Stripper's Guide

In this year’s survey we lost one paper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, not because the paper went out of business but because the information is not available online. But we did get two papers returning that were not available for the previous year, so this survey covers 256 papers.

In the Top 30 the biggest mover is Dilbert moving up 4 spots from 10 to 6. Baby Blues was the other big mover this year, moving up 2 spots from 27 to 25. Two strips moved into the Top 30. The first is the debut of Zits which debuted at the 22^nd position. Zits writer Jerry Scott became the second cartoonist to have two strips in the top 30 (the other is the Walker family with Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois). The other strip to enter the Top 30 is Jump Start at number 30. Three strips fell out of the Top 30 -- Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, Crankshaft and Rex Morgan. With Barney Google falling out the oldest strip in the Top 30 is now Blondie and with Rex Morgan falling out that leaves only one adventure or soap strip in the thirty, Mary Worth.

E&P Survey vs. Stripper's Guide The 300 Survey

The surveys I did for Editor & Publisher were of the top 100 papers in the US, by circulation. There’s an important difference in the criteria for that poll compared to The 300 – in the E&P survey strips got ranked with Sunday papers included; in other words if a given daily or Sunday paper ran Peanuts, that paper got counted. This allowed Sunday-only strips and strips with more popular Sundays than dailies, to get in the running. The 300 poll covers daily features only.

This is the last year we can compare the Top 25 from both surveys. Out of the 25 top strips, 23 of them are on both surveys. The main difference is because we have added smaller circulation papers to this survey, and many of them were using the NEA package which included their two more successful strips, Born Loser and Frank and Ernest. The E&P list has Prince Valiant in the Top 25, proving that Prince Valiant is the most successful adventure strip of all time and the most successful Sunday only strip.

Universal Comics Page

Over the past 80 years when you picked up a paper from another town or city in most cases you would read some of the strips that appeared in your local paper but mostly you would see strips that you have never seen before. By the 1980s, with the slow demise of newspapers beginning and fewer papers around to compete for features, more papers had the opportunity to buy strips that were not available to them before. This could lead to more variety from one paper to another, but instead, the editors of these papers would do the opposite and just pick the most popular strips. As this way of filling a comics page became more and more prevalent, you would now see many of the same comics in every paper.The Universal Comic Section is a measure of how many papers run the most popular strips. 

The universal comic strip had growth in some papers and a drop in others. As last year, the most universal comic section had the top 26 strips but this time it is not Colorado Springs Gazette but The Arizona Republic. Here is the breakdown:

Top 2 – 209 (Up 5)

Top 3 – 182 (Up 6)

Top 4 – 157 (Up 5)

Top 5 – 124 (Same)

Top 6 – 88 (Down 3)

Top 7 – 71 (Down 4)

Top 8 – 63 (Up 4)

Top 9 – 56 (Up 9)

Top 10 – 48 (Up 12)

Top 11 – 33 (Up 11)

Top 12 – 23 (Up 8)

Top 13 – 7 (Down 2)

Top 14 – 6 (Up 3)

Top 15 – 4 (Up 1)

Top 16 – 3 (Up 1)

Top 17 – 2 (Same)

Top 18 – 1 (Same)

Top 19 – 1 (Same)

Top 20 – 1 (Same)

Top 21 – 1 (Same)

Top 22 - 1 (Same)

Top 23 - 1 (Same)

Top 24 – 1 (Same)

Top 25 – 1 (Same)

Top 26 – 1 (Same)

The Average Number of Comic Strip per paper cracked 18 this year moving to an average of 18.03 from 17.59.

Here are the rest of the strips that made this year’s survey:

38 – Rose is Rose (+3)

37 – Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (-1), Crankshaft (0), Rex Morgan (0)

33 – Funky Winkerbean (0)

32 – Lockhorns (+2)

30 – Alley Oop (0), Luann (+4)

29 – Andy Capp (-5), Mutts (+6)

28 – Curtis (+2), Marvin (+1)

27 – Herman (R)

26 – Grizzwells (+1), In The Bleechers (-1)

25 – Real Life Adventures (+2)

22 – Pickles (+3), Rubes (-6)

21 – Geech (+1), Kit N Carlyle (-1)

20 – Bizarro (0), Eek and Meek (0)

19 – Gasoline Alley (-3), One Big Happy (+1)

18 – Judge Parker (-1), Robotman (+2)

17 – Tank McNamara (0)

16 – Heathcliff (-1), Overboard (-1)

15 – Adam (+1), Ernie (+2)

14 – Crabby Road (+5), Fred Basset (-1)

13 – Berry’s World (-5), Big Nate (+2), Drabble (0), Tiger (+1)

12 – Mark Trail (0), Nancy (-1), Stone Soup (0)

11 – Amazing Spider-Man (-1), Betty (0), Buckles (+1), Sylvia (-2)

10 – Ghost Story Club (-1), Middletons (+1), Mixed Media (-3), Mr. Boffo (-1), Speed Bump (0)

9 – Apartment 3-G (-1), Bound and Gagged (-1), Dave (-2), Dunigan’s People (+1), I Need Help (+1), Rhymes with Orange (-3)

8 – Dick Tracy (-1), Gil Thorp (0), Hocus-Focus (0), Sherman’s Lagoon (-1), Zippy (-1)

7 – Against The Grain (+1), Archie (-1), Brenda Starr (0), Buckets (-1), Duplex (-1), Herb & Jamaal (-2), Off The Mark (+1), Over The Hedge (-6), Tommy (-6)

6 – Citizen Dog (+2), Kuduz (-2), Momma (0), Ralph (-1), Thatch (-1), They’ll Do It Every Time (-1)

5 – Bliss (+4), Dr. Katz (R), Fusco Brothers (-2), Grin and Bear It (-1), Horrorscope (+1), 9 Chickweed Lane (+1), Safe Havens (0), That’s Jake (0), Tumbleweeds (0)

4 - Broom Hilda, Comic For Kids, Committed, Crock, Motley’s Crew, Us & Them, Willy N Ethel

3 - Ballard Street, Ben, Bottom Liners, Cornered, Donald Duck, Liberty Meadows, Love Is, Norm, On The Fastrack, Our Fascinating Earth, Redeye, Small Society, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, Twins, Warped

2 - Animal Crackers, At The Zu, Beattie Blvd, Better Half, Between Friends, Chubb & Chauncey, Dinette Set, Fair Game, Feet of Clay, Frumpy The Clown, Ick, Meg, Mickey Mouse, New Breed, Out of Bounds, Quigmans, Reality Check, Rip Kirby, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Second Chances, Stitches, Too Much Coffee/Strange Brew, Tuttle, Two Toes, Word For Word

1 – Belvedere, Charlie, Flintstones, Good Life, Homespin, J.D. Comics, Laffbreak, Little Orphan Annie, Lumpy Gravy, Meatloaf Night With Brewster, Meet Mr. Lucky, Modesty Blaise, Pellets, Penmen, Playing Golf With Jack Nicklaus, Popcorn, Quality Time, Rural Rootz, Scrimmages, Sneed, Suburban Cowgirls, Swan Factory, Tarzan, Trudy, Tundra, Walnut Cove, Wild Life, Wit of The World

Labels: Paper Trends

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 7:00 AM