Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Jeffrey Lindenblatt's Paper Trends: The Three Hundred for 1984 -- Biggest Winners and Losers
The strips that were gaining papers the year before are still moving up this year. Garfield gained the most again with 30 papers, followed by Bloom County with 22 additions and Family Circus with 19. Here are the top gainers.
Garfield – 30
Bloom County – 22
Family Circus – 19
Cathy – 11
For Better or For Worse – 9
Marvin – 9
Far Side – 8
Berry’s World – 7
Hagar the Horrible – 7
Shoe – 7
Beetle Bailey – 7
The losers this year were all old-timers, except for the top loser, The Muppets:
The Muppets – 13
Dick Tracy – 7
Andy Capp – 6
Archie – 6
Captain Easy – 6
Heart of Juliet Jones – 5
Phantom – 5
Winthrop – 5
Adventures strips, like the previous years continue to lose papers consistently – not one gainer. With Latigo and Kerry Drake ending, freeing up a whopping 31 adventure strip spots, it appears that most or all of those spots went to non-adventure:
Alley Oop – 43 (-1)
Amazing Spider-Man – 41 (-4)
Dick Tracy – 37 (-7)
Buz Sawyer – 28 (-1)
Steve Canyon – 26 (-4)
Captain Easy – 22 (-6)
Mark Trail – 22 (0)
Phantom – 22 (-5)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 16 (-3)
Little Orphan Annie – 13 (0)
Brenda Starr – 11 (-1)
Rip Kirby – 10 (-2)
Joe Palooka – 8 (0)
Star Wars – 7 (-1)
Flash Gordon – 4 (0)
Lone Ranger – 3 (-1)
Mandrake the Magician – 2 (0)
Popeye – 2 (0)
Brick Bradford – 1 (0)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)
Secret Agent Corrigan – 1 (0)
Superman – 0 (-1)
Tim Tyler’s Luck – 0 (0)
Adventure strips that Ended:
Latigo – 18
Kerry Drake – 13
Star Trek – 3
Buck Rogers – 2
Sergeant Preston – 1
The total spots for adventures strips for 1983 was 320, way down from 392 last year. That is an 18.3 percent decline, more than double the drop in the prior year.
Labels: Paper Trends
: 5/25/2021 11:48 AM Went through the 19 papers there is no real replacement. Family Circus was the replacement by either the editors or fan polls. In 1983 two Family Circus specials (Valentine and Easter) were rebroadcast. That could explain the fan interest. For newspaper editors, maybe it was because Bil Keane won the Reuben that year.
