Birmingham Historical Comic Strips -- Birmingham Post-Herald, The Eighties
A lot of what was added in the '80's were strips that are now familiar, so this is the point where the comics page starts to feel like a well-known country.
1980:
In March, Nancy was dropped and Hi and Lois replaced it in a clear bid to modernize the comics page (I dunno, you explain it for me some other way). Early May brought the arrival of Briny Deep, the comic tales of the world's worst sailor, replacing the departing Priscilla's Pop. Funny Business, which had always been irregular, ran for the last time in late May.
Hi and Lois, none listed,
King Features Syndicate
Briny Deep, none listed, United Features Syndicate
1981:
At the end of February, Briny Deep, having ridden steadily in that deadly valley where it was never truly awful but never rose above a mild twitch of the lips in the direction of a smile, was allowed to seek other opportunities. It was replaced on March 2 by Willie 'n Ethel, one of the members of Joe Martin's wacky stable of strips, which would later be renamed to the full Willie and Ethel in 1983.
Willie 'n Ethel, none listed, Field Enterprises
1982:
I mentioned above that Hi and Lois had been an odd choice to replace Nancy, since it was over 25 years old by that point and not obviously better in any way. Even odder was that a recurring theme in H&L at that point in time was the success of Lois' real estate career, which was being presented in a way that felt like a form of feminism that was 8-12 years out of date by that point, so it was sort of doubly dated. One way or the other, the strip apparently never clicked with P-H readers, so it left at the end of July. The good news is that it was replaced at the beginning of August by a literally brand new strip. The bad news is that that strip was Marvin, which went on to progress not one faint step in the next 40 years and counting.
There was good news in the second half of the year, as two new strips were added with no loss. On the other end of the "go fast and leave a good-looking corpse" spectrum from Marvin, in October Tank McNamara was moved to its typical spot in the sports section, and Bloom County took its space on the comics page. In late November, they squeezed the horoscope enough to fit in a strip called Ribbons, which was the mild comic contributions of a house dog named Ribbons and his street sidekick Haywire which had spun off from a series of Hallmark cards in the late '70's.
Bloom County, none
listed, Washington Post Writers Group
Marvin, none listed,
Field Syndicates
Ribbons, none listed, King Features Syndicate
1983:
When Garry Trudeau took Doonesbury into a hiatus in January, an event which didn't necessarily free all the strip artists from their chains but did definitely shake up the industry, they replaced it with an Australian strip called Snake Tales. I don't know of any examples of Aussie strips being introduced in the US before that. The strip wasn't groundbreaking, but it did have its moments, with some decently interesting human cast members around the mostly heard-but-not-seen snake. In June, they replaced Ribbons with Geech. I find Geech somewhat amusing, but it really hasn't changed at all in 40 years.
In September, they reworked the comics page fairly heavily. They squeezed everything smaller, dropped Snake Tales, and turned Peanuts vertical, all in order to make room for a mediocre children's feature called Everything box (lack of capitalization intact), which was a mixture of jokes, reader-contributed artwork, and random text. Despite turning the strip titles back to horizontal, they still didn't re-add artist credits.
Snake Tales, none listed, NEA
Geech, none listed, Universal Press Syndicate
1984:
When I was a kid, we had a couple to a few of little children's books featuring round single-color characters intended to represent humans of indeterminate age. I don't remember the titles exactly, but it would have been something like Mr. Bashful or Little Miss Clever, and they spent a dozen pages or so with simple art and descriptions of the character - things like, "Miss Clever always has an answer." I would have characterized them as odd but harmless. Today I learned that, rather than being part of some strange blip in the zeitgeist that Mom had picked up at from the table leftovers at a Scholastic Book Fair at school (that part's probably true), they were part of a worldwide, multi-decade empire of commerce! Well, anyway, there's still a website, which, in contrast with my experience, sells everything but books but which does have hip, modern characters like Little Miss Never Swipes Right (no, I'm not joking) on everything from pillows to coasters to onesies. The reason I found this little nook of, well, odd but harmless territory is that a comic strip called Mr. Men and Little Miss featuring unnamed black and white versions of the generic character shape ran from late April to the beginning of June in the P-H, bridging the gap between the departure of Dick Tracy (B. O. Plenty was attempting to turn himself in on the last Saturday, leading to a very minor unresolved cliffhanger) and the return of BC after over a decade away.
At the end of September, Willie and Ethel were/was let go to make space for the pending return of Doonesbury. This led to a wonderful letter to the editor printed in October calling the decision to drop Willie and Ethel while keeping four other strips that the writer objected to (Momma, Tumbleweeds, Gasoline Alley, and Marvin, in case you're wondering) a "two-bit, low down, dirty deal". Of all the things I miss from the demise of newspapers, letters to the editor are way on up there.
Mr. Men and Little Miss, none listed, NEA Services
1985:
There were no strip changes in 1985, but in early February they did do another page layout redesign, undoing some of the damage from the 1983 changes. After moving the text and kids' features to the bottom of the page and restoring Peanuts to a horizontal orientation, they were left with a smaller-print full column on the left and a larger right-side column with Doonesbury, Bloom County, and Peanuts, along with the Ziggy and Family Circus panels in among the puzzles.
1986:
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. In January, Arlo and Janis replaced Tumbleweeds. This feels like a wonderful transition between a strip that I liked and a strip that I truly love - Tumbleweeds had had a good run but had said what it was going to say by this point, and A&J went on to be one of my all-time favorites. On the other hand, in March they replaced Marvin, which never had much to say but was comfortably mediocre, with the execrable U. S. Acres - imagine Jim Davis but without the occasional interest he shows in Garfield.
Arlo and Janis,
none listed, NEA Service
U. S. Acres,
none listed, United Features Syndicate
1987:
No changes to the comics page, but the last of Heathcliff's periodic showings that I can find was near the end of 1987.
1988:
At some point in 1988, the News and Post-Herald began running a joint Saturday edition including the full comic pages of both.
Mistakes don't actually have to last forever, so U. S. Acres was cancelled overall in 1989 (although its inclusion in the animated Garfield and Friends means that it may actually last forever in some sense); the P-H went ahead and jumped off the wagon in April of 1988. It was replaced by Foxtrot (listed in the P-H as "Fox Trot"). The writing was similar from the beginning, although I thought Bill Amend did a good job of rotating in new characters, mostly kids, through the years, bit it's interesting to see how much his artwork and lettering improved over the decades.
Fox Trot, none listed,
Universal Press Syndicate
1989:
To wrap up the decade, Berke Breathed walked away from Bloom County in August of 1989, after what in hindsight feels like a fairly short time. The strip had covered a lot of ground in seven years, but I do find that it hasn't aged as well as other strips of the time - it's easy to attribute that to the topical nature of the strip, but Doonesbury holds up quite well for the most part (admittedly, Journey to Reagan's Brain or whatever it was from around that time kind of falls flat now, but predicting future revelations about Presidential health and societal shifts in thoughts about ableism would have been hard to predict). Nonetheless, Bloom County was a fun ride to be on at the time, and Breathed's ability (and, later, Watterson's) to walk away when the time came ties back clearly to that point I made up there about the impact of Trudeau's sabbatical. The strip was replaced by Curtis, which I tend to find important rather than really funny but which was a solid choice anyway, especially given Birmingham's worrisome history.
Curtis, none listed, King Features Syndicate
Last Updated: November 14, 2023