Piranha Club. I think it used to run on Sundays but ended up being squeezed out when the new Opus strips started running.

How about....Doonesbury?

To help folks come up with ideas here are links to three comics syndicators:

Tribune Media Services

King Features

United Feature Syndicate

Thanks for the links, Frank - good thinking.

Here's one other one that I just read about on a listserv: Tundra. It's drawn by a guy in Alaska, and he self-syndicates. I really like it so far - curious to know what others think.

Tundra's too much "Far Side" wannabe.

Pearls Before Swine looks promising.

Mary Worth and Brenda Starr are actually a lot more fun than in days of yore.

And you can never go wrong with the Ghost Who Walks...

OK, no need to even go to the Tribune Media Services site. It's like "Comics for Old People."

I like Zippy.

But why not move Doonesbury back to the actual comics page and end his exile to the classifieds?

The King Features site is delightfully skewed toward election jokes.

Am I allowed to vote? Pearls Before Swine.

Speaking of a vote, why not run a poll through the front page, giving four contenders and representive selections from the comics?

(patting self on back)

I'd love to do a reader poll, but time is a bit of a factor. We only got three weeks' notice that Fox Trot is going away, which, considering the comic pages are typeset about two weeks in advance, poses a problem. Plus, the comic pages are put together by an outside vendor, which will be up to its neck in changes because a bunch of other newspapers are in the same boat we are.

That aside, it's tough to make a call based on three or four days' worth of strips. I like a lot of the Pearls Before Swine samples that I've seen, but I've looked at a months' worth of the strips, and the artist has come off a rather lengthy tirade over a mistake that an editor or paginator made somewhere. He's got every right to be upset, but I'm not sure I want to drag readers along for two weeks whenever he's got a bone to pick (Bruce Tinsley of "Mallard Fillmore" is pretty famous for this, too).

Anyway - lots to research to do and stuff to think about. I'm trying to read at least five weeks worth of each strip that comes up for consideration. "Snuffy Smith" and "Katzenjammer Kids" (110 years and still kicking!) are out.

Sherman's Lagoon is pretty sweet.

I love going to other cities and seeing what they have to offer (comics wise). May favorite is (and always was) "Kathy". I'd love to see her return.

PLEASE, Take a serious look at a comic called "Pickles." It appears in the Tacoma daily paper and has appeal for all ages although the two main characters are elderly. After all, Spokane area has more elderly--and thier long suffering families and friends--than any other age group. I hope you'll give it a try.

Pearls Before Swine gets my vote. Are you afraid you will be the editor next on the tirade list? Tirades can be quite entertaining. Just look at Bloom County.

So many to choose from, so little space . . .
1. Boondocks
2. Jane's World
3. Pearls Before Swine

Or just bring Doonesbury back from the purgatory of the classifieds.

I logged on just to promote Boondocks but Pearls Before Swine is hilarious. I understand the issues with the author and Sherman's Lagoon seems a good substitute. I always enjoy it on Sundays and it's pretty family friendly, like Foxtrot.

That said, we have so much old, tired CRAP in the comics pages (Beetle Bailey, B.C., Hagar the Horrible, the excreble Family Circus, etc.) that a hip, controversial strip like Boondocks would add some balance. Besides, it's is very, very funny stuff. Boondocks reflects Spokane itself, a wannabe hip town that's actually, well, the boondocks.

Are you afraid you will be the editor next on the tirade list?

Anyone who's read these blogs for any length of time knows I've been the target of numerous tirades...

I think tirades are great if it's a worthy target. Berke Breathed always set his sights pretty high.

Devoting a whole week or more worth of strips to dressing down a pagesetter somewhere for an honest mistake, though, strikes me as a little bit thin-skinned. "Pearls Before Swine" is still high on the list, don't get me wrong, but not without reservations. Diva cartoonists and production deadlines don't always mix well.

I got a suggestion via email for re-running old "Calvin and Hobbes" strips, and I've been looking for syndication info. Not sure if it's still available. Any seconds on that idea? We're already running old "Peanuts" strips...

Pearls before Swine for Fox Trot replacement, please.

Just one word: Lio

http://www.gocomics.com/lio/

Tank McNamara

There seems to be a Pearls before Swine groundswell (I wasn't too taken with it.).

But now there are two people asking about Doonesbury, so please address that.

And I haven't looked into Boondocks, but that was a pretty convincing argument.

OK, now I have looked at Boondocks--good strip, but do you honestly think the Spokesman is going to print a comic where the main characters are African American? In Spokane? Please....

