Cartoonists hate them. Editors pay too much attention to them. Newspapers shouldn’t use them. They’re completely unscientific. The only people who do enjoy them are 105 year-old readers who live in fear that Beetle Bailey may get court-martialed and they’ll have nothing left to live for. Coincidentally, they’re the ones who have nothing else to do but sit around all day filling them out. You guessed it: it’s time for another newspaper comic strip survey.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press is running what another cartoonist described as a “keep or drop” survey. Strips on the chopping block include:
Candorville
Dog Eat Doug
Fred Basset
Lio
Mutts
Non Sequitur
Piranha Club
Red and Rover
Sylvia
Every reader can vote once a day (yes, I know, that makes no sense at all, but it’s their rules) by e-mailing comics_survey@pioneerpress.com and naming one strip from that list you want them to keep, and one from that list you want them to drop. If you want to keep reading Candorville in the Pioneer Press, you need to e-mail them every day (I guess for the next month) and tell them to “Keep Candorville.”
Candorville’s always got a handicap in these polls, because while unfunny comics don’t prompt a lot of hatred from readers, comics that discuss politics certainly do. Candorville has to contend with people who believe the comics page shouldn’t explore anything more controversial than whether cats should be eating lasagna. You can bet all the people who are shocked by the issues discussed in Candorville are going to be writing in to get it dropped, and all the people who think it’s just a “black interest strip” (believe me, there are plenty of those people out there) will be calling for it to get the axe, so it’s up to you, the readers, to keep those guys from getting their way.
