January 9, 2023
For the past handful of years, the hardreading staff has diligently chronicled the Boston Globe’s chuckleheaded handling of its comics pages. Beset by a chronic case of schlimmbesserung (making something worse by trying to make it better), the Globeniks are forever replacing decent strips with inferior ones.
Representative reaction from us after a 2019 Globe reader survey led to wholesale changes in the comics lineup: “Seriously? Rose Is Rose instead of Get Fuzzy? Adam @ Home instead of Zippy? We’re sorry to say this, but Globe readers are idiots.”
Not to mention Globe editors.
On January 2 the Globe unceremoniously kicked Mother Goose and Grimm to the curb via this microscopic notice (actual size).
(To be sure graf goes here)
To be sure, no one has ever confused Mother Goose and Grimm with Calvin and Hobbes or The Boondocks, but Ma and Grimmy are like cartoon comfort food, which is more than you can say about Pardon My Planet, judging from its maiden voyage in the Globe on New Year’s Day.
Pardon my plaint, but that’s just not funny. More like grim.
UPDATE: Splendid reader Mark has informed the hardreading staff that “[a]pparently you’re not the only one who missed it. Mother Goose was back as of today.”
Indeed she was, complete with another microscopic notice.
Universal Hub’s redoubtable Adam Gaffin also weighed in.
Grimm situation at the Globe resolved
By
adamg on
Mon, 01/09/2023 – 8:36pm
John Carroll reports he could not believe his eyes the other day when the Globe replaced “Mother Goose and Grimm” with one of those depressing strips about 20somethings being depressing.
The Globe’s Kevin Slane, though, reports the venerable strip is back today.
All’s well that ends well, yeah? Let’s hope the Globe editors stop all their strip teasing for a good long while.
2 Comments | 
Uncategorized | Tagged: Adam @ Home, Adam Gaffin, Boston Globe, Calvin and Hobbes, comics pages, Get Fuzzy, Kevin Slane, Mother Goose and Grimm, Pardon My Planet, Rose Is Rose, schlimmbesserung, strip-mining, The Boondocks, Universal Hub, Zippy | 
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Posted by Campaign Outsider
February 6, 2019
The Great Comic Strip Follies at the Boston Globe continued yesterday. As the hardreading staff previously noted, right before Christmas the cheapskately local broadsheet announced that it had “discontinued several strips and two puzzles” from its daily editions.
By “several strips,” of course, they meant 11.
Two weeks later, the Globe moonwalked from its comic strip mining.
And yesterday the results were in, as we learned from this editor’s note.
They gotta be nuts graf:
Seriously? Rose Is Rose instead of Get Fuzzy? Adam @ Home instead of Zippy? We’re sorry to say this, but Globe readers are idiots.
(Then again, restoring the Jumble is a good call. The old man used to toss it on the breakfast table to see who could be first to solve it without any writing implements. It was good clean American fun.)
Regardless, the Great Globe Comic Strip Tease is now officially over.
Badly done, Globeniks. Very badly done.
3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Adam @ Home, Arctic Circle, Arlo & Janis, Bizarro, Bliss, Boston Globe, cheapskately local broadsheet, comic strip mining, comic strip tease, Curtis, DNA correction, DNA test, Dustin, Elizabeth Warren, For Better Or For Worse, Get Fuzzy, Great Comic Strop Follies, Jumpstart, Mother Goose & Grimm, Mr. Boffo, Pinheads, Pooch Cafe, Red & Rover, Rose Is Rose, The Pajama Diaries, Zits | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
January 7, 2019
As the hardreading staff noted at the time, last month the Boston Globe announced that the cheapskately local broadsheet had “discontinued several [comics] strips and two games.”
By “several,” of course, they meant 11.
(The Globe’s math skills leave much to be desired, as we discovered when the paper played DNA newsletter for Elizabeth Warren last year.)
Regardless, that relegated the comics to a single anemic page.
Cut to today’s edition of the Globe, where the editor moonwalks on his strip mining of the comics pages.
We’ve already indicated our choices: Zippy, Get Fuzzy, Mother Goose & Grimm, Bliss, and Bizarro.