Here's a reprint FAQ page from Universal Press Syndicate that covers Calvin and Hobbes comics.

We have to agree with Isabelle and Rondy Green, "Pickles" by Brian Crane is the best strip of this modern era. Please give this strip some serious considertion. For those that have never viewed it check .

Tom and Sharon Spofford
Soap Lake, WA

1. Mother Goose and Grimm
2. Boondocks
3. Redmeat

I've spent a lot of time reading the letters and emails sent to Paul Turner the last time this came up, and I've only been able to determine one thing: This is a no-win situation no matter what we decide.

And for readers just jumping in, let me again re-iterate that time is a factor. We have to make a decision fast. Like, this week. That prevents us from conducting any meaningful research to make a decision (we could probably slap together an online poll for the day, but would that be representative?).

Pulling Doonesbury out of classifieds solves one problem but creates two new ones. We add the issue of having to coordinate with classifieds, and the issue of having to explain why "Mallard Fillmore" was left behind. Do I really want to get into that? Do I?

In order to speed things along, I've made the executive decision that we need something a little more edgy. There are a lot of old, but very popular, chestnuts on the page now, and we ought to use this opportunity to liven things up a bit. This, of course, will anger a lot of readers, but there's no avoiding that either way.

Just to key people in to where I'm at with the process, I'll address the suggestions one by one:

Doonesbury: Not moving it right now. Sorry.

Piranha Club: Endorsed by Remi, premiere arbiter of good taste etc. But their syndicate hasn't exactly been Johnny-on-the-spot getting back to me with information. Not a good sign.

Pickles: I agree, it's excellent. But it's too similar to a lot of other strips we've got now.

Pearls Before Swine: The front-runner at the moment. It's immensely popular elsewhere in the country. The latest book is outselling "Calvin and Hobbes" on Amazon right now, it sometimes meshes with "Get Fuzzy", which it will run right next to, and very importantly, the syndicate has assured me a seamless transition with an introductory week. No small consideration given the time crunch. And it's just plain weird. We need more of that.

Tundra: I don't think you can go too wrong with humor about outhouses and roadkill around here. The artist self-syndicates and is eager to work with us. I'm asking around at other papers to see how it's been received (Everett and Bremerton run it). But it will be a logistical challenge to get it in.

Boondocks: I've always been a fan, and I don't think the race thing is/should be an issue. But I'm told the strip is nearing the end of the line, and the ones posted on the syndicate site right now are actually pretty old.

Lio: Love it. I think it's brilliant. The lack of dialogue might be pushing things a little too far, though. I'm trying not to let my personal preferences inform this too much, because I'm kind of an odd duck.

Did I forget anything?

Please keep in mind that all of the suggestions are going into the memory bank for the next time this comes up, so don't feel like your pitches are being made in vain. I really wish we could take more time with this.

Thanks to everyone for your input so far, and please keep those suggestions coming...

If I'm not completely confused (I could be) The Spokesman used to run Kathy when I moved out here in the early 90s.

I like Boondocks - but this Tundra thing Ken found yesterday just had me in stitches...

Zippy!

Alright, so I'm currently an art student at SFCC and I've spent my whole life in Spokane. I grew up eating my honey nut cheerios while reading the comics before school and I maintained all a's throughout school despite drawing cartoons instead of taking notes. My AP US history teacher told me that I should make comics for a living, because he loved the daily ones I made in his class. Anyhow, I have a million ideas go through my head everyday for comics that I should make. I know that I don't have enough of a portfolio or comics to start a strip right now, but I would love to continue to draw them out and show them to the Spokesman Review the next time an opening comes about. I'm very creative (as I'm hoping to become a computer animator for Pixar) and I'm also working on improving my drawing skills at the Falls. I love family oriented and old school comics (my dad always loved the Far Side ones), however I also like to make ones that are out on the edge as well. Such as this one....
http://www.drawspace.com/forums/index.php?act=module&module=gallery&cmd=si&img=560
Anyways, if you're ever interested in comics from a local college student who is an aspiring character animator just let me know. I would absolutely love the opportunity to get my comics out.

Some good suggestions here. Let me toss out one more: "Stone Soup." It's a family strip with a Northwest connection. The artist lives in Eugene, Ore. Ooh, and she's a woman. Lynn Johnston could use a little company on the comics page.

My second vote would be for Pearls Before Swine. It's too weird for words.

Oh yeah....and my vote is definitely for Tundra...First time I've heard of it and it's just hilarious!

