newspaper strips

[ctc]

So;

I've noticed that a lot of the newspaper comic action strips aren't really very good. Mostly 'cos there isn't a lot of action. I was wondering, would there be an audience for an actual action-oriented action strip?

Don C.

[HardyGirl]

I know when my mom was a kid they had Tarzan, Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie and Buck Rogers. When I was a kid we had Spider-Man (I don't think that started til I was in 5th grade, though), Dick Tracy, Dondi, Brenda Starr and Little Orphan Annie.

[Adam West]

I like comic strips that can have a complete thought in 4 or 5 panels. Charles Schulz was the master of this. I don't think it works well with an action oriented comic.

[johnnystorm]

I don't think the action strips have the necessary space any more to do it right. We have none in our local paper. I used to follow The Phantom & Spider-Man, but they seem to drag out on & on. And Spider-Man has got to be the most boring super-hero strip ever. Like you said, there's no action just a lot of talking heads. Peter & MJ watching TV on the couch.

I think most newspaper comics are now an after-thought of the management, a left-over piece of fluff they'd probably like to jettison altogether for more ad space, but dumping the likes of Blondie, Doonesbury, & Peanuts would probably irritate enough of a percentage of the dwindling subscriber base that they won't chance it yet.

I don't even think our local paper chooses the strips, they just buy a pre-packaged assortment ready to print. And weirdly, the Saturday page has a different batch than the weekday page (it also has a puzzle & a zodiac panel). And Sunday color section is also a different lot.

[The Toyroom]

I haven't read the comic strip page faithfully since my paper dumped The Phantom years and years ago....Slowly but surely, one by one, they dumped a lot of the "classic" strips for modern mediocre fare. Peanuts ALWAYS used to be the strip at the very top of the page but it's now bumped down by a strip done (poorly I might add) by the paper's own local cartoonist. It sucks big time and turns me off to the entire "Funnies" entirely.

[samurainoir]

Middle aged guys like us are probably the last generation to remember adventure strips that had any kind of significance, and I know the best days were well past even when I was a kid.

Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson's Star Wars strip was way better than the Marvel Comic book IMHO. It "felt" like Star Wars to me in a way that Chaykin's and Infantino's stylized artwork couldn't match. (although the day I stumbled across the large sized UK weekly was mind-blowing).

I was also very fond of Leonard Starr's Annie (did they drop "Little Orphan" at some point?).

I remember I liked the early years of Spiderman, but three panels a day just seems so small and glacial, and overall limiting compared to triple monthly doses of Amazing Spiderman, Spectacular Spiderman and Marvel Team Up where Spidey practically leaped of the page in full color splashes.

Looking at collections of stuff like Tarzan, Buck Rogers, Terry and the Pirates, it's mindblowing to think how much real estate they gave the artists to work in back in the day. Although I guess in the age of pre-television, this was their daily fix of visual storytelling. Not surprising that there was so much crossover between Radio and the Comic Strips back then.

[The Toyroom]

I was also very fond of Leonard Starr's Annie (did they drop "Little Orphan" at some point?).

They dropped it when the strip was revived during the Broadway musical years....Starr was in charge of the revival. The original creator was Harold Gray.

[samurainoir]

Frank Cho always seemed like he was totally boxed in by the Liberty Meadows format.


Imagine how liberating it must have been for him to jump from three panels daily to double page splashes in Shanna the She Devil and Mighty Avengers.

[samurainoir]

They dropped it when the strip was revived during the Broadway musical years....Starr was in charge of the revival. The original creator was Harold Gray.

Ah! That makes sense. The movie was simply titled "Annie" right?

Gray was dead and buried before I was born. I always liked the two collections of Gray's stuff I found in the library as a kid, but I couldn't quite relate to the depression era stuff at that age.

I wasn't too big a fan of the musical, and the strip had a very different feel than the movie (other than lack of musical numbers). There was something about Starr's contemporary "Fugative" or Nancy Drew vibe that I liked as a wee lad.

It's the opposite for me when it comes to Bud Sagendorf's Popeye versus Bud Segar's. I know Sagendorf's is probably the most iconic and the one we all grew up with, but when I found the collection containing Segar's stuff, it was wonderfully raw and unexpected (like the Fleisher Bros Cartoons that were inspired by it). You never knew what would happen next in Segar's era. Although I'm sure that it had something to do with Sagendorf having settled into a comfortable formula in the 70's and 80's after decades of Popeye and long surpassing his mentor's output.

I liked Tarzan as a kid as well. Who was drawing Tarzan in the late seventies/early eighties? Mike Grell?

Oh and World's Greatest Superheroes when it featured the entire JLA, not just Superman (I guess that must have shifted after the Reeve movie?)

Wasn't there also a short lived Star Trek comic strip based on the Motion Picture?

[johnnystorm]

Mike Grell did the Sunday Tarzan strip and so did Gray Morrow.

[ctc]

>I think most newspaper comics are now an after-thought of the management,

I whoileheartedly agree, and I think that's why so many of the new ones are SOOOOOO flat. Even the comedy strips are really, REALLY formula.

>I don't even think our local paper chooses the strips, they just buy a pre-packaged assortment ready to print.

I've noticed that too. I think there are some standard Syndicate packages that they pick up. I THINK there used to be a similar system in place, back in the day too. (But don't quote me. The workings of the newspaper strip have always been a mystery for me.)

>And weirdly, the Saturday page has a different batch than the weekday page

The local paper has been doing that since I was a kid. I THINK the weekend strips are considered a different animal by the syndicates. That's why they sometimes have a different continuity than the dailies.

>I don't think the action strips have the necessary space any more to do it right.

Hmmmm.... I think they DO; but they have to be approached from a different angle than they HAVE been.

>Frank Cho always seemed like he was totally boxed in by the Liberty Meadows format.

Yeah, like that. That's a COMIC BOOK layout, hence the crowdedness. The action strip format is one of them artistical templates we've lost over the years. The cartoonists either try for too much comic book, or lay it out like the comedy strips.

I'm asking 'cos "Mark Trail," "Spiderman" and "Dick Tracy" are favourite topics at the Comics Curmudgeon; and they're ALL horrible! And I used to LOVE the old Dick Tracy strips! Ghould could do a lot on them three panels. The new guys.... not so much. Sure the shrinking has something to do with it, but I think a lot of what's currently out there isn't very good. So people don't read it. So publishers back-burner it. Which reduces interest. Which scares away the GOOD cartoonits. Which leads to more mediocrity....

Don C.

[HardyGirl]

I've never seen a Mark Trail comic, although I do have one radio show cassette.

[ctc]

>I've never seen a Mark Trail comic, although I do have one radio show cassette.

It's one of those super-long running strips that's WAY past it's prime. For more info:

http://joshreads.com/?s=

Mark and his trusty fists o'justice are regualrs.

Don C.

[tay666]

The only one I ever followed was Conan
http://www.tylisaari.com/comics/78-10-29.JPG

[ctc]

>The only one I ever followed was Conan

Oh yeah! Back in the day there were a lot of good comics. In Britain they even had a Judge Dredd comic run in the papers.

But it all seems like one of them lost arts now. Nobody really does that sort of thing any more. Well.... they KINDA do, but it seems half-hearted. So that's why I wonder if the audience could get into one. A good one. Even the online comics I've seen tend to be comedy, and not action.

Don C.