Rick Marschall on the future of comic strips

MARSCHALL: ...But the fact remains that total readership is down, total percentage of readership is down, and the polls bear this out. There are fewer strips being introduced, and fewer strips running these days. Syndicates are cutting from the bottom. In 10 years, we're getting to the point where every syndicate will have a very small list of very strong strips. King Features used to have 40 or 50 features, and some may have only been in 100 papers, but with an incredible variety of offerings, and a real fabric of flavors of types of strips, to satisfy all types of readers. We're rapidly getting to the point where they're going to look at the top of the list, see what's strongest, and chop from the bottom. It's happening. It's a very sad thing.