N.J. Newspaper Shrinks Size of Its Sunday Comics Section

By: Dave Astor The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., this past Sunday shrunk its comics section from eight to six pages.

It's not known if this was a one-time action or the way the paper's Sunday comics will look from now on. E&P left voice mail messages with The Star-Ledger's features editor yesterday morning and this morning, but the phone calls were not returned as of early this afternoon.

The New Jersey paper's six-page section contained 38 comics, compared to 39 in the eight-page section -- meaning many of the 38 strips ran very small on Feb. 17. Several of the pages had seven comics crammed into them -- including a tiny, almost-unreadable "Prince Valiant" on page two.

"You Can With Beakman and Jax" was the one comic dropped this past Sunday.

Many newspapers throughout the U.S. have been shrinking their comics sections in an effort to save on newsprint costs.

One interesting aspect of The Star-Ledger's Feb. 17 comics section was that "Mutts" was moved from its previous page-one position to the last page. The Star-Ledger bills itself as "The Newspaper for New Jersey" near the top of its front page, and "Mutts" cartoonist Patrick McDonnell is a New Jersey resident.

Another interesting aspect of the paper's 38 Sunday comics is that "Jump Start" is the only strip by a cartoonist of color (Robb Armstrong). The Star-Ledger is based in a city (Newark) with a large African-American and Hispanic-American population, although the paper also has a lot of circulation in mostly white suburbs.

The issue of many papers running no more than one or two strips by cartoonists of color was a catalyst for the widely publicized Feb. 10 comics-page action by more than 10 cartoonists of color.