Stripper's Guide

Since Peanuts lost 20 papers the strip fell from its number 2 spot down to number 4. This enabled For Better or For Worse to move up to the number 3 spot. With Shoe losing 15 papers the strip fell from #19 to 24. Our biggest gainer was Zits, which moved from 16 to 12.

The Average Number of Comic Strip per paper went up again; 18.668 strips per paper from last year’s total of 18.41.

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. 

With a lot of classic strips being dropped the universal section had a shake-up this year. We only made it to the Top 16 strips before originality reared its head, but instead of one paper we had 4 papers that had the Top 16: El Paso Times (TX), Hartford Courant (CT), Montgomery Advertiser (AL) and Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL)

Top 2 – 186 (Down 4)
Top 3 – 165 (Down 8)
Top 4 – 139 (Down 14)
Top 5 – 113 (Down 11)
Top 6 - 95 (Down 6)
Top 7 – 83 (Down 4)
Top 8 – 68 (Down 2)
Top 9 – 53 (Down 4)
Top 10 – 41 (Down 3)
Top 11 – 23 (Same)
Top 12 – 19 (Up 5)
Top 13 – 13 (Up 2)
Top 14 – 10 (Up 6)
Top 15 – 9 (Up 5)
Top 16 – 4 (Same)
Top 17 – 0 (Down 1)

Here are the rest of strips that did not make the Top 30:

42 – Crankshaft – (0), Luann – (+3)

39 – Mary Worth (-3), Mutts (+5)

38 – Funky Winkerbean (+2)

36 – Rex Morgan (+1)

35 – Pickles (+5)

33 – Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (-1), Herman (-2), Lockhorns (+1)

30 – Alley Oop (0)

28 – Boondocks (+5), Curtis (0), Get Fuzzy (+15)

24 – Kit N Carlyle (-1)

22 – Grizzwells (-3)

21 – Geech (+1), In The Bleachers (-1)

20 – Marvin (-2), Robotman (+2)

19 – Judge Parker (0), Sherman’s Lagoon (+4)

18 – One Big Happy (0), Real Life Adventures (-1), Rubes (0)
16 – Baldo (R), Crabby Road (+1)

15 – Bizarro (0), Gasoline Alley (-1)

14 – Adam (+1), Betty (+1), Lola (+4), Pluggers (0), Stone Soup (+1)

13 – Andy Capp (-3), Big Nate (-1), Drabble (0), Overboard (-3)

12 – Anges (+3), Buckles (+1), Fred Basset (0), Grand Avenue (-2), Heathcliff (0), Mark Trail (0)

11 – Phantom (0), Soup To Nuts (R), Tank McNamara (-2), Tiger (0)

10 – Berry’s World (0), Piranha Club (-2), Six Chix (R), Speed Bump (0)

9 – Dunagin’s People (0), Sylvia (-1)

8 – Gil Thorp (0), Heart of The City (+1), Hocus Focus (-2), Middletons (-1), Nancy (-2), That’s Life (+4), Zippy (0)

7 – Apartment 3-G (-1), Brenda Starr (0), Dinette Set (+2), Herb & Jamaal  (-1), Liberty Meadows (+4), Rhymes with Orange (-1), Rugrats (-6), Shirley and Son (R)

6 – Dick Tracy (-1), Duplex (-1), Fusco Brothers (+1), I Need Help (0), Mr. Boffo (-2), Off The Mark (0), Red & Rover (R), Strange Brew (+1)

5 – Amazing Spider-Man (-2), Archie (0), Ben (0), Bound & Gagged (0), Citizen Dog (0), Committed (-1), Grin and Bear It (0), Kuduz (0), 9 Chickweed Lane (0), Pokeman (R), Safe Havens (0), They’ll Do IT Every Time (-1)

4 – Buckets, Crock, Horrorscope, Momma, Over The Hedge, Randolph Itch, Tumbleweeds, Twins

3 - Cats With Hands, Coast, Comic For Kids, Cornered, Donald Duck, James, Love Is, Mixed Media, Our Fascinating Earth, Pooch Café, Ralph, That’s Jake

2 - Ballard Street, Better Half, Between Friends, Bobo’s Progress, Broom Hilda, Chubb & Chauncey, Helen Sweetheart of The Internet, Loose Parts, Meg, Mickey Mouse, Natural Selection, Nest Heads, New Breed, Norm, Offsides, On The Fastrack, Redeye, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, Tarzan, Willy N Ethel

1 – Aminals, Animal Crackers, Belvedere, Big Picture, Bit Off, Bottom Liners, Do Not Disturb, Edge City, Fair Game, Flight Deck, Good Life, Laffbreak, Little Orphan Annie, Mandrake The Magician, Meehan Streak, Meet Mr. Lucky, Modesty Blaise, Mulch, Offline, Out of Bounds, Playing Golf With Jack Nicklaus, Quigmans, Raising Hector, Reality Check, Saturday Afternoon, Single Slices, Spooner, Squinkers, Top Secrets, Tundra, Warped

Labels: Paper Trends

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM