How do comic strips stay profitable? Who reads The Family Circus,

They're not

Not anymore anyway

Some of the old big ones are being propped up by the fanbases they had time to develop, but with newspapers themselves gradually sinking into the mud of the modern economy, old fashioned print comic strips will be going with them

>>85517593

How did the comics last several decades? I can't imagine Blondie being popular even in the 70s.

>>85517754
Blondie had reruns of the old black and white serials/TV show playing on TV constantly back in the day. I know they did in my area so people still knew who those characters were. And to its credit, some of it was (stressing some) in the comics were still funny. Rot on most syndicated comics didnt really start until the late 60s or 70s depending on the comic at hand when their original creators began dying out and the syndicates kept them going or gradually cancelled the adventure comics.

>>85517836
Blondie in particular started out as a serialized story and didnt become gag only until much later. You'd never know it reading the strip today.

I remember years back seeing some of the old mainstays like Blondie and Dennis the Menace attempt to clumsily modernize the strips to appeal to a younger audience, and it doesn't work at all.

There was a painful strip that portrayed Dagwood's son Alex wearing a backwards cap and listening to rap music that needless to say clashed horribly with the aesthetic and tone of the strip.
There was also a Dennis the Menace I remember seeing when I was in middle school that showed Dennis and his friends playing a gamecube, while still in their 1950's getup with the overalls and slingshot in his back pocket.

Strips like Peanuts that have a bit of a more timeless quality feel less cringey.
Even as a kid I was never able to enjoy a lot of the old dated classics like Blondie and Dennis though, both because they're stuck in some kind of weird time-period limbo and because I never found them especially funny or clever.

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I was an avid newspaper strip reader as a youth.

I somewhat recently took a look at some of the modern strips running today.

Have you seen this shit?

>>85518052
The last time I picked up a British tabloid they had replaced most of their comic strips with some shoddy 3d rendered shit

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This isn't suggestive at all

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Growing up my dad had a ton of Garfield / Charlie Brown/ Andy Capp comic compilation books kicking around and they were my first real exposure to comics as a medium so I have a fondness for the weekly strip.

Honestly, I pick up the local paper now and again just to read the funnies but the only ones of value that they run are Blondie, Baby Blues and Zitz.

>>85517530
the news media just bought the presidential election, then went ahead and bought it AGAIN just so no matter what happens one of their stooges gets elected
they have more money than god

The wife cucks Blondie with Andy Capp

>>85521407
Does he have the Andy Capps when he beats up Flo?

>>85518052

That can't be legit

>>85517754
They cost basically nothing to make.

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>>85517530
They are all mostly owned by syndicates (who I think also own some of the papers themselves) so they were leased to papers in bulk. I also heard stories along the lines of "If you want Peanuts than you HAVE to take Beetle Baily & Mary Worth." but that was back in their heyday. Now they are on life support along with the papers themselves.

>>85517754
I dunno if Blondie was popular in the 70's-80's but it was pretty entrenched. It also had a very weird anti-women's lib vibe to it, Dagwood would lose his shit if his wife cut her hair from that 1930's flapper look she had or when she opened her own catering business. And it wasn't played for laughs either. I'm no SJW but it seemed really weird when I read them. Kind of like what >>85517952 said about them being in a time limbo and wanting be modern yet rejecting it at the same time.