The local newspaper the Plain Dealer has quite a few daily and Sunday strips but their policies puzzle me. Most strips run seven days a week. But one strip called Baby Blues appears only on Sundays and not weekdays but another strip Judge Parker appears on weekdays and not on Sundays. I cannot fathom the reason for this. Surely it would makes sense to pick either Judge Parker or Baby Blues to run seven days a week and drop the other? This would not require more space on the comic pages.
Baby Blues is a humorous strip with no continuity so each Sunday can be read without having the context of the previous week’s strips, but Judge Parker is a soap opera and by not having the Sunday strip, readers who follow it might be puzzled by Monday’s content. And unlike another soap opera strip Mary Worth where nothing seems to happen for days and even weeks on end, and Sunday often consist of a rehash of the previous week’s story, Judge Parker stories tend to move at a fairly decent clip and Sundays have new material. If they put in the Sunday clip of Judge Parker and removed Mary Worth, that would also make more sense and also would not require more space.
Of course in these days where all the comics are online, this really does not matter. But I am still puzzled by the reasoning of the comics page editor for this strange practice.
I really gotta stop trying to make sense of weighty issues like newspaper comics page editorial policies and spend more time on light-hearted trivialities like proofs of gods’ existence.
I remember reading (I think on arloandjanis.com, the blog of the comic artist of the “Arlo and Janis” comic strip) that Sunday comics are sold to newspapers separately from the rest of the week. It makes a bit of sense since Sunday comics are usually in a larger format so a newspaper needs to have a different layout for Sunday than on other days and may have to drop or add some comics.
Many artists will purposely treat Sunday comics as extra, or supplemental. If the comic tells a continuous story, then Sunday is either a break from the story, a summary of the past week, or a small disposable part of the story that often can be skipped.
Another thing about Sunday comics: since they are extra large and usually take up 3 rows, many newspapers will choose to omit the top row of panels to save space. Because of this, most artists will use the top row as disposable. Calvin and Hobbes usually had a separate, but related joke in the first row. Spiderman would cycle through the main parts of Spidey’s backstory on the top row. Many other artists will just have a huge title for the first row that can easily be thrown out.
Oooh: one more Sunday/weekday difference! Weekday comics were traditionally in black and white and only Sunday comics would be in color. However, many newspapers started coloring the weekday comics themselves which sometimes lead to different hair colors and inconsistencies with what you would see in Sundays strip. I think nowadays more artists are just coloring every days strip.
Are comments broken? I left a long comment… it didn’t appear. I left it again, it said I’m double posting. Its 5 hrs later and still no comment…
Ok.. let me try again then:
I read (i think on arloandjanis.com) that Sunday and weekday comics are sold to newspapers as separate packages. This makes some sense since Sunday comics are larger so newspapers need to deal with a different layout. So they may want to drop or add different comics.
Usually the artists make Sundays comics disposable. If theres a continuous story, it either pauses and Sunday is unrelated, or Sunday is a summary, or Sunday is part of the storyline but one where nothing crucial happens.
Another similar thing happens with the Sunday comic itself: usually they are 3 rows tall, but newspapers who want to save space will omit the first row. So artist make the first row of Sunday comics disposable too. Some artists (like Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes) will draw a separate, sometimes related, joke in the first row. Spiderman used to just put a recap of how Spidey got his powers. Other artists just do a big decorative title in the first row.
Ok.. let me try again then:
I read (i think on arloandjanis dot com*) that Sunday and weekday comics are sold to newspapers as separate packages. This makes some sense since Sunday comics are larger so newspapers need to deal with a different layout. So they may want to drop or add different comics.
Usually the artists make Sundays comics disposable. If theres a continuous story, it either pauses and Sunday is unrelated, or Sunday is a summary, or Sunday is part of the storyline but one where nothing crucial happens.
Another similar thing happens with the Sunday comic itself: usually they are 3 rows tall, but newspapers who want to save space will omit the first row. So artist make the first row of Sunday comics disposable too. Some artists (like Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes) will draw a separate, sometimes related, joke in the first row. Spiderman used to just put a recap of how Spidey got his powers. Other artists just do a big decorative title in the first row.
*perhaps including a website blocks my posts? If this comment posts, then that was it.
And again no comment.. maybe its too long?
Nice trolling Mano. 🙂
The purpose of Metaphysics is to give an overarching understanding on the world, which gives physics primacy, because physics gets closest to the road, so to speak, of the sciences. When your metaphysic takes Aristotelian physics and it’s notions of causation to be accurate, and then tries to contain modern scientific notions, something really is astray. But those poor Thomists* like Feser have to follow Aquinas, because a pope decreed ex-cathedra that his philosophy, specificially metaphysical, was correct, and to be true explanations of how the universe is. To be fair a lot of modern philosophers assume a notion of science that could best be described as Newtonian (Euclidian space, no QM), or classical when propounding a Metaphysic, so there’s a lot of it going around.
This comment might attract scrutiny from those poor benighted Feserists. 😉
By the way, here’s a relatively recent book that fashions a metaphysical explanation that isn’t Aristotelian or Newtonian in conception, if that interests you:https://www.amazon.com/Every-Thing-Must-Metaphysics-Naturalized/dp/0199573093.
I can’t vouch for the scientific accuracy, as I’m still working through Susskind’s lectures on QM.
*Thomist from the first name of Aquinas in English (Thomas Aquinas).
Overlapping Magisterial @#1,2,3,4,5
For some reason, your comments went straight to the spam folder and I had to rescue them from there. I rescued them all, despite the repetition, because I did not want the algorithm to use the fact that one of your comments was in spam to send any future ones there too.
It’s been a while since I checked out the spam folder. It has a lot of weird stuff.
Thanks Mano. Now with 5 posts, I feel like I am spamming you!
The PD in its entirety has puzzled me for many, many years. As to Mary Worth, nothing may happen in that strip for decades on end. I would be interested in a synopsis of plot development since 1970, which may just fit into one sentence.