[SOUND CLIP FROM MOVIE PLAYS]
WOMAN: So what do you have against a Family Circus?
MAN: Okay. You sit down to read your paper, and you're enjoying your entire two-page comic spread, right? And, you know, then there's the Family Circus -- bottom right hand corner, just waiting to suck. And that's the last thing you read, so-- it spoils everything you read before! I hate it, yet I'm uncontrollably drawn to it.
BOB GARFIELD:That scene from the 1999 movie "Go" crystallized a lot of people's feelings about an oddly un-comic strip, but the popularity of these panels is no laughing matter -- as many a features editor has learned the hard way. One such is Elizabeth McIntyre of the