BOSTON -- 'Doonesbury' cartoonist Garry Trudeau said Monday he revived his comic strip in larger-than-normal size because some strips like 'Li'l Abner' and 'Steve Canyon' had been 'reduced to talking heads.'
The artist's commentscame in a letter to the editor of The Boston Globe, in response to a news story quoting editors who are upset at the larger size.
'It is both self-defeating and ironic that in an era when newspapers face their gravest competition from television and other visual media, editors have continued to reduce the comics page, the one area of genuine pictorial interest in their papers,' he said.
Trudeau, through his Universal Press Syndicate, has required that newspapers buying his comic strip not publish it at any size smaller than 44 picas across -- a printer's measure -- slightly more than 7 inches.
His size stipulation was prompted when newspapers reduced the standard width of comic strips last year.
'Many editors seem oblivious to the fact that visual impact -- the simple pleasure of looking at the pictures -- is greatly diminished with each redution of size,' Trudeau said.
'Many great strips, like 'Steve Canyon and 'Li'l Abner,' were eventually reduced to talking heads,' he said. 'More and more readers, especially older ones, began voicing complaints that they could no longer read the comics.'
Some editors claim Trudeau's size mandate compromises their editorial control, and have refused to print 'Doonesbury.' But Trudeau said some backlash was expected.
'While we recognized that we might lose clients who found our needs untenable, we accepted that as a regrettable tradeoff,' he said.
'For editors to suggest, as some have, that they 'had' to buy 'Doonesbury,' is to greatly exaggerate both the strip's appeal and the syndicate's leverage.
'Few newspapers today are in genuinely competitive situations, and those that are certainly don't depend on a single comic strip to give them a competitive edge,' he said.
