Saturday, June 19, 2010

World's Smallest Comic Strip

I am in search of the World's Smallest Comic Strip published in a newspaper. I'm starting things off with the Greenville Journal. This Non Sequitur strip by Wiley Miller is 2 3/8" (6 cm) by 2 7/16" (6.2 cm). If it were in strip format, it would be 1 3/16" (3.1 cm) high by 4 3/4" (12 cm) wide.

If you know of a smaller one, please aid me in my quest and email me: spoonercomics-at-gmail-dot-com.


D.D. Degg passed this along:

The Modesto (CA) Bee prints The Family Circus as a one column panel on a six column-wide classifieds page. It measures 1 17/32" (3.9 cm) wide x 1 25/32" (4.6 cm) high. 

The same paper prints the Classic Peanuts (1963 version) measuring barely over an inch high and a hair over 5" wide.

Jan Eliot (Stone Soup) and Gary Trudeau (Doonesbury) have commented on the shrinking of newspaper comics:








Some reader comments from The Washington Post's Comic Riffs' question of whether the small size of comics deters folks from reading them:

With this last round of shrinkage on the WaPo comics pages, I have now been forced to give up my life-long habit of enjoying the funnies at the breakfast table, 

The comics are getting smaller?????? That's a relief. I thought I was going blind.

When Get Fuzzy is that small, I skip it because to much type in to small a space...very true of The San Antonio Express-News.

Yes, the comics in the Post, with the exception of Doonesbury, are now too small to enjoy.

Certainly the comics are too small. It does make me skip some and I had long been a reader of every strip on any comics page I've seen, even serials that I might only see while traveling and getting a paper that I don't regularly read.

It's important to note that being able to "read" a comic strip is not just about the words. If you look at today's Zits, in the 4 7/8 inch size now becoming common, you cannot "read" the art.

If I say "yes," will they change it?

* * * * * 
For what it's worth, I don't believe we're hearing the Death Knell of the newspaper comic strip. I think they'll be around till the end of time. What I do believe is that comic strips are being stifled and not allowed to do what they do best: Help sell newspapers.

1 comment:

  1. I know it's not a newspaper comic, but I instantly thought of Longshot comics, where all the characters are just dots on the page:
    http://comicsworthreading.com/2006/10/01/longshot-comics/

    Someday, this is what Newspaper comics will look like.

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