LAT Redesign Draws Comics Fans’ Ire; Sylvia Was Among Tribune Cuts

A couple of people have e-mailed me this page of complaints from LA Times readers about a recent re-design's impact upon the comics page. Like many newspapers, the Times has gone smaller in its overall size or in the size of its comics section, but in doing so didn't swap out any comics, or at least not enough comics that they don't subsequently appear to be pretty darn small.

It's worth noting that the Chicago Tribune responded to similar complaints by dropping a half-dozen strips and increasing the size of those that remain. Two of those strips were Lio and Get Fuzzy, which are popular, modern strips and I have to admit are the ones that caught my initial attention when the list came out. But taking a second look one of the strips to be cut February 8 is Nicole Hollander's Sylvia, which is another story altogether. Sylvia is one of those strips about which I think it's safe to suggest basically needs its flagship appearance -- in the Tribune -- to remain viable as a syndicate project. It's also a Tribune Media Services strip, which basically indicates an act of no-confidence on the syndicate's part by putting it on the Tribune chopping block. While it's not the mini-sensation it was in the immediate post-Cathy world, Sylvia remains one of the two or three strips --the others being even older offerings, like the sports pages' Gil Thorp -- that distinguish the newspaper's overall comics offerings. Hollander is exhorting her fans to write in and maybe save the strip from the chopping block, as described in the graphic above and in this article in the Chicago Reader. I'm going to see if I can sneak in a vote of support somehow. I don't read the Tribune anymore, but Sylvia heading to the dustbin of history potentially would be like losing a neighbor.
 
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