Here's an interesting note from Chris Barron at the Kitsap Sun:

We started “Pearls Before Swine” and “Tundra” at the same time, and I’ve received a bunch of thank yous for Tundra and none for Pearls. I really think it fits well with the Northwest. I’m happy we finally made room for it.

Still trying to get ahold of folks at other papers. I'll keep you posted...

Has Gary Larson sued Tundra yet?

Oh all this talk about comics....I can't stop thinking of ideas....
There's the strip called Generation Clash that I made awhile ago...I have about a hundred different ideas on that. Or I could make a comic strip specific to Spokane and the area or.....ah they just keep coming!
I haven't actually drawn a comic strip for awhile...I think my style and artwork have come a long way since the last time I drew one up...so I might have to make one tonight just for the heck of it. I look back on some of my ideas and doodles from one or two years ago and all I can think about is how I could improve them...but just to prove how many characters pop into my head daily check this site out...(this is how all my high school papers looked)
http://flickr.com/photos/teresanord/
Anywho, I'll stop rambling now. Just let me know the next time an opening comes about and I'll be sure to have a strong portfolio ready.
Good luck with the comic strip crisis, I'm sure you'll find a great replacement.

I think Gary Larson would probably sue this guy first...

Correction to an earlier post - "Tundra" does not run in Everett (I was talking with the cartoonist over the phone, and he was working from his best recollection). It is, however, being picked up by the LA Times.

Maybe a reverse class-action suit?

Oh, please. Oh, please. Please, please, please! Run "Pearls"! Yes, it's edgy (whatever that means), yes, it'll offend people (so what?), yes, Pastis goes on tirades (and is that a bad thing?). "Pearls Before Swine" is an award-winning, intelligent and above all _funny_ strip. The word "trenchant" applies, but let's not get all intellectual at this point.

Come on. You had the guts to run "Fuzzy". Add "Pearls" to the mix and I swear I'll never ask you for another strip. Well, maybe one more.

Thanks!

38 (now 39) comments in this posting about comic strips. Amazing. Shows you where our priorities lie I guess. :-)

Oh yea, I don't read the comics so I don't have an opinion on this one.

I have, for years, read a strip call "Frazz" by Jef Mallett (United Media, http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/frazz/). The comic is smart and funny, and has the added advantage of being largely apolitical and is well suited to a general audience. I could not recommend it more highly.

How about Broom Hilda? One of the funniest strips I have ever seen...

http://www.comicspage.com/broomhilda/

Pearls before swine would be my choce to replace Foxtrots

Did Greg mention Zippy?

My favorite comics you have had in the past - I want CATHY and SHOE.
I check them on line every day and I soooo miss them!

Good morning, all...

forty messages all about cartoons? Talk about over-the-edge.

Have a good day, ya'll...

Sorry to burst your bubbles, Dave and Phil, but the comics, jumbles and crosswords are some of the most, um, controverisal items in the paper.

We get more calls about these items than we do when we run a story about a child who's been abused to death.

I've heard of "Pearls Before Swine" before somewhere... I'm taking that as a good sign. And I'm taking my current foray over to its website as an even better sign.

However, I think you could do no better to replace the gentle, family-friendly nostalgia of "Foxtrot" than with the likeminded "

It's a bit Peanuts, a bit Fox Trot, and a bit Calvin & Hobbes – basically billed as "a little slice of old-fashioned childhood". I think it'd be the perfect replacement for Fox Trot.

Here's the publishing information for the strip.

Leave it to me to leave off an HTML closing tag somewhere. Sorry.

Following the "likeminded" part should be:

However, I think you could do no better to replace the gentle, family-friendly nostalgia of "Foxtrot" than with the likeminded "Kim & Jason". Done by an independent professional cartoonist in Wisconsin, he's been able to develop a rather wide, new media-like presence on the web and has really turned "Kim & Jason" into something far beyond a simple comic strip.

It's a bit Peanuts, a bit Fox Trot, and a bit Calvin & Hobbes – basically billed as "a little slice of old-fashioned childhood". I think it'd be the perfect replacement for Fox Trot.

Here's the publishing information for the strip.

Zippy!

Please, dear Lord, don't put Cathy back in the paper. I get it...you don't like trying on swimsuits...'nuff said!

I'd say go with Pearls...time to shake things up a bit.

Also, could we (in the future, like after the new year) do one of the polls on the comics page? I'd give my first born to drop the nauseating Family Circus, or the tired Hagar?

Definitely "Pearls Before Swine." Very funny and graphically cool. Novel thought: comics for folks under 75! We don't need more "Mary Worth" or "Garfield" for crying out loud. Give us something funny!

Eight of us would like to see Baldo put in daily.

