As many of you know, comic strips get smaller and smaller with each passing year. This webpage has a good overview of how the Sunday Funnies have shrunk. And I'm going to quote here from an e-mail I received recently from Russell Myers, who has been drawing the superb comic strip Broom-Hilda since 1970…
In Tulsa in the 1940's and 50's the Sunday comic section was sixteen pages. Each page measured 14.5 inches by 21.5, or 311.75 square inches. Prince Valiant was a full page, Tracy, Annie, Blondie, and others were a half page. The smallest were one third page.
Today's Tulsa Sunday section is four pages. Each page measures 12 by 21, 252 square inches.
In those old sections a half page comic was approximately 13 by 10, 130 square inches. Today in the Tulsa paper, Broom-Hilda is 5.5 x 5.5. That's 30.25 square inches, less that one fourth the size of, say, Blondie of a half century ago. If you try to draw anything much more complicated than talking heads and torsos you can barely see it.
Not everything changes for the better, huh?
No, some things sure don't. And I won't waste anyone's time by trying to pretend that a campaign of any sort would reverse this trend. Strips are just going to get smaller and smaller and there doesn't seem to be anything that anyone can do about it.