Home > Letters to CR
James C. Langdell On Changes On The Comics Page At The San Francisco Chronicle
posted February 2, 2009

The San Francisco Chronicle introduced a redesign of the daily paper, including some changes to the comics.
Most of the comics had been on a single page, in two columns with four single-panel comics at the bottom. In the new design, comics are part of a two-page spread, with puzzles and some columnists on the outer edges. On each page, the comic strips are slightly wider than half the page, so each strip is printed larger than before (thank you!).
All four of the single-panel comics seem to have disappeared from the paper: Bliss, Brevity, Dennis The Menace, and Mr. Boffo. Of the strips, only the rehashed For Better Or For Worse was dropped. Three new strips have been added: The Knight Life (Keith Knight), Candorville (Darrin Bell), and Tundra (Chad Carpenter). Candorville has been running in the Sunday comics for several months already.
Bizarro has been retained, and moved from elsewhere in the paper to appear among the columns and puzzles on the comics page. It's still smaller than Piraro's artwork deserves. Dilbert remains in the business section, but a recent redesign of that section made the strip's dimensions smaller.
In the two stacks of comic strips, here's what now appears:
LEFT
Doonesbury
The Knight Life
Rhymes With Orange
Sally Forth
Luann
Zitz
Garfield
Sherman's Lagoon
Blondie
Classic Peanuts (three panel version)
RIGHT
Candorville
Tundra
Lio
The Fusco Brothers
Get Fuzzy
Mutts
Non Sequitur
Baby Blues
Pearls Before Swine
The Elderberries