As a dad of an 8 year old, I do disapprove of the language. Still, I teach ‘a time and a place for everything’.
In other words, kid’s got a point.
Any newspaper editor who can’t handle being called a shithole, needs to turn in his press pass (and corresponding hat with ‘press’ inserted into band)
Very funny.
Wait until he discovers whoever his generation’s Joss Whedon will be…
I do take your point that press should be able to deal with much worse, but I didn’t get the notion that the editor couldn’t handle it, just that he was a bit taken aback and thought being called names by an eight year old was worth remark. I’m sure the editor will be fine, and can probably keep his press pass.
It’s lovely that kids still can form relationships with these strips though. Its one of the things that changes as newspapers get slimmer and go away, despite the fact that comics are one of the things that make newspapers such good tools for developing literacy in both a literary and cultural sense.
I was going to comment on the removal of Ziggy and Garfield as being a good thing… But thinking back, as an 8 year old I’m pretty sure I did enjoy them greatly.
His faves included [...] “For Better or For Worse,”
Because what does an eight-year-old boy from Indiana like more than a rerun of a strip detailing a Canadian family age in real time?
When I was young I did enjoy Garfield, but the local paper never carried Ziggy, so I didn’t really come to appreciate its bizarreness and deep existential despair until I started reading The Comics Curmudgeon Blog.
So that’s who still reads newspapers!
Kid might lack manners, but he’s got good taste.
I think it is indisputable that Garfield just ain’t what it used to be. (I have the impression that many regard the decline as starting around the end of “Garfield and Friends” – book 20 or so, I think – as if that sapped the remaining creative energies.)
This child needs a lesson in manners, and an internet connection. A well written complaint to the editor would have been more appropriate. You can still express your displeasure without attacking someone.
And he will survive, as I did when they stopped Henry. Different situation since Henry died from hypothermia from going out with only ear muffs and short pants on a brutally cold day. I miss him dearly.
I have to say, that I think Get Fuzzy is like the modern, edgy Garfield…
The “funny papers” are really really not funny. But when I was a moppet, it was the one part of Father’s Sacred Newspaper that was obviously meant for kids. I didn’t need to laugh, I just needed to feel included. I would read those pages so hard, I even kept going when I got to Steve Canyon and Apartment 3G. I didn’t understand them one bit.
You know your paper is in trouble when they can’t afford Garfield anymore.
How can I set up my printer to print out the funnies for me on sunday mornings?
There must be an ap for that.
Who needs a newspaper, I read my comics on-line including Peanuts, Garfield and several others.
How about Mary Worth? At least Steve Canyon and 3G had at least the suggestion of action and/or sex. Mary Worth was just about an insufferable busybody who was somehow viewed as a hero for interfering with other people’s lives.
I remember sometime in junior-high I came to the realization that I could just skip all the boring ones that I didn’t enjoy. my whole paradigm shifted.
You can listen to the whole thing but a quick summary: the mother dials the number, leaves an introduction, then calls the kid over to the phone, but spends about half the time coaching her kid on what to say (minus the “jerk” and the “shithole” parts), including reading a list of every comic that was removed.
//The first “jerks” the kid threw around sounded like my friend in elementary school with Tourettes did.
Don’t forget “Gasoline Alley”. I used to think that it was too old-fashioned, but realized almost too late that it had a pretty hip approach to social satire.
Just wait until Advance Publications takes over your local news paper. They did here and we only have Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday news paper.
