I READ THE NEWSPAPER.
THE COMICS COUNT, YEAH?
“As long as there are newspapers, people will want comics and puzzles. It’s a medium pretty specific to newspapers,” Rizzo says. “You can get it online, but it’s not the same as the printed page.”
— Rizzo, assistant features editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Wee Bit Of History
When it comes to newspaper comics, most credible sources give the first-on-the-scene trophy to Richard F. Outcault, author of The Yellow Kid comic strip. The series of images in which the Yellow Kid appeared presented a turn-of-the-century theater of the city, in which class and racial tensions of the new urban, consumerist environment were acted out by a mischievous group of New York City kids from the wrong side of the tracks.
First appearing in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World in 1895, the kid with the oversized T-shirt turned out to be quite the business man. He not only increased the sales of newspapers carrying him, but he was also the first to demonstrate that a comic strip character could be merchandised profitably. In fact, for these two reasons, the Yellow Kid and his creator, R. F. Outcault, are generally credited with permanently establishing the comic strip and making it a part of American society.
THIS IS WHY COMICS ARE NOT JUST DRAWINGS:
1. They sell newspapers
2. They PERSUADE your mind.
(I understand lists usually have more than 2 points… but simplicity works, yeah?!)
As opinion polls of newspaper readers have been confirming since 1930, even though they are still powerful delivery systems for information and entertainment, the most popular segment is the funnies page. Old or young, rural or urban, rich or poor, overeducated or uneducated, if you have not read the comics YOU PROBABLY ARN’T HUMAN.
It’s not a little kid thing!A New York University poll indicated that more college-educated readers (82.1%) turned to the comic strips than did readers with an eighth grade education or less (69.3%). The very structure of the medium, as many theorist have argued, enhances its accessibility. The basics of the comic strip (AKA sequential images with accompanying dialogue). provide a user-friendly form whose audience can self-tailor its consumption. Unlike movies, plays, or radio programs, the comic strip can be consumed at everyones personal pace. This leads right into why they are so valuable.
Through 1939–45, comic strips contributed to the war effort by presenting familiar characters successfully coping with disturbing situations. Many strips sent their principal characters to military settings, and they featured simple humor or offered a morale boost through tales of good triumphing over evil in spectacularly super-heroic fashion.
Even now (maybe more than ever) we see politics entering into our favorite page of the paper…
If a newspaper has a particular political view, you will definitely figure it out through their comics.
But we don’t mind (is okay for me to speak on behalf of Americans??), because we keep buying the newspapers, and we like pretty pictures. I’d like to say I personally search for them because of ones like these… (:
