Attention Macon Residents! Vote for Comics!

The Macon Telegraph is running a comics contest.

They recently ran a "favorites" poll and only received 1500 votes, resulting in SSDD (Same Shit, Different Day). The favorites were:

1. Blondie
2. Beetle Bailey
3. Family Circus
4. For Better or For Worse
5. Zits
6. Garfield
7. B.C.
8. Snuffy Smith
9. Andy Capp
10. Hagar the Horrible

Now they'd like us readers to vote on comics to ADD to the line-up above. No word on whether they're keeping all of those golden oldies but I say "Let them go!". It's time to give the younger, more contemporary voices the exposure they deserve.

I commend The Telegraph on some of the new additions they're proposing: The Knight Life, Get Fuzzy, F-Minus, Frazz, Cul de Sac, Retail, and (my favorite and the only entry by a female cartoonist) Rhymes with Orange, but the examples they include don't show even half the talent and genius behind these strips.

For example, the Rhymes with Orange entries were notated "Hil is on vacation" and were drawn by guest cartoonist Mo Willems. Are readers judging whether they like Hilary or Mo? Hil's faithful readers will "get it" but newcomers might not. I fear these particular samples will knock her out of the running.

The F-Minus entries are dull and don't show Tony Carrillo at his best. I encourage readers to catch up on the F-Minus archives in order to get a better sense of Tony's very special style and humor.

The Telegraph gives us a total of fifteen strips to choose from but we're only allowed to select FOUR. That's right. Only 4.

If you live in the Macon area, go to this link from macon.com. Please read all of the entries and judge them fairly and wisely.

Help upgrade the comics pages from Same-Old-Thing to Smart, Progressive, and Finally Funny.

That is all.

~ j

Update: I don't know why they even held this contest. The only ones they chose from the list were Frazz, Get Fuzzy, and Rose is Rose. And those are only available online. They're not running them in the paper. Maybe they're going to insert them on Sundays or something. Still, they don't even have a link online to F-Minus or Rhymes with Orange. I don't get it. :-(