The Washington Times Cancels Its Sunday Comics Section With A Whimper

As the Internet continues to slay printed newspapers around the digitally-augmented world, The Washington Times has presumably been forced to jettison its comics page to make ends meet.

Here's TWT's statement, which doesn't actually say why the Sunday funnies are gone, but fuels rational assumptions:

"Effective today, The Washington Times will no longer run Sunday comics. We apologize for the inconvenience."

For many of us Webcomic fans, the only real inconvenience we can imagine is that some TWT readers will have to find something else to wrap holiday gifts in.

As The Comics Reporter mentioned, this feels like the start of a 2010 trend. I pretty regularly mock the funny pages as an institution for allowing nostalgia to replace relevance. And yes, the snarky blogger in me wants to celebrate its demise with unrepentant cackling glee. The guy with a sweet grandmother who still chuckles at a few of the interior gags and the kid in me who loved Garfield, Foxtrot, Dilbert and a few others, however, doesn't really relish watching a few of the dinosaurs get pummeled by the meteor of reality. Aside from catching The Comics Curmudgeon I don't read newspaper strips. Still, I kind of like knowing they're there when I visit my newspaper-buying parents.

Since there's not much anyone can do to save the printed funnies at this point, I'll stick with my pseudo-hopeful mantra, "The strong will survive, the jaded will die and deserving artists will manage a living off of a devoted fanbase." Repeat.