Are Rival Syndicate Reps Telling 'Half-Truths' About the Future of 'For Better or For Worse'?

By: Dave Astor Are some syndicate salespeople -- in the hopes that newspapers will buy comics from their syndicates to replace "For Better or For Worse" -- hinting that "FBorFW" will end completely Aug. 31? Or are these salespeople exaggerating how much old material will be in Lynn Johnston's strip when she goes to "new-runs" Sept. 1?

That's the implication of part of a Tuesday blog post by Steve McClure, managing editor of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Moscow, Idaho.

"The problem is there are plenty of people out there who have tried to use the change as a means to work their way into the market," he wrote. "They toss out some half-truths in an attempt to get people to completely dump the strip. Basically, they're stretching the truth so they can swipe some of the business Johnston has generated."

McClure said Johnston's feature "will "'start over' on Sept. 1 with new strips that help retell the story she started 29 years ago. According to information from Universal Press Syndicate, eventually half the material will be new and the other half will be repeated from the course of the strip."

He added that "FBorFW" ranked "right at the top of our comic survey a few years back, so we plan to go with the new format."

McClure's piece can be seen here.

"FBorFW" runs in more than 2,000 newspapers worldwide. Some papers have said they'll drop the comic Sept. 1, but many other clients are taking a wait-and-see approach. Meanwhile, a number of cartoonists are upset with the new-old plans, arguing that shrinking newspaper-comic space should be devoted to all-new material. Similar complaints have been made about the "Peanuts" reruns syndicated by United Media.

Some cartoonists are suggesting that Johnston, in order to reduce her workload, should have considered making "FBorFW" a Sunday-only strip with all-new material -- as is being done with "FoxTrot" by Bill Amend of Universal and "Opus" by Berkeley Breathed of the Washington Post Writers Group.

"FoxTrot" was formerly daily and Sunday, and "Opus" features characters from the daily and Sunday "Bloom County" comic Breathed did in the 1980s.