Tuesday, December 07, 2021
Jeffrey Lindenblatt's Paper Trends: The 300 for 1987 - Biggest Gainers and Losers
The biggest gainer for 1986-87 was the also the biggest gainer in 1985-86 and that was The Far Side by Gary Larson, which gained 30 papers this year, and with last year’s gain of 35 that makes an impressive total of 65 papers in the past two years. Coming in second is a strip that gained 20 papers, Bloom County, which continues its fast growth in popularity. Tied for second and in its second year, Calvin and Hobbes, which is showing how popular this strip was from its inception in 1985. For Better and For Worse and Cathy continue their healthy annual growth with 13 and 7 more papers this year.
Here are the biggest gainers:
Far Side - 30
Bloom County – 20
Calvin and Hobbes - 20
For Better or For Worse – 13
Cathy – 7
Marmaduke – 6
In The Bleachers - 6
Garfield – 5
Beetle Bailey - 5
Shoe – 5
Sally Forth – 5
Neighborhood - 5
The strip that lost the most papers was Berry’s World with 11, most likely losing most of those spots to The Far Side. Here are the biggest losers from 1986 to 1987:
Berry’s World – 11
Orbit – 8
Snake Tales – 7
Buz Sawyer – 6
On The Fastrack - 6
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith – 5
They’ll Do It Every Time – 5
Duffy – 5
As expected the adventure strips continue their slow demise. Three rare plus signs on display this time though:
Alley Oop – 39 (-1)
Amazing Spider-Man – 32 (0)
Dick Tracy – 30 (-2)
Phantom – 25 (+1)
Steve Canyon – 20 (-1)
Mark Trail – 18 (-2)
Captain Easy – 17 (-1)
Buz Sawyer – 16 (-6)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 14 (0)
Little Orphan Annie – 10 (+1)
Brenda Starr – 9 (-1)
Rip Kirby – 5 (-4)
Flash Gordon – 4 (+1)
Popeye – 2 (0)
Brick Bradford – 1 (0)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)
Secret Agent Corrigan – 0 (-1)
Mandrake the Magician – 0
Tim Tyler’s Luck - 0
The total slots for adventures strips is down 16 from last year; that is a 6.1% drop.
Soaps did not have much of a drop this year:
Mary Worth – 66 (-2)
Rex Morgan – 50 (-3)
Judge Parker – 31 (+1)
Apartment 3-G – 22 (0)
Gil Thorp – 12 (0)
Heart of Juliet Jones – 8 (+2)
Winnie Winkle – 4 (0)
Dondi – (-5) -- strip ended
The Soaps dropped 7 from last year which is a 3.5% dip but most of that was because the end of the strip Dondi.
Labels: Paper Trends
