Real Life Adventures ended on September 23.
No word on why the cartoonists are retiring, although the strip has been going for 32 years, and writer Lance Aldrich has turned 78, and there are only four newspapers left in the United States that even run comics, so it’s easy to make up a plausible story.
I have harvested their material frequently (here, here, here, here, and many more) for the humor subsection of TYWKIWDBI, and will truly miss their panels.
It's sad to see that cartoons are disappearing. But then again, so are the newspapers they appear in. Nevertheless, they're an important and underappreciated art form. They're being replaced by memes and gifs.
ReplyDeleteCartooning is alive and well! I follow a bunch of them on Instagram, people who have never even had their stuff in newspapers. For as long as people can put their funny little comics somewhere, we'll always have these short-form funnies.
DeleteOnly four newspapers run comics anymore? That's truly sad, but since they don't directly generate revenue it's kind of understandable these days. The San Francisco Chronicle is among those four -- we get the Sunday print edition and occasional weekdays when they feel like it. That said, I don't read most of the comics in the paper we do get anyway. By the time I get to the paper, I've already read the ones I follow online.
ReplyDeleteThat's truly sad, but since they don't directly generate revenue it's kind of understandable these days
DeleteOut of curiosity, I'm asking why you say that. How does an op-ed bring in more revenue? Or a tech section?
For me the comics are pretty much the first thing in a newspaper I look for, after scanning the front page.
What happened to the E ?
ReplyDeleteIt quit. But it came back.
DeleteThere are more than 4 newspapers running syndication from Andrews McMeel. They have 2,500 US newspapers running their content, including comics. https://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/syndication/
ReplyDeleteHow many of those papers include comics in the print edition, presuming they even have a print edition? (I also had trouble verifying the "4" claim.)
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