Am I the only one who doesn't think Tundra is funny?

I think the illustrator is a Larson-wannabe. I don't know that I don't think it's funny, but it feels quite "been there, done that" to me.

Unlike...Zippy!

My vote goes to Sherman's Lagoon. I didn't know there was a daily version until a friend in Seattle told me. Pearls Before Swine is good, also.

Anything but Cathy. Please no Cathy. Please.

Please start with the Sunday strips that you don't run daily--Baldo, Sherman's Lagoon, Hi & Lois, Beatle Bailey, Peanuts. THEN look at the other family friendly ones like Red & Rover, Pickles, Arlo & Janis, One Big Happy. Anything resembling Calvin & Hobbes would be welcome!

Re: Zippy.

I'm going to let this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry speak for itself:

The Zippy comic strip has a cult following of devoted readers; however, many people find nothing humorous in Zippy and cannot comprehend the strip. This antagonism and confusion is so common that the official Zippy website contains a tutorial on understanding the comic strip.

Starting a strip that requires an instruction manual probably isn't the best idea.

Cathy isn't even on the table.

I'm embarrassed to admit that the option of running one of the Sunday-only strips daily hadn't occurred to me (I'm still pretty new at this, and, as I've mentioned numerous times, am on a pretty tight timeline).

Does it bother people that some strips only runs Sundays and not daily, and/or vice versa?

Ken, I wrote that Wikipedia entry (as far as you know).

You did an excellent job. As far as I know.

I've got nothing against Zippy - I used to read it pretty regularly in one of the alt weeklies back in the Midwest (forget which one exactly). I just think it's only fair to the readers under these particular circumstances to introduce something that I know will have some mass appeal.

I think in the next year or so, we might be due for a serious reader survey on the current comics along with some proposed new offerings. The suggestions that don't make the cut this time will still be under consideration.

Except for "Cathy."

I've got to make a decision tomorrow morning - I'll post it here.

Decision:

"Pearls Before Swine"

I'll be back with further explanation after the 10 o'clock meeting, if anyone's interested...

Wish I could have posted sooner -- "Agnes" by Tony Cochran is very weird and funny. But "Pearls before Swine" will probably be good.

My husband and I both love Drabble.
He's always funny and good for a laugh. We need him every day of the
week.

Hi Pia,
You didn't burst my bubble. I always knew that people were not really that interested in the newspaper for the news. But like I said, it does show you where our priorities lie. I'm not sure whether that is good or bad -- it just is.

OK - so here's what "Pearls" had going for it:

• Demand. Even before this came up, I had someone at a party ask me to start running "Pearls." The pleas on this blog were similarly impassioned. That tells me we have a built-in fan base already. And the demand has come largely from younger readers, which we need to do a better job of serving.

• Popularity. The strip has been well received at other papers around the country.

• Page mix. There's plenty of tame, family-oriented strips and plenty of classics. What we're lacking is more off-beat strips in the tradition of "The Far Side" and "Calvin and Hobbes." "Pearls" has a style of humor that showed up occasionally in "Fox Trot."

• Ease of execution. This is not a major consideration, but is also not to be dismissed. We already work with the syndicate that produces the strip, and they're going to give us a week or so of "introductory" strips to introduce newcomers to the characters. The transition will be pretty seamless from a production standpoint.

We'll run an editor's note for a week on the comics page, so hopefully there will be no confusion. I expect to hear from some angry readers, but that's inevitable no matter what happens. I'll share some of the more colorful replies here.

Thanks again to everyone for your suggestions, and feel free to keep them coming. I'll be measuring feedback on some new offerings if we ever get around to doing a survey (which is a lot more work than it sounds like).

Shall we use that for the sample we send out in the reader survey?

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

A reader's poll on the rest of the comics would be very interesting; please do consider it soon. And did I say thank you?

I wish you'd bring back Cathy. I've missed her ever since you dropped her, and I sure enjoy her when I visit other cities.

The good news is, you can read Cathy online here.

If you're looking for offbeat, it's too bad you limited your search to just the nationally-syndicated strips when you've got a brilliant cartoon coming out of your own backyard.
"Brinkerhoff" (www.brinkcomic.com) is hilarious. Brinkerhoff is a character that says the things we only wish we could say. Your own Dan Webster could probably vouch for the strip's appeal since he interviewed the cartoonist, Gabe Strine, for "7" a few months ago.

"Pearls Before Swine" will make a good addition to the page, but I hope you can consider new alternatives for future selections. I'd hate to see the Spokesman miss out on a great thing.