Pogo, Dick Tracy, Peanuts, et al.

"Robert, you are so wrong, philosophers weep at the sound of your voice. I don't have to stand for such disrespect."

Every real city deserves at least two newspapers. One in the morning, one in the afternoon. You don't have to read them both, but they should be there, appearing on the news stands, or on your front porch, at their appointed times.

But what a city deserves isn't always what it gets. The Hearst chain has announced plans to rid itself of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- a newspaper that has shared Seattle's history for the last 145 years. If no one offers to buy the P-I within the next sixty days -- and such an offer, in today's economic climate, seems extremely unlikely -- then Hearst will shut it down. The Seattle Times will remain Seattle's sole remaining daily.

I'll miss the competition. I'll miss the lawsuits. I'll miss the differing political philosophies. But most of all, I'll miss the comics.

I subscribe to the P-I, but I usually read the Times as well -- largely because I love the comics in both newspapers. Not all the comics, you understand. Maybe not even most of them. But both papers have a number of strips whose existence I find necessary to sustain my quality of life. And even those comic strips that royally suck -- and there are indeed a number -- well, they are also a pleasure to read, just because of their extreme suckiness, and the joy I experience in sneering at them.

And yet, "the funnies" are a dying institution. Todd Leopold, the writer of a CNN blog, laments that his hometown newspaper in Atlanta is halving the number of comics that it carries. Readers' comments to his blog show overwhelmingly support for the comic pages, with many of the writers specifying their favorites. The thirteen-year absence of Calvin & Hobbs from our daily papers, for example, is still much lamented. (I fortunately have the entire Bill Watterson oeuvre sitting safely on my book shelf in hard bound edition.) Many writers also took the time to mention disfavored strips. (Does anyone in the United States really enjoy "Cathy"? I doubt it.)

Maybe comics are a habit you learn, or don't learn, as a kid. Fewer families subscribe to newspapers now, fewer kids are exposed to the funnies while they eat breakfast with their folks, and, as a result, fewer young people march into adulthood with an itch to read the comics inseparably linked to their craving for morning coffee. Also, the increasingly dire economics of the newspaper industry forces publishers to pare back even the most popular of features -- such as the comic pages.

This is all very well, but don't try to argue logically with an addict. I jump to the comic pages as soon as I've finished scanning the front page. I'm not giving them up. If the P-I must die, I pray, may it die as an organ donor, bequeathing the best of its comic strips to the soon-to-be monopolistic pages of the Seattle Times.