For any number of reasons, I haven’t read a paper newspaper in a very long time. So this afternoon when I picked up the Register, I naturally celebrated our reunion by turning to the all-important comics page.

It was I remembered. There was some mildly amusing stuff, a consistently excellent strip or two, and then the rest. And of the rest, the worst seemed to have one thing in common: they were all a single panel.

So on the basis of this data, allow me to offer my own plan for comics page reform. Its basis is one simple precept: prohibit comics that (usually) contain a single panel.

Note this plan has two corollaries. One: Brad Anderson has a lifetime ban. A decision to convert his strip to multiple panels (as in the Sunday edition) is insufficient for inclusion on any page, ever. Two: should Gary Larson decide to restart his strip, he, too, should not be included on the comics page.

He should be on the front page.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2003 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Miscellany.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.