Make sure to weigh in on yours as well.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: Adam @ Home, Arctic Circle, Arlo & Janis, Bizarro, Bliss, Boston Globe, cheapskately local broadsheet, Curtis, DNA correction, DNA test, Dustin, Elizabeth Warren, For Better Or For Worse, Get Fuzzy, Jumpstart, Mother Goose & Grimm, Mr. Boffo, Pinheads, Pooch Cafe, Red & Rover, Rose Is Rose, The Pajama Diaries, Zits | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
December 24, 2018
Are we having none yet?
The powers that be at the Boston Globe have continued their assault on the comics pages, as this note in today’s edition indicates.
Before:
After:
Let’s call the roll of the “several” strips that have been dumped. First, the good ones: Zippy (second time the Globe Pinheads have dropped him), Get Fuzzy, Mother Goose & Grimm, Bizarro, Bliss.
Then the no-great-loss ones – Rose Is Rose, Jumpstart, Pooch Cafe, Adam @ Home, Dustin, Mr. Boffo.
That would be 11 dropped comics if you’re keeping score at home.
Worse yet, consider some of the dogs they’ve kept: Red & Rover, Zits, Arctic Circle, The Pajama Diaries, For Better Or For Worse, Curtis, Arlo & Janis – all mind-numbingly either a) stupid, or b) unfunny.
Of course, the stately local broadsheet doesn’t care what old fogeys like the hardreading staff think. It’s too busy chasing the millennial crowd that it will likely never get.
But as Don Seiffert reported last week at the Boston Business Journal, “[a]s of Sept. 30, the paper had 109,409 weekday subscribers and 190,787 Sunday-only subscribers — down year-over-year by 11 percent and 13 percent respectively.”
And that, of course, is no joke.
3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Adam @ Home, Arctic Circle, Arlo & Janis, Bizarro, Bliss, Boston Business Journal, Boston Globe, Curtis, Don Seiffert, Dustin, For Better Or For Worse, Get Fuzzy, Jumpstart, Mother Goose & Grimm, Mr. Boffo, Pinheads, Pooch Cafe, Red & Rover, Rose Is Rose, The Pajama Diaries, Zits | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
October 11, 2021
First, a disclaimer: The hardreading staff believes that the new Texas vigilante abortion law is an abomination, given that it essentially outlaws abortions in the One Star State.
Accent on essentially, since the bounty-hunting law technically bans abortions after six weeks.
But that’s not what the Boston Globe allowed Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau to charge in its Sunday comics page.
Here’s the problematic panel.
That’s flat out false.
If the left wants to hold the right accountable for misleading – or lying – to the voting public, the reverse has got to be true as well.
Not to mention Trudeau.
3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Boston Globe, Doonesbury, Garry Trudeau, One Star State, Texas abortion law | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
February 22, 2019
As the hardreading staff has diligently chronicled, the Boston Globe joined dozens of other newspapers in dumping Non Sequitur for inviting Donald Trump to do something anatomically impossible in its comic strip last week.
In yesterday’s Boston Herald comics page, Pearls Before Swine offered this commentary.
Beyond that, Two Daily Town has received several protests to the Globe’s defenestration of Non Sequitur.
Draw, as it were, your own conclusions.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: Adam @ Home, Bearaissance, Bizarro, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Butler (PA) Eagle, comics pages, Donald Trump, Get Fuzzy, Half Full, Leonard Bear-Vinci, MN, Mother Goose & Grimm, Non Sequitur, Orlando Sentinel, Pearls Before Swine, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Rose Is Rose, the Columbus Dispatch, The Daily Cartoonist, the Post Bulletin of Rochester, the Post-Standard of Syracuse, the Sun Sentinel of South Florida, Wiley Miller, Zippy the Pinhead | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
February 14, 2019
As the hardreading staff has previously noted, the Boston Globe had no immediate reaction to last Sunday’s Non Sequitur comic, which contained what was widely described as a “profane and vulgar” message to Donald Trump inviting him to do something, well, anatomically impossible.
All week newspapers have been busy dropping the strip (The Daily Cartoonist stopped counting at 45), and today the Globe followed suit with this Page 2 editor’s note.
So, instead of this on today’s comics pages . . .
Globe readers got this.
If Non Sequitur had to go (which, in truth, it didn’t), Zippy the Pinhead is an excellent replacement.
