In the previous posting, I just fixed a minor factual error that was pointed out to me by Dan Kravetz. I mentioned buying the Sunday Herald-Express. Actually, if it was Sunday — and it was — the paper was called the Herald-Examiner.
Let me explain. Once upon a time, when newspapers were a real business, Los Angeles had more of them. We had the Times-Mirror company publishing a morning paper (The Los Angeles Times) and an afternoon paper (The Los Angeles Mirror), and then we had the Hearst Corporation publishing a morning paper (The Los Angeles Examiner) and an afternoon paper (The Los Angeles Herald-Express). These all came out Monday through Saturday.
On Sunday, each company published one Sunday paper that combined the regular features of its morning and afternoon papers. The Times-Mirror company put out the Sunday Los Angeles Times and it included some columnists and comic strips that were seen in the Mirror on weekdays. The Hearst folks called their Sunday paper The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and it had features from both. In 1962, the two companies worked out some deal whereby each terminated one of its papers. The Times-Mirror people dropped the Mirror and some of its features went into the Los Angeles Times, which remained a morning paper. The Hearst folks dropped their morning paper and merged its contents into an afternoon paper called the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. The Herald-Examiner continued until 1989.
For a time after the '62 changeover, the Herald-Examiner carried the comics pages of both newspapers in full and it was a glorious thing. Eventually though, they began tossing out strips and whittled it down to one page. The Times dropped a lot of strips immediately and just merged two funny pages into one. I don't recall the exact casualties list but I recall an awful lot of angry mail, including a letter I sent asking why we had to lose anything. A lot of people were happy that they had fewer newspapers to buy but they hadn't reckoned on losing their favorite comic strips.