(Comic Strips) As I told you Thursday, cartoonist David Lasky had checked into our message board to let our readers know that Seattle weekly newspaper The Stranger was changing out its comics page in favor of a single, full-page color comic strip, which would then be farmed out to different cartoonists each week. A minor debate over this state of affairs ensued. Within days, Fantagraphics marketing kingpin Eric Reynolds had posted responses emailed to him from Editor Dan Savage and Design Director Joe Newton. Savage first:
"The Stranger is not, contrary to what you may have heard, dropping or eliminating comics from our pages. We are, however, making some changes. In place of three comic strips that we've been running, we're going to be running some larger, one-off comics. This means that the work of more comic artists is going to find its way into the pages of The Stranger.
"We will also still be running Maakies, Jim Woodring, and Lloyd Dangle's Troubletown, in addition to a single large-format comic that features different artists every week. The three artists whose strips
are being dropped have been invited to be regular contributors to the
large-format comic slot.
"While we had to cut a page of comics last year -- and while that bummed us out -- it by no means should be interpreted as The Stranger, or the paper's editor (that would be me), hating comics or having it in for comics or wanting to remove them from the paper. The comics lost a page around the same time our paper lost many pages due to the contracting economy in the Seattle area. We used to run two pages of Stranger Suggests, but Suggests is now one page; we used to run two and half pages of film reviews, now we run one and half pages. Our features are shorter, our letters section is smaller. I could go on. The sad reality is that whole paper shrunk last year. While we used to have regular issues in that were 126 pages or more, our regular issues these days are about 108 pages. We simply can't include
everything that used to appear in a 126 page paper in a 108 page paper.
"The work of comic artists has always been important to The Stranger. We continue to have a full-page dedicated to their work every week, and almost half of the covers we run every year are by comic artists.
If comics are the reason you pick up the paper now, you'll still have good reason to keep picking up the paper. Again, the paper is not cutting comics. No space was cut from comics with this announcement. We're going to have the same amount of space for comics this year as we had last year. The only difference is that we're going to have the work of more comic artists cycling through the paper."
Next up is Newton's reply:
"Although it has been saddening and frustrating to see our comics page dwindle in size, I do think this is an exciting opportunity to expose Seattle-ites to some new faces, and to some artist's whose work
hasn't been seen in the paper for years. The Stranger does have a grand history with comics. And your letters to the editor acknowledging and commending that will have a positive effect.
"I do want to point out to those who don't know how free papers function, that advertising has no editorial sway over comic content (at least not here). Also, the amount of space for editorial content (incl. comics) is based on how many ads we sell each week. The ratio of ads to content has not changed at all. And although there are a lot of ads in the paper, it is what makes us able to make it free. The decrease in overall editorial space is directly linked to ads.
"Beyond that, as the paper size has shrunk is this lame economy, every
section of the paper has decreased the amount of space, be it Theater, Movies, Visual Art, whatever. And EVERY one of these arts communities is bombarding the editor with complaints and demands that their community get more coverage. So the editor is being pulled at from all sides. There just isn't enough space to go around.
"That said, let it be known that I personally have lobbied to bring back the two page comics section right away. So do feel free to write letters to the editor. But write them in appreciation of comics, emphasizing why you think they are great and important, and deserving of more space. Accusations of wrong-headed behavior by the editor is likely to just get his hackles up.
"The decision to make this change has been really difficult, particularly considering the financial impact it has on those losing regular income. But I know that we are going to a lot of great new stuff in the paper, and get a chance to plug people's new releases while we're at it. Hopefully in the future we can bring back the second page too. if only the economy improves.
"Thanks for the interest and support in comics!"
Now that's what I call customer service. I'm taking a "wait and see" attitude towards the paper's new approach, partly because I can sympathize with the ecomonic argument, but mainly because after losing my weekly Acme Novelty Library fix, everything else seems like an afterthought anyway.
