When the comic strip “Boondocks” first disappeared from our Features pages last spring, I got weeks of calls and e-mails asking if we had canceled the strip because it featured African-American characters with often controversial opinions on current events and culture.
Here is a sampling of the more than 400 reader comments I got:
* “Boo hiss to The Tribune for dropping Boondocks! (Unless it’s just temporary?) Sometimes it’s brilliant, sometimes it’s annoying, but it’s an essential part of the big world picture.”
* “Why in the world did you get rid of Boondocks? It was one of the funniest and smartest strips currently being published. Also, the art was, by far, the most unique and beautiful since Calvin and Hobbes. Please bring this strip back.”
* “I was very disappointed not to see Boondocks in this morning’s paper. Boondocks was my favorite strip and what replaced it was not the least bit entertaining. Yes, minivans are practical, but not funny. A 99-year old man trying to pick up girls on Myspace.com is hilarious. Yes, it can be controversial at times, but those who don’t like it don’t have to read it. There is no need to protect the ultra-conservatives from the evil of the world. They can protect themselves.”
I patiently explained that the cartoonist,
Aaron McGruder, was “off to smell the flowers or leap across the meadows – or do what ever cartoonists do when they are searching for inspiration.” He told his syndicate he was planning to take off six months.
Some of you must have marked this on your calendars, because you have been calling lately.
Sit down and get ready to take it; I have bad news.
According to a story this week in Editor & Publisher, McGruder will not be back any time soon:
“Because Aaron McGruder has made no statement about whether he’ll resume or end ‘The Boondocks’ comic strip, Universal Press Syndicate announced [Monday] that newspapers should not count on it coming back in the foreseeable future,” the E&P staff wrote.
“The syndicate made many unsuccessful attempts to get McGruder to name a date that the strip would return, said Universal President Lee Salem. McGruder had begun what would was supposed to be a six-month sabbatical in late March.
“‘It was obvious that Aaron would not be able to meet his original six-month target of returning ‘The Boondocks’ to newspapers,’ Salem said in a statement,” the story explained.
The E&P staff added, “The cartoonist was also spending a lot of time working on ‘The Boondocks’ TV show that runs on the Cartoon Network. It has been renewed for another season.”
I know many of you are disappointed, because you thought you would only have to bide your time for 180 days and the little guys and their grandpa would be back. No such luck. Sorry.
The good news: Some of you who read The Tribune on the Web should be happy, however. When www.sltrib.com was redesigned, habitual readers, like this one, were disappointed: “I commented before about the need for links to articles based on the days of the week when they were published in the hardcopy edition of the Trib. I never received a response but did see the Reader Advocate article a few days after the Web site changes which included this comment, ‘Some online users were confused about finding stories from previous days, but readers can find staff-written stories from the previous 30 days by using key words in the search feature.’ I found this statement to be somewhat dismissive at the time, but decided to let it go and give the site changes a chance.
“Well, [Thursday's] Public Forum is a perfect example of why links are needed to the days of the week. The letter today from Jim Dublinski (What a sham http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci 4400984) references a letter published last Sunday, Sept. 24. Dublinski’s letter does not include any information which would allow me to easily use the search feature to find the letter he is referring to.
“I would like to find this letter to see if it is as egregious as Mr. Dublinski says it is . . .. But alas, without a link to Sunday’s letters, or any valid key words to search by, [the letter] remains a mystery to me.”
This news is going to have you dancing around like the dog, Snoopy, in “Peanuts”: According to Manny Mellor, The Tribune’s online editor, “We have reinstated the past contents pages. Readers can find the link to past content under the News menu in the navigation toolbar at the top of every page, or go to http://www .sltrib.com/contents.”
See, we do listen to and respond to reader suggestions.
