Comic strips

[helen]

Ever noticed that while the Advertiser and the Star Bulletin daily comics are not duplicated between the two papers, both Sunday comics have Garfield and Doonesbury. What's even strange is that some strips appear daliy in one paper and the Sunday on the other paper. For instance Classic Peanuts are in the Star Bulletin but the Sunday is on the Advertiser.

Is this a Honolulu thing or does other cities' newspaper (with 2 or more dailies) does the same thing with their comic strips?

[pzarquon]

Re: Comic strips

I haven't even pretended to be in the newspaper biz for a while, but if I recall correctly, most non-continuous (i.e. long storyline/sequential) comic strips are provided to publishers in batches - a newspaper will have several Garfield strips to choose from, rather than just one. So, that might be one explanation. It seems to rely on luck, though, and the chances that you'd see the same strip in both papers in a given week seem pretty high... and I don't think that's the case.

Asking what other two-newspaper towns do seems reasonable, except that two-newspaper towns are a dying breed. I suppose publishers could maintain parallel series of a single strip to prevent duplication... but that sounds like a lot of work for an uncommon problem. Especially since storyline/sequential strips (i.e. the current Doonesbury plot) can't be developed that way.

I do know that some strips set up exclusivity within a given region... so that's why you can only read "Opus" in the Honolulu Advertiser (drat!) for example.

I do wish newspapers would shake things up a bit more overall, though. Classic Peanuts? Garfield? What a waste of space. There's a lot of great, colorful, perhaps edgier stuff out there. Just how many different ways can a fat cat eat lasagne?

[dick]

Re: Comic strips

From what I understand, the comics are distributed to the papers on an exclusive basis. In other words, if one runs in one paper it won't be distributed to the other.

As for the Sunday-Peanuts-in-the-'Tizer situation, I recall that being a left-over from the JOA days when the 'Bull ran Peanuts during the week, but since the Sunday paper was done by the 'Tizer, they got the Sunday rights, which continues to this day.

As for the Sunday Garfield/Doonsbury duality thing, I'm not sure what's going on there. I never noticed it before.

[BKHale2007]

Re: Comic strips

I'd like to see at least one local daily comic strip. Maybe Deb Aoki could expand on her weekly "Bento Box." Or something by Peppo, Corky, or even a talented unknown.

[helen]

Re: Comic strips

As for the Sunday Garfield/Doonsbury duality thing, I'm not sure what's going on there. I never noticed it before.

The Sunday Star Bulletin version has both the Garfield and Doonsbury strips running top to bottom instead of left to right.

And then both papers on Sunday has half a page with brain teasers (Star Bulletin) or Shortcuts (on the Advertiser) on various subjects.

To the Advertiser's credit at least they devote an entire page to comics on the daily. The Star Bulletin puts Bridge and crossword on the daily comics page and the Dilbert strip is in the Business Section.

[helen]

Re: Comic strips

About a week ago the Star Bulletin added 4 other strips to the daily, they took out the bridge column to add in the strips. And for Sunday they added another page to the comics section, but only one side of the page has comics while the other side is a full page ad of something.

[scrivener]

Re: Comic strips

Dick's right about the exclusivity thing. There's a reason for a couple of the strips' appearing in both papers, but I can't remember it just now.

The reason one paper sometimes carries the dailies while the other runs the Sunday strips is the syndication agreements for them are separate deals. You've probably noticed that there are strips that appear in the dailies that you never see on Sundays. It's not that those strips don't run on Sundays; it's that your paper doesn't pay to run the Sunday strip. This is why in strips with continuing (or longer) story arcs, the Sunday strips are seldom part of those arcs. For one thing, the Sunday strips have different due-dates (they're due to the syndicate much more ahead of time than dailies because they take longer to process and print), meaning that artists have to be well ahead of schedule if they want to include the Sunday strips in those arcs; but the main reason is the separate deals. If you include the Sunday strip in longer story arcs, towns whose newspapers don't run the Sunday strips will find their readers confused. Easier for the artist to do something differerent on Sundays and pick the stories back up on Monday.

Something else a lot of people don't know is that for a really long time, the Sunday format dictated that the first two panels of a strip be "throwaway" panels. Papers had the option of removing them (I'm not sure if it was a space consideration or what). Look at old Sunday strips of B.C. and The Wizard of Id for a blatant example. The artists used those first two panels as a quickie two-panel joke that easily lifted right out of the strips. Other artists used those as set-up panels that, when removed, certainly messed up some of the pacing, but didn't mess up the story or joke for the rest of the strip. I'm not sure, but I suspect some papers still do this; it's especially noticable to me in Sunday versions of Zits, my current favorite.

The Sunday strip has come a long way in the last twenty years, mostly due to Bill Waterston, who, after years of fighting with his syndicate, finally worked a deal allowing for some variation in formats. The artists can now choose from a (limited) number of formats for those strips; you could see dramatic differences in Calvin and Hobbes and Outland on Sundays after that, but Frazz and Foxtrot have also taken creative advantage of this extra artistic breathing space. In fact, the shape and size of Foxtrot collections was changed a few years ago to accomodate more easily the Sunday strips without changing their pacing and flow--before the change, it took a lot of time to rework the Sunday strips so they'd fit in the established anthology format.

Whoops. Went off topic. Sorry about that.

[Linkmeister]

Re: Comic strips

O/T but interesting. I did know about the "throwaway" Sunday panels, but the rest of it was either new or something I'd only guessed at.

[scrivener]

Re: Comic strips

This is from a legal summary (I don't know what it's called) of a case brought against the Chicago Sun-Times by the Chicago Daily Herald. Apparently, exclusivity isn't a given and is negotiated on a case-by-case basis, much more likely in the case of a metropolitan area's larger newspaper. It's an interesting read that includes:

News services and features syndicates charge by the circulation of the subscribing paper, and they therefore strive to sign up the largest paper in each market. Exclusivity is one valuable feature the service offers, for a paper with exclusive rights to a service or feature is both more attractive to readers and more distinctive from its rivals. When selling to smaller papers, however, the supplemental news services and features syndicates generally do not offer exclusivity--for they still hope to interest the larger, and therefore more lucrative, papers in the market (which can sign up later with exclusive rights against all but the original customer).

The rest of the text is here, if you're interested.

[buzz1941]

Re: Comic strips

Scrivener is correct. The Star-Bulletin tried to get the Sunday strips to match its daily ones when the two papers were divorced, but the Advertiser would not give them up. So the Star-Bulletin started running Sunday strips that appeared in the daily Advertiser -- because the Advertiser executives are so dumb they didn't lock down the rights.

[Palolo Joe]

Re: Comic strips

Hmmm... so do you work at the Star-Bulletin? I wonder if Dick knows who you are.

[helen]

Re: Comic strips

Something else a lot of people don't know is that for a really long time, the Sunday format dictated that the first two panels of a strip be "throwaway" panels. Papers had the option of removing them (I'm not sure if it was a space consideration or what).

I noticed that when I was reading the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chroncle in the early 1990's. Strips like Beatle Bailey were missing one to two panels before title page of the strip.

[dick]

Re: Comic strips

>>>Hmmm... so do you work at the Star-Bulletin? I wonder if Dick knows who you are.<<<

Nope.

At least I don't know who's behind that name...