Jeffrey Lindenblatt's Paper Trends: The 300 for 2001 -- Results

This year we did not lose any papers, but 3 more papers were missing from the archives; they will all return in a future poll. The count for this survey is 250 papers.

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.

Title (250 Papers)	Rank	Rank +/-	Papers +/-	Total Papers
Garfield	1	Same	-5	218
Blondie	2	Same	-4	206
For Better or For Worse	3	Up 1	-2	203
Peanuts	4	Down 2	-20	190
Dilbert	5	Up 1	2	184
Beetle Bailey	6	Down 1	-6	178
Family Circus	7	Same	-1	163
Hagar The Horrible	8	Same	-2	159
Doonesbury	9	Up 1	-1	142
Cathy	10	Down 1	-11	134
Fox Trot	11	Same	5	115
Zits	12	Up 4	17	114
B.C.	13	Down 1	3	110
Hi and Lois	14	Down 2	-2	105
Frank and Ernest	15	Down 1	-7	93
Wizard of Id	15	Same	-6	93
Born Loser	17	Same	-3	87
Dennis The Menace	18	Same	-1	82
Baby Blues	19	Up 1	12	80
Sally Forth	20	Up 2	4	68
Marmaduke	21	Same	-3	61
Mother Goose and Grimm	22	Up 1	-1	58
Non Sequitur	22	Up 2	4	58
Shoe	24	Down 5	-15	57
Mallard Fillmore	25	Up 2	2	50
Rose Is Rose	26	Up 1	1	49
Jump Start	27	Up 2	1	48
Close To Home	28	Down 3	-4	47
Ziggy	28	Down 2	-3	47
Arlo and Janis	30	Same	2	45

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