Re: Why are second-tier comics so bad?

Beefies wrote:

> Without arguing the merits or demerits of the particular strips you mention,
> I think your premise is flawed. The types of strips you cite aren't "waiting
> in the wings" or a farm league. Hugely popular strips seldom emerge from the
> vast sludge of second-tier strips that have been percolating along with a
> few papers for five or ten years, just waiting for someone else to retire or
> die so they can take his/her place.
(. . . )
> The most recent example I can think of is "Zits." It
> didn't languish in obscurity for years, nor did its success depend on some
> other successful strip getting out of its way. It succeeded because
> newspaper editors thought it was better than something else (probably a
> second-tier strip) on their comics page.

OK, I actually don't disagree with this, but isn't the implication that
a really good new strip could quickly and easily find a significant
portion of the market, despite the constant presence of the perennials?
And doesn't that form a counter-argument to the claim that the dead
old-timers should move aside to make room for the new young guns?

Really, this last couple of weeks since I went whole-hog on my Chron
page (indcluding adding Pearls Before Swine, heh) has been an
eye-opener for me. Perhaps it's unlikely that a farm-league strip will
emerge as a new hit, but I'd like to think that there is enough talent
out there that it wouldn't be necessary to fill the gaps between the
big dogs with, well, just dogs.

Even calling these "second-tier" as I did might be off-base, as one
thing that I have taken away from my experiment is a new appreciation
for the Drabbles, Grimmys, and Boffos: generally unassuming but solid
strips that don't sell paperback collections but manage to be worth
looking at day-in, day-out.

JGM

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