For the second time this year, the Boston Globe has dropped one or more comic strips on the Sunday comics page — specifically, Arlo & Janis
— to include a half-page color advertisement. Personally I am as in
favor of the Looney Toons DVDs as the next comics/animation aficionado,
but not at the expense of truly great comic strips. Dump Garfield and
the Family Circus (just in general, PLEASE!), but don’t yank a
character-driven strip just because only adults really “get” it. You
should only wish that adults would keep reading the comics so that they
also pay attention to all that garbage advertising you wrap inside of
them.
If, like me, you sniff a conspiracy in the air to test-market pulling Arlo & Janis, please write a letter to the Globe. It’s only when readers complain that they start realizing what the real readership of any strip is.
As requested…
Arlo & Janis is one of my favorite comic strips. I was disappointed to see it missing from this Sunday’s paper. If you need to include ads in the Sunday comics section, please print up an insert rather than pre-empting one of the comics.