Tuesday, March 07, 2023
Jeffrey Lindenblatt’s Paper Trends: The 300 for 1991 — Winners and Losers
You could call 1990 a throwback year, or say it continues the status quo. First the status quo: Calvin and Hobbes continued its growth, adding 23 papers, making it the biggest winner of the year. Another big gainer was The Far Side with 13 added papers and Cathy with 12. With the end of NEA's Bugs Bunny strip on the last day in 1989, we also had a newer NEA strip, Robotman, gaining papers.
As for the throwbacks, in 1955 some King Features sitcoms strips abandoned the light continuituy format and became just gag a day strips. One of these strips was more of an adventure comedy strip and became a gag a day strip. In 1990 the strip decided to return to its root and became an adventure comedy strip again, though not every day. What they did was run a 3-to-4-week adventure story and then run a week of gag strips. This new format gained them 7 new papers that year. The strip was Mickey Mouse.
Here are the strips that gained 5 or more papers:
Calvin and Hobbes – 23
Robotman - 16
Far Side – 13
Cathy – 12
For Better or For Worse – 8
Hagar The Horrible – 7
Jump Start – 7
Mickey Mouse – 7
Sally Forth – 5
Sports Hall of Shame – 5
As in previous years the big rookies from last year followed that up with big losses the next year: Pogo with 13 and Batman with 8. Also, we have a big drop for a soap strip; Apartment 3-G lost 7 papers.
Here are the big losers this year:
Pogo – 13
Batman - 8
Apartment 3-G – 7
Ernie - 6
In The Bleachers – 5
Tiger – 5
Phipps – 5
Good News Bad News – 5
With the introduction of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the return of Mickey Mouse, the adventure strip category has its first gain in over 10 years with an 18.3 % gain from last year.
Alley Oop – 35 (-2)
Dick Tracy – 26 (4)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – 26 (26)
Amazing Spider-Man – 18 (0)
Phantom – 16 (2)
Mark Trail – 15 (0)
Brenda Starr – 10 (-1)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 10 (0)
Mickey Mouse – 9 (9)
Batman – 7 (-8)
Little Orphan Annie – 6 (-1)
Rip Kirby – 4 (0)
Flash Gordon – 2 (0)
Popeye – 2 (0)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)
Secret Agent – 0
Tim Tyler’s Luck - 0
The soap strip category had a drop of 6.8% mainly because of papers dropping Apartment 3-G:
Mary Worth – 57 (-2)
Rex Morgan – 46 (-3)
Judge Parker – 28 (1)
Apartment 3-G – 16 (-7)
Gil Thorp – 10 (0)
Heart of Juliet Jones – 3 (0)
Winnie Winkle – 3 (0)
Labels: Paper Trends
