Editing Comic strip (section)

==Issues in U.S. newspaper comic strips==
[[Decline of newspapers|As newspapers have declined]], the changes have affected comic strips.  Jeff Reece, lifestyle editor of ''[[The Florida Times-Union]]'', wrote, "Comics are sort of the '[[Third rail (metaphor)|third rail]]' of the newspaper."<ref name="eandp">{{cite magazine | url=http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003973207 | title=Comics-Page Changes Can Come at a Price | magazine=[[Editor & Publisher]] | date=May 14, 2009 | first=Shawn | last=Moynihan | access-date=2009-05-15 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090516174406/http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003973207 | archive-date=May 16, 2009 }}</ref>

===Size===

In the early decades of the 20th century, all [[Sunday comic]]s received a full page, and daily strips were generally the width of the page. The competition between papers for having more cartoons than the rest from the mid-1920s, the growth of large-scale newspaper advertising during most of the thirties, paper [[rationing]] during [[World War II]], the decline on news readership (as television newscasts began to be more common) and [[inflation]] (which has caused higher printing costs) beginning during the fifties and sixties led to Sunday strips being published on smaller and more diverse formats. As newspapers have reduced the page count of Sunday comic sections since the late 1990s (by the 2010s, most sections have only four pages, with the back page not always being destined for comics) has also led to further downsizes.

Daily strips have suffered as well. Before the mid-1910s, there was not a "standard" size", with strips running the entire width of a page or having more than one tier. By the 1920s, strips often covered six of the eight columns occupied by a traditional broadsheet paper. During the 1940s, strips were reduced to four columns wide (with a "transition" width of five columns). As newspapers became narrower beginning in the 1970s, strips have gotten even smaller, often being just three columns wide, a similar width to the one most daily panels occupied before the 1940s.

In an issue related to size limitations, Sunday comics are often bound to rigid [[Comic strip formats|formats]] that allow their panels to be rearranged in several different ways while remaining readable. Such formats usually include throwaway panels at the beginning, which some newspapers will omit for space. As a result, cartoonists have less incentive to put great efforts into these panels. ''[[Garfield]]'' and ''[[Mutts (comic strip)|Mutts]]'' were known during the mid-to-late 80s and 1990s respectively for their throwaways on their Sunday strips, however both strips now run "generic" title panels.

Some cartoonists have complained about this, with Walt Kelly, creator of ''[[Pogo (comic strip)|Pogo]],'' openly voicing his discontent about being forced to draw his Sunday strips in such rigid formats from the beginning. Kelly's heirs opted to end the strip in 1975 as a form of protest against the practice. Since then, ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' creator [[Bill Watterson]] has written extensively on the issue, arguing that size reduction and dropped panels reduce both the potential and freedom of a cartoonist. After a lengthy battle with his syndicate, Watterson won the privilege of making half page-sized Sunday strips where he could arrange the panels any way he liked. Many newspaper publishers and a few cartoonists objected to this, and some papers continued to print ''Calvin and Hobbes'' at small sizes. [[Opus (comic strip)|''Opus'']] won that same privilege years after ''Calvin and Hobbes'' ended, while [[Wiley Miller]] circumvented further downsizes by making his ''[[Non Sequitur (comic strip)|Non Sequitur]]'' Sunday strip available only in a vertical arrangement. Most strips created since 1990, however, are drawn in the unbroken "third-page" format. Few newspapers still run half-page strips, as with ''[[Prince Valiant]]'' and ''[[Hägar the Horrible]]'' in the front page of the ''[[Reading Eagle]]'' Sunday comics section until the mid-2010s.

