The Mooresie

Berke Breathed interview

[…] How different is the situation with newspaper strips today?  Did the changes in the size of panels play a role in your recent decision to abandon newspaper strips?  Will newspaper comics (and newspapers) survive?  Have you ever thought about doing an online comic strip?

This is a sad topic but I’m going to be blunt.   Newspapers have about five years left.  Young readers of the newspaper comics simply don’t exist anymore in numbers that count.  Those eyeballs are elsewhere and will not come back.  Online comics are terrific.  But they will never have 1% of the readership any major comic had 20 years ago, by the nature of the technology.  They’re different beasts now.  No, after having 70 million daily readers in 1985, getting 3000 a day online isn’t terribly energizing at this stage.  I’m happy to go to the storytelling potential of film and books now.   My heart was always there anyway, to be honest.