Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Zombie comics

Last week Lynn Johnston brought her long-running “For Better or For Worse” comic strip saga to a satisfying conclusion with the marriage of the eldest daughter to her old high school sweetheart.
But Johnston did not end the comic strip, choosing instead to run repeats going back to the beginnings of the strip with some occasional new materials and commentary added in.
Unfortunatley, the Express-News editors decided to ditch the strip anyway and have replaced it with a creepy, gag-a-day strip by Mark Tatulli called Lio.
Lio is not a bad strip. It’s just not the best one that they could have replaced “For Better or For Worse” with. It’s not even the best strip written by Tatulli. That would be his delightful “Heart of the City” which the Express-News has inexplicably ignored and passed over.
My biggest problem with canning Johnston’s strip is that it is unfair in light of their past decisions to continue running other comic strips long after the original artist/author is dead.
Here are the 11 comic strips currently running daily in the E-N that live on under the direction of different artists (except in the case of Peanuts which is in reruns).

Peanuts
Hagar the Horrible
Hi and Lois
Born Loser
Frank and Ernest
B.C.
Wizard of Id
Blondie
Dennis the Menace
The Lockhorns
Fred Basset

So the question remains, why is Lynn Johnston, who is not even dead yet, being singled out for special mistreatment?

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