===Format===
<!-- Deleted image removed: [[File:Stripslatimes42259.jpg|right|thumb|upright=1.35|A typical 1950s layout of [[daily strip|daily newspaper comic strips]] is seen in this page from the ''Los Angeles Times'' (April 22, 1959). To see such full size, go to [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2009/04/matt-weinstock-april-22-1959.html The Daily Mirror].]] -->With the success of ''[[The Gumps]]'' during the 1920s, it became commonplace for strips (comedy- and adventure-laden alike) to have lengthy stories spanning weeks or months. The "Monarch of Medioka" story in [[Floyd Gottfredson]]'s [[Mickey Mouse (comic strip)|''Mickey Mouse'' comic strip]] ran from September 8, 1937, to May 2, 1938. Between the 1960s and the late 1980s, as [[television news]] relegated newspaper reading to an occasional basis rather than daily, syndicators were abandoning long stories and urging cartoonists to switch to simple daily gags, or week-long "storylines" (with six consecutive (mostly unrelated) strips following a same subject), with longer storylines being used mainly on adventure-based and dramatic strips. Strips begun during the mid-1980s or after (such as  ''[[Get Fuzzy]]'', ''[[Over the Hedge]]'', ''[[Monty (comic strip)|Monty]]'', and others) are known for their heavy use of storylines, lasting between one and three weeks in most cases.

The writing style of comic strips changed as well after World War II. With an increase in the number of college-educated readers, there was a shift away from slapstick comedy and towards more cerebral humor. Slapstick and visual gags became more confined to Sunday strips, because as ''Garfield'' creator [[Jim Davis (cartoonist)|Jim Davis]] put it, "Children are more likely to read Sunday strips than dailies."

===Second author===
Many older strips are no longer drawn by the original cartoonist, who has either died or retired.  Such strips are known as "[[zombie strip]]s". A cartoonist, paid by the syndicate or sometimes a relative of the original cartoonist, continues writing the strip, a tradition that became commonplace in the early half of the 20th century. ''[[Hägar the Horrible]]'' and ''[[Frank and Ernest (comic strip)|Frank and Ernest]]'' are both drawn by the sons of the creators. Some strips which are still in affiliation with the original creator are produced by small teams or entire companies, such as Jim Davis' ''Garfield'', however there is some debate if these strips fall in this category.

This act is commonly criticized by modern cartoonists including Watterson and ''Pearls Before Swine'''s [[Stephan Pastis]]. The issue was addressed in six consecutive ''Pearls'' strips in 2005.<ref>[http://comics.com/pearls_before_swine/?DateAfter=2005-09-19&DateBefore=2009-12-18&Order=d.DateStrip+ASC&PerPage=10&x=36&y=15&Search=blondie ''Pearls Before Swine''] at Comics.com</ref> [[Charles Schulz]], of ''[[Peanuts]]'' fame, requested that his strip not be continued by another cartoonist after his death. He also rejected the idea of hiring an inker or letterer, comparing it to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts. Schulz's family has honored his wishes and refused numerous proposals by syndicators to continue ''Peanuts'' with a new author.

====Assistants====
Since the consolidation of newspaper comics by the first quarter of the 20th century, most cartoonists have used a group of assistants (with usually one of them credited). However, quite a few cartoonists (e.g.: [[George Herriman]] and Charles Schulz, among others) have done their strips almost completely by themselves; often criticizing the use of assistants for the same reasons most have about their editors hiring anyone else to continue their work after their retirement.

===Rights to the strips===
Historically, syndicates [[Creator ownership in comics|owned the creators' work]], enabling them to continue publishing the strip after the original creator retired, left the strip, or died. This practice led to the term "legacy strips", or more pejoratively "[[zombie strip]]s". Most syndicates signed creators to 10- or even 20-year contracts. (There have been exceptions, however, such as [[Bud Fisher]]'s ''[[Mutt and Jeff]]'' being an early—if not the earliest—case in which the creator retained ownership of his work.) Both these practices began to change with the 1970 debut of [[Universal Press Syndicate]], as the company gave cartoonists a 50-percent ownership share of their work. [[Creators Syndicate]], founded in 1987, granted artists full rights to the strips,<ref name="Superhero">{{cite news |page=34 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=June 14, 1987 |title=A Superhero For Cartoonists?|author=Katina Alexander |access-date=August 18, 2012|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/14/business/a-superhero-for-cartoonists.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm}}</ref> something that Universal Press did in 1990, followed by [[King Features]] in 1995. By 1999 both [[Tribune Media Services]] and [[United Feature]] had begun granting ownership rights to creators (limited to new and/or hugely popular strips).{{citation needed|date=December 2017}}

