I was looking through my recent shipment of comic books and the included “Comic Shop News“, which featured an article regarding “Comic Strip Collections”. I have noticed that book companies are publishing more and more comic strip collections, and see that article made me consider the fate of the newspaper comic strip.
As I read the article, a collection of Star Trek Comic Strips originally caught my eye. I thought of the marketing and entertainment value that these strips brought to the newspaper. I remember looking at the full color comics section included in each Sunday morning newspaper prior to going to church. I only wish now that I had paid more attention to the more serious strips rather than the lighthearted humorous ones.
However, it is clear that there was a time when the newspaper was king and the comic strips strung along a cliffhanger storyline from week to week, or sometimes day to day. These comic strips have on some levels begun to die away. I can understand how they began to fade, because as the physical newspapers have declined the space to put comic strips have begun to fade as well. The lack of space in the newspapers made the comic strips, for the lack of another term, “homeless.” There simply has not been another place for comic strips to exist.
This medium seems to be missed in today’s digital environment. Although, I still believe there is a place for short storytelling today. It could exist in shareable content through social media or create a new platform—possibly like YouTube to create and share these types of stories. Yes, there are small pockets of webcomics, but there are no large pockets to place big named comic strips on a regular basis. This is an area for growth and it will be interesting what the world will be reading several years down the road.
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Photo from Amazon.com