going, and Nancy Beiman's Furbabies launched last year. I do think they a fine art form and things have kind of changed with their formats there's alot more story arcs, like as I write this , Crabgrass is in the middle of a body swap arc, longer than any arcs Peanuts did it feels, so it is interesting to see that, it's kind of smart to have people look the next day to see what happens. I kind of hope they stick around, it's a fun medium.

 

[Pooky]

Even in the 80s, when Comic Strips were still hugely popular, if there was one thing Charles Schultz, Bill Waterson and Bill Griffith could actually agree on it was a general resentment over how much the comic sections of newspapers had shrunk since their respective youths. So this has kind of been a long term problem.

 

[Antiyonder]

I think Phoebe and Her Unicorn incidentally has some newspaper distribution.

And for what it's worth 16 of 18 volumes of strips collected. Volume 6 and 8 being original GN stories.

 

[pacman000]

You also remember the bizarre ones, like "Apartment 3-G" and "Steve Roper and Mike Nomad", where I used to wonder "do these comics actually have an audience?"

These were introduced in an earlier era, when comics had about 6 panels a day. Six panels is enough to tell a chapter of a serialized story; as comic sections shrunk, such strips became harder & harder to do.

It's not impossible; I followed Alley Opp for a few months, back when Yahoo! had a comics section. But I had to read a week's worth of comics to make sense of the story.

Even in the 80s, when Comic Strips were still hugely popular, if there was one thing Charles Schultz, Bill Waterson and Bill Griffith could actually agree on it was a general resentment over how much the comic sections of newspapers had shrunk since their respective youths. So this has kind of been a long term problem.

In the early 20th century, newspapers would use large comic sections as a selling point. Paper shortages in WWII meant the papers had to cut content, &, with a war on, they had plenty of real news to attract people. After the war, TVs started becoming popular, so there wasn't a need to bring back the large comic sections.

TVs also hurt pulp magazines, pulp novels, comic books, & movies.