===Censorship===
Starting in the late 1940s, the national syndicates which distributed newspaper comic strips subjected them to very strict censorship. ''[[Li'l Abner]]'' was censored in September 1947 and was pulled from the [[Pittsburgh Press]] by [[E.W. Scripps Company|Scripps-Howard.]] The controversy, as reported in ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', centered on Capp's portrayal of the [[U.S. Senate]]. Said Edward Leech of Scripps, "We don't think it is good editing or sound citizenship to picture the Senate as an assemblage of freaks and crooks... boobs and undesirables."<ref>{{cite magazine | url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,804275,00.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071023081224/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,804275,00.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=October 23, 2007 | title=Tain't Funny | magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] | date=September 29, 1947 | access-date=2009-05-15}}</ref>

As comics are easier for children to access compared to other types of media, they have a significantly more rigid censorship code than other media. Stephan Pastis has lamented that the "unwritten" censorship code is still "stuck somewhere in the 1950s". Generally, comics are not allowed to include such words as "damn", "sucks", "screwed", and "hell", although there have been exceptions such as the September 22, 2010 ''[[Mother Goose and Grimm]]'' in which an elderly man says, "This nursing home food sucks," and a pair of ''Pearls Before Swine'' comics from January 11, 2011, with a character named Ned using the word "crappy".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.grimmy.com/comics.php |title=Mother Goose and Grimm/Mike Peters Website |publisher=Grimmy.com |date=1994-01-01 |access-date=2012-12-27}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://comics.com/pearls_before_swine/2011-01-10/ |title=Pearls Before Swine Comic Strip, January 10, 2011 on GoComics.com |publisher=Comics.com |date=2011-01-10 |access-date=2012-12-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110115200207/http://comics.com/pearls_before_swine/2011-01-10/ |archive-date=January 15, 2011 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://comics.com/pearls_before_swine/2011-01-11/ |title=Pearls Before Swine Comic Strip, January 11, 2011 on GoComics.com |publisher=Comics.com |date=2011-01-11 |access-date=2012-12-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110124191330/http://comics.com/pearls_before_swine/2011-01-11/ |archive-date=January 24, 2011 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }}</ref> Naked backsides and shooting guns cannot be shown, according to ''[[Dilbert]]'' cartoonist [[Scott Adams]].{{sfn|Adams|2007}} Such comic strip taboos were detailed in [[Dave Breger]]'s book ''But That's Unprintable'' (Bantam, 1955).

Many issues such as [[sex]], [[narcotics]], and [[terrorism]] cannot or can very rarely be openly discussed in strips, although there are exceptions, usually for [[satire]], as in ''Bloom County''. This led some cartoonists to resort to [[double entendre]] or dialogue children do not understand, as in [[Greg Evans (cartoonist)|Greg Evans]]' ''[[Luann (comic strip)|Luann]]''. Another example of wordplay to get around censorship is a July 27, 2016 [[Pearls Before Swine (comics)|Pearls Before Swine]] strip that features Pig talking to his sister, and says the phrase "I SIS!" repeatedly after correcting his sister's grammar. The strip then cuts to a scene of a NSA wiretap agent, following a scene of Pig being arrested by the FBI saying "Never correct your sister's grammar", implying that the CIA mistook the phrase "I SIS" with "[[ISIS]]".{{Citation needed|date=April 2021}} Younger cartoonists have claimed commonplace words, images, and issues should be allowed in the comics, considering that the pressure on "clean" humor has been a chief factor for the declining popularity of comic strips since the 1990s (Aaron McGruder, creator of ''[[The Boondocks (comic strip)|The Boondocks]]'', decided to end his strip partly because of censorship issues, while the ''[[Popeye]]'' daily comic strip ended in 1994 after newspapers objected to a storyline they considered to be a satire on abortion). Some of the taboo words and topics are mentioned daily on television and other forms of visual media. Webcomics and comics distributed primarily to college newspapers are much freer in this respect.