(To be sure graf goes here)
To be sure, there were a couple of protests on Twitter.
But that’s pretty much all the blowback we saw.
According to the editor’s note, the Sunday Globe will continue to stiff Zippy, opting instead for Half Full, which is, to be fair, half funny.
Hey – six out of seven Zippys ain’t bad.
11 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Adam @ Home, Bearaissance, Bizarro, Boston Globe, Butler (PA) Eagle, comics pages, Donald Trump, Get Fuzzy, Half Full, Leonard Bear-Vinci, MN, Mother Goose & Grimm, Non Sequitur, Orlando Sentinel, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Rose Is Rose, the Columbus Dispatch, The Daily Cartoonist, the Post Bulletin of Rochester, the Post-Standard of Syracuse, the Sun Sentinel of South Florida, Wiley Miller, Zippy the Pinhead | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
February 12, 2019
As the hardreading staff noted yesterday, the strip has hit the fan over Wiley Miller’s Non Sequitur comic on Sunday, which featured this smash note for Donald Trump (it’s now been erased from the web version).
That caused a number of papers to drop the strip, including the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Butler (PA) Eagle, Orlando Sentinel, the Sun Sentinel of South Florida, the Post Bulletin of Rochester, MN, the Post-Standard of Syracuse, the Columbus Dispatch, and . . . well, tally them yourself here.
But not, as yet, the Boston Globe.
So we tweeted this a couple of hours ago to Globe editor Brian McGrory.
So far, no reply.
All this mishegas coincides with yesterday’s launch of the expanded Globe comics pages, which now look like this.
As it happens, the four restored comics – Mother Goose & Grimm, Bizarro, Rose Is Rose, and Adam @ Home – share the kiddie table on the right with Non Sequitur.
Memo to Globe readers who voted for Rose Is Rose and Adam@Home: Here’s what you brought back to the party.
When you could’ve had this . . .
. . . and this.
As Indiana Jones might say, you chose poorly.
3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Adam @ Home, Bearaissance, Bizarro, Boston Globe, Butler (PA) Eagle, comics pages, Donald Trump, Get Fuzzy, Leonard Bear-Vinci, MN, Mother Goose & Grimm, Non Sequitur, Orlando Sentinel, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Rose Is Rose, the Columbus Dispatch, the Post Bulletin of Rochester, the Post-Standard of Syracuse, the Sun Sentinel of South Florida, Wiley Miller, Zippy the Pinhead | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
February 11, 2019
Well the strip has really hit the fan over Wiley Miller’s Non Sequitur comic on Sunday, and the Boston Globe is in it up to its eyeballs.
Yesterday’s Non Sequitur depicted this color-it-in “Bearaissance” with Leonardo Bear-Vinci. (Image from Globe e-paper.)
Problem is, tucked into the middle of the strip was this exhortation to Donald Trump.
As we write this, two newspapers – the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Butler Eagle – have dropped the strip, and the Twitterverse is relatively calm. We doubt it will remain that way.
And we look forward to the Globe’s reaction to the rumpus. Feels like a lose-lose, no?
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: Bearaissance, Boston Globe, Butler Eagle, Columbus Dispatch, comics pages, Donald Trump, Leonard Bear-Vinci, Non Sequitur, Wiley Miller | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
December 5, 2016
As the hardreading staff painstakingly chronicled, the Boston Globe dropped Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead comic strip last August. At the time of the Zipectomy, we had this to say about the management at the stately local broadsheet:
Boston Globe editor Brian (Hey – let’s reimagine the paper! We can use John Henry’s garage!) McGrory has now become a first-ballot entry into the Comic Strip Hall of Shame.
Well, we officially take that back, because Zippy himself is back. McGrory’s media culpa appears on page 2 of today’s Globe.
From our Before ‘n’ After desk, here are Saturday’s comics pages.
And here are today’s.
And the triumphant return of Zippy.
We’d like to think we had something to do with the Globe’s coming to its senses, but we doubt that’s the case. Still, live and let learn, that’s our slogan.
9 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Bill Griffith, Boston Globe, Brian McGrory, Comic Strip Hall of Shame, John Henry, media culpa, Zipectomy, Zippy the Pinhead | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider
(To be sure graf goes here)
It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town 