Jeffrey Lindenblatt's Paper Trends: The 300 for 1997: Biggest Winners and Losers

 For the year 1996 there were not many changes to the landscape of the comic section. Editors seemed like they wanted to keep things calm with their section since the pandemonium of the year before, when they lost two of the biggest strips of all time. Dilbert was still gaining papers with another banner year -- 32 papers added in 1996 making a two-year total of 101 papers. For Better or For Worse still found some more papers adding 6 more to its already huge client list. Here is the list of all strips that gained five or more papers in 1996.

Dilbert - 32
For Better or For Worse – 6
Ghost Story Club - 6
Non Sequitur – 5
Pickles – 5
I Need Help – 5 (new offering)

Only one strip had a big loss and that was Tank McNamara which lost 5 papers.

On the story strip front 1996 saw the end of three long-running features. Two adventure strips ended, Secret Agent Corrigan and Tim Tyler’s Luck. Neither had any papers in our survey and I mentioned last time that no paper currently available online was running them. The third story strip to end was Winnie Winkle which had 2 papers in our survey that ran it to the end. You can read the complete 76 years run online through many different newspapers.

Overall, the adventure strip market penetration stayed at the same number of papers, even though some papers were dropping these features. Ghost Story Club, a newer strip geared to younger readers, gained 6 papers to help offset the losses of others. Here is the breakdown:

Adventure (net change 0)
Alley Oop – 30 (-1)
Amazing Spider-Man – 12 (-1)
Mark Trail – 12 (0)
Phantom – 12 (+1)
Ghost Story Club – 11 (+6)
Dick Tracy – 9 (-1)
Brenda Starr – 7 (-1)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 4 (0)
Terry and The Pirates – 4 (-2)
Little Orphan Annie – 2 (0)
Mickey Mouse – 2 (-1) - Reruns
Rip Kirby – 2 (-1)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)
Tarzan – 1 (+1) - reruns
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – 1 (0) – reruns
Mandrake the Magician – 0
Popeye – 0 - reruns

Ended
Secret Agent Corrigan
Tim Tyler’s Luck

Soap strips had a drop of 3.4% since last year. Here are the individual strip totals:

Soaps (net change -4)
Mary Worth – 42 (-1)
Rex Morgan – 37 (+1)
Judge Parker – 19 (-1)
Apartment 3-G – 10 (-1)
Gil Thorp – 8 (0)
Heart of Juliet Jones – 0

Ended
Winnie Winkle – 2