I have a few new followers today thanks to @ComicBookProgressive. Not to disappoint, I thought I ought finally to provide my promised take on the standardised comic strip lineup now available at Gannett newspapers (and which started a little more than a month ago at my hometown daily).
As background, The Daily Cartoonist website has written extensively on this, and a recent post (link below) provides a list of the lineup. ('Toot' continues.)
This list does, by and large, represent the big getting bigger and the small getting smaller, with long established strips returning to my local paper ('Dennis the Menace', 'Wizard of Id', 'Born Loser') rather than seeing newer strips from younger artists.
I understand the economics of this, especially as print newspaper subscribers (like myself) tend to be older and like seeing familiar characters. But it does make the comics pages seem rather stale and less innovative. ('Toot' continues.)
So when we see characters show up in other strips (as in today's 'Blondie'), it should not be surprising that the set of strips from which those characters are drawn is also quite limited. ('Toot' continues.)
For me personally, I miss not having any traditional serial comic strips (of which 'Judge Parker' was the last to appear in my local daily paper; 'Prince Valiant' and 'The Phantom' appeared on Sundays). I also miss the comic strip 'Agnes' by Tony Cochran, which did have a local, Ohio setting. ('Toot' continues.)
Michael Meckler