Tim Rogers: Comics are changing

DALTON — Good morning.

My kids may not be the biggest newspaper readers in the world, but there is one section that they fight over like cats and dogs — the Sunday funnies.

They even like reading the daily comics and looking for their favorites, but to them there is nothing better than the Sunday color comics.

They like them so much that I frequently have to rip the pages in half so that everyone has something to read and pass to the next person. In that way, we can have a little more peace and quiet at the breakfast table and on the way to church and no one feels like they are getting cheated.

Watching them read the Sunday comics makes me smile, because I love reading the comics section. And while I don’t get to the funnies as regularly as I once did, I get a smile out of something every time I am there.

It doesn’t matter if it is a joke I have read a thousand times (like Dagwood Bumstead wondering what he is going to eat or getting yelled at by Mr. Dithers) or something new (like “Baby Blues”), I find myself chuckling at what I just read.

My favorite comic strip right now is “Zits,” which tells the story of Jeremy Duncan and his gang of high school pals and his relationship with his parents, who figure prominently in the strip.

One of the reasons I like the strip is that my son reminds me so much of Jeremy. They (both Jeremy and Zach) are basically nice guys who dream of bigger things while wandering through their own worlds. They also specialize in parent baiting and have made the monosyllabic answer an art form.

I also relate to the strip because, for good or for ill, Deb and I are the mom and dad in the strip. We have had the same conversations they have, but never seem to come up with the same funny rejoinders or one-liners.

My all time favorite strip, however, is “Calvin and Hobbes.”

When I was growing up I couldn’t start the day without reading it. I still own a number of “Calvin and Hobbes” books, including one of my favorite titles, “Something under the bed is drooling.”

For those of you who have never heard of “Calvin and Hobbes,” Calvin was a little boy whose stuffed tiger, Hobbes, came to life whenever no one else was around. They became embroiled in all kinds of adventures and mischief, while at the same time being thwarted by Calvin’s mom, dad and Susie, his neighbor nemesis whom he was never quite able to best.

Calvin was drawn by Bill Watterson, and while I miss reading it daily, Watterson decided that he had enough of drawing the strip and stopped doing it. Instead of letting it fall into mediocrity, he stopped drawing it and froze it in time forever, just like Gary Larson’s “The Far Side.”

Youtube, Comedy Central and reality TV have certainly upped the ante these days for what it takes to get a kid to laugh, but for many of us the funny pages are still a place we can turn to for some good, clean humor.

I am telling you all of this because we are going to have to make a change in our comics section come Oct. 4. “Cathy,” which has been in the paper for many years, is going away and taking her mom and dad, her fears and phobias, and boyfriend, now husband, Irving with her.

At the same time, we are going to retire the comic strip “For Better or Worse,” which is using a mix of new and rerun material to keep going.

That means we have two opportunities to put new comic strips into The Daily Citizen.

I have been talking to various syndicate representatives, whose job it is to try and get papers to purchase their material, and have received a number of samples for us to look at.

I don’t want this to be just my decision, however, and likely neither do you.

What I am looking for is a group of readers who are comics junkies, or just regular readers of the funnies, to help me make this decision.

There are a number of good comic strips out there and I would like to get a readers’ group together to look at the samples and rank the strips. I will couple this with input from our employees and try to come up with some good replacements.

If you would like to be part of this group, please drop me a line at my e-mail, timrogers@daltoncitizen.com, or give me a call at (706) 272-7735. I plan on doing the meeting at the newspaper at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 20, so that those of you who work can join us.

I can take about 12-15 people, so if more than that contact me I’ll figure out some way to weed it down or possibly even host another session.

I look forward to hearing from you all and, as the saying goes, seeing you in the funny pages.

Tim Rogers can be reached at 706-272-7735 or timrogers@daltoncitizen.com.

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