A guy goes on a vacation and halfway through his two-week trip, he calls his brother to see how things are going at home. His brother tells him, “Mom dropped dead this morning.”
The vacationer pauses and says to his brother, “You should not give me terrible news like that. You should ease into it, so I have time to adjust to the terrible news. For instance, if I had left my cat with you and it died, you should say: “Yesterday your cat crawled out on the roof and had a wonderful time looking at the clouds and watching the birds fly by. Then, apparently, something caught the cat’s eye and he crawled out farther toward the gutter. He slipped and fell to the ground. I found him immediately and took him to your veterinarian who worked very hard to save him. Despite all these efforts, the cat died last night.”
The man’s brother pauses for a minute and then says, “Last night Mom crawled out onto the roof . . . ”
Dear readers: Last night some comics crawled out onto the roof.
This means, I am afraid, that changes are coming to the comics page. (I can think of 400 announcements I would rather make than one about changes on the comics page — including I will not eat solid food for the next two months.)
The last time The Salt Lake Tribune messed with the comics, so much smoke and flame came out of my phone from angry subscribers that I could have cooked hotdogs. So, several months ago when The Tribune ran a reader survey on comics, I started to get nervous and jerky.
In order to remake the comics section into two rather than three pages on a daily basis, three comic strips, a one-panel comic and a games column will be eliminated early next month.
Comics and puzzle fans were offered a chance to let the paper know what strips they read and what word games they worked out. Ratings were gathered on whether readers looked at daily comics “always,” “sometimes” or “never.”
Points were assigned for the frequency, and then each comic was given an overall rating. It’s like voting, folks; if you did not fill out the survey form and mail it in, then you cannot complain about the results.
Some of the strips drew negative ratings numbers. “Judge Parker” scored — 195; “Mary Worth” totaled a — 175 and “Gasoline Alley” a — 2. They are toast as of Nov. 10. (Let the weeping and whining begin.) The one-panel comic that goes is “Dinette Set,” which scored the lowest on the reader survey.
(Am I the only one old enough to wonder how Rex Morgan’s nurse can still look that young when she must be 105 by now?)
A puzzle feature will also disappear: “Aces on Bridge” scored a — 336 in the survey. Bye-bye, bridge. All of the others — including the “Jumble,” “Cryptoquote,” “Astrology,” “Crossword,” the “Asimov Quiz” and “Wuzzles” scored in positive numbers, so keep your pencils sharpened for them.
Comments from readers about the crossword puzzle were interesting. Most folks say the difficulty is just right — something they can get done in the morning before they go to work. “I don’t want a harder crossword! I don’t have forever in the morning,” one reader wrote.
I am grateful it is placed on the corner of a page, something that was difficult to arrange the last time the comic pages were overhauled. Apparently, only those who work crossword puzzles in newspapers understand how puzzlers fold the paper to make the grid manageable. We had it in the middle of the page on the outside — a placement that caused puzzlers to fold the paper like origami before they could have at it.
I know I will hear from comic aficionados about the changes. I am psychically prepared — and I have strapped myself into my desk chair, so I will not be blown over when the gales of protest start.
The Reader Advocate’s phone number is (801) 257-8782. Write to the Reader Advocate, The Salt Lake Tribune, P.O. Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110. E-mail: reader.advocate @sltrib.com.
This week’s stats
29 Number of readers who believe The Tribune should run all U.S. casualties in Iraq on the front page
69 Number of readers who “cannot read the type in stories”
24 Number of readers who are sick of the Smarts and the Jensens
56 Number of readers who think The Tribune crossword is “just right”
