Ahh, innocence!
Yes, in my world, the comics are still the funny papers. I also call movies "picture shows". Apparently, in my little universe, we're still fighting the Commies.
I have always looked forward to reading the funnies; even as a wee one, I would look with keen interest at the funny papers. Such wonders! The funny papers were actually still funny then.
Long ago, far away, our po-dunky little newspaper would put on a decent spread for Sunday funnies: your average folded page, and one inserted page in the middle (I'm sure this has a name, but, hell, what's it matter at this point?).
At the time, three of the four people in our house would read the funnies, so if you didn't get to 'em first, they were folded, creased, and generally disheveled. This annoyed my growing OCD, so I liked to be the first to get hold of the paper. That, and if you weren't careful, someone would tell you what the six differences were in the games section. That, however, is a different story, which I shan't bore you with now.
This was my childhood.
What always pleased me most was that, unlike their daily counterparts, the Sunday funnies were always in color!
Yeah, I used to watch this, too. 'Cause the Disney Channel used to be freaking awesome.
So, since I have always had a pattern for reading the funnies, I followed it, just as normal: the front page, the back page, then open it up to finish it off.
Everything was going just swell on the front and back pages, but when I opened the paper up, I was met with a mixture of confusion and disbelief.
The inside of the paper was, dare I say it, printed in black and white.
Don't get me wrong, I'm keen on black and white, man, but the Sunday funnies ain't no Ginger Rogers picture...
I find it a great shame they didn't even show Allan Lane in this trailer. Am I alone on this one?
At first, I chocked it up to being a mistake during printing.
"Surely they'll have fixed this by next week," I thought to myself.
Well, next week became this week. THE MOMENT OF TRUTH HAD ARRIVED.
I read the front and the back pages in color...
...before opening up the paper to find this.
It's like the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy gets back to Kansas and everything is sepia tone again. Or like this M&Ms commercial.
Even I don't know how I remembered this. Go figure.
Since the funny pages I remember from my days of being much shorter and dumber, the inserted page has been eliminated, and the strips have been scaled down to such a minuscule size, even young eyes like mine need glasses to read the text.
Those things were overlooked. Desperate times, and all that jazz.
Printing the Sunday funnies in black and white? This one is just a little too much.
Too. Much.
Reginald Kitty is not amused.
Putting this atrocity against a not-so-distant childhood aside, it leaves a giant question for me: if newspapers - in particular, our local paper - are on the rapid decline (for good reason, but we won't get into that right now), why the hell are they pulling stupid stunts like this?
"Well, maybe it saves money", says the voice in my head.
"Costs, more like!" says my business sense "If you had a subscription, you'd cancel because of this insanity! How many others will do the same?"
Let's be honest, business sense has a point; after all, I already read my favorite strips online during the week anyway. And guess what? When they're online, EVEN THE WEEKDAY FUNNIES ARE IN COLOR.
So, newspapers of the world, take heed of this message: leave the damn funnies alone, already!
Farewell, newspapers, for you have served us well.
