So a newspaper in Virginia is trying to whether to keep Rex Morgan or Doonesbury. They don't want to move Mike, Zonker and the gang to the op ed page because it would reflect a political bias. My solution after reading the story is to report less celebrity news.
But the real issue here it that Bill Amend is an incredible wuss. He stopped the daily grind back in Decmeber voluntarily, so the newspaper is going to drop a strip that shows the true spirit of comics creation? Rex Morgan and Doonesbury are decades long experiences in the tradition of Peanuts and Krazy Kat and Beetle Baily and B.C. Fine, a whippersnapper like Amend retires. Give the spot to some punk kid, but don't remove Doonesbury or Rex Morgan.
Posted by Mike Chary at May 27, 2007 9:43 AM
Huh? Not only is it not Amend's fault, but the comics pages would be in a hell of a lot better shape if more creators followed his lead and stopped producing comics when they got tired and burned out. Bill Amend should be praised for not turning it over to assistants or relatives to keep churning out "product." If Rex Morgan is the true spirit of anything, it's the spirit of the reanimated corpses of comics that litter today's newspapers.
"They don't want to move Mike, Zonker and the gang to the op ed page because it would reflect a political bias."
But that's the reason WHY so many papers run it on the op ed page. It's no less biased because of it running on the funny pages.
Heck, move Doonesbury over there and add Day by Day for a right leaning strip to balance things out. The answer isn't less comics it's MORE comics.