For the good of cartooning, we’ll take even small victories. And by small, we mean a mere 7 picas wide.
The Washington Post recently shrank Doonesbury to 34 picas wide. (To put that in perspective, that’s just under six inches. Or just over 14 centimetres.)
Now, shrinkage is already a pretty major annoyance in the comic world. But when you’re dealing with a comic as text-intensive as Doonesbury, that can mean outright illegibility.
With the Post, though, something interesting happened. If I’m reading this right, the newspapers comics blogger, Michael Cavna, went to bat for Doonesbury… and lo and behold, the paper restored it to its previous 41-pica width.
I’m used to seeing in-house newspaper bloggers acting in a variety of roles. But this is the first time I’ve seen one act so successfully as a reader advocate within the paper. It’s kind of cool. (Has anyone out there seen other examples?)
Now if we could just get them to shrink a few strips down to zero picas (yes, you, Blondie), we might really be getting somewhere.
Posted via web from robcottingham’s posterous
