On Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 7:20:04 PM UTC-4, Brian Henke wrote:
Here is another installment of the Cincinnati Post Comic Strip Index Retro. This time, we're up to 1989.
Two major sports stories were the paper's focal points of the year. The Bengals made it to Super Bowl XXIII, but then in March the Pete Rose gambling scandal broke. How could a man who loved baseball so much - and defined a generation - could do
something as shocking as betting on Reds games? On March 1, the Post had two articles that were related: Boomer Esaison got to be on All My Children (now that ABC canceled the show and stunned its remaining fans) and David Broder said that new baseball
Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti - he would go on to ban Rose and die within eight days later that summer - was "the perfect commissioner."
There were two changes to the Post's comics that year. For months, I had known that Curtis had been picked up by the paper, but I didn't see him. Finally on May 22, he arrived, replacing Willy and Ethel. A story about Curtis ran on Page 3B, while he
made his comic page debut on Page 7C. The Post comic page was now integrated for the first time since 1983, and would stay that way for the last 18 years of its existence. By then, the Post was running this ad:
CALVIN & HOBBES
Great comics
PEANUTS
Everyday
GAMES & PUZZLES
in the Post
Later that year, the Post got rid of Robotman and added The Fusco Brothers. Later on, when the Post went online with @ThePost, Robotman was one of the comics that was offered. Meanwhile, Rose was suspended for life for betting on baseball. "He is
baseball's Judas," then-Post columnist Paul Daugherty wrote.
Berry's World ran in 1989. Win, Lose or DREW was apparently dropped that year.
The lineup on December 30, 1989 (a Saturday), was:
On editorial page:
Doonesbury
The main comic page:
(The Best of) Listen Honey, Long Overdue, Family Circus, Ziggy, Off the Leash On the left:
The Grizzwells
Peanuts
Sally Forth
Born Loser
Marvin
Frank and Ernest
Rex Morgan, M.D.
The Ryatts
Calvin and Hobbes
On the right:
The Fusco Brothers (by J.C. Duffy)
Curtis (by Ray Billingsley)
Luann
FoxTrot
Nancy (which marked 50 years in the Post on April 3)
Mother Goose and Grimm
Hagar (the Horrible)
Shoe
(Funky) Winkerbean
Ten of the Post's strips that started the decade were still around (eight if you count that both Rex Morgan and Funky Winkerbean were dropped, then reinstated in 1980 and 1982, respectively).
Next: Not World Championship worthy changes.
The Fusco Brothers debuted in the Post September 18, 1989.
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