A few million trusting readers will open their Sunday comics today, expecting entertainment, but some may get an unwelcome shock if they read Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury.
Trudeau builds his Sunday strip around research results suggesting that masturbation can lower the likelihood of prostate cancer. As one character puts it, “self-dating prevents cancer.”
The work doesn’t appear in the Star-Telegram’s Sunday Comics or in those of many other mainstream newspapers. Readers with Internet access can find the strip posted on the Web (www.doonesbury.com).
Some newspapers will risk running the strip, but we saw no redeeming value in testing local society’s tolerance for droll humor about a personal matter that people generally treat discreetly.
Granted, there was a bit of news value involved, but not enough to justify deeply offending many of our Sunday readers.
We opted for a replacement strip that Universal Press Syndicate offered to the nearly 1,400 daily and Sunday newspapers that carry Doonesbury.
Extreme comics open a huge can of conflict for those editors who are torn over whether to publish such material because they don’t want to offend readers unnecessarily.
For instance, while considering how to handle the situation, we who treasure openness are fearful of sinking too deeply into censorship. We who insist on respecting readers’ right to know, and their right to decide about appropriateness, are faced with blocking their access to information.
Some editors don’t wrestle with extreme comics. They simply don’t censor comic strips, they say. But that doesn’t mean they work free of censorship.
In deciding content, journalists practice various degrees of censorship every day. It’s called editing. And there are editors who won’t touch certain subjects and developments.
If that weren’t happening, however, newspapers could end up carrying all manner of libelous, slanderous, repugnant, depraved content. Resulting lawsuits and reader/advertiser revolt could ruin a paper.
But professional news organizations, already working to overcome historically low credibility ratings, would not allow that to happen. They expect content to meet certain standards. Why shouldn’t those standards apply to comic strips?
If a paper gambles reader trust on Trudeau and his masturbation idea, why wouldn’t the issue be worth more than a sly joke back there in the comics?
Supplemental coverage about M-issues probably would be too much of a reach. In real life, exploration of life’s edges can yield intriguing content, but the outer limits of reader tolerance are treacherous places.
Speaking of outer limits conjures memories of the most famous comic panel in the history of the universe: Gary Larson’s The Far Side, a cartoon that revolutionized comics humor and captivated an international readership in more than 1,900 daily and Sunday newspapers.
After a 14-year run that began in January 1980, a burned-out Larson retired nearly nine years ago to worldwide dismay and undying adulation.
But Universal Press Syndicate has announced that The Far Side will return for a limited run, Sept. 28-Dec. 28 — in newspapers only, not the Internet or magazines.
It’s part of an elaborate marketing plan for The Complete Far Side, a deluxe, two-volume slipcased collection of every Far Side cartoon ever syndicated.
The set, three years in the making and published by UPS sister company Andrews McMeel Publishing, goes on sale at bookstores on Oct. 21.
The Star-Telegram will carry The Far Side daily and Sunday on the front page of its Classifieds section.
Yes, Larson’s work offended some readers (dogs playing tethercat, bug-eyed fat kids doing stupid things, buzzards wearing a dead cowboy’s gear). But it was clear that his mission was simply to have fun.
The world has thanked him, UPS notes, with more than 100 million purchases of his books and calendars in 17 languages.
There’s nothing offensive about the M-word for Larson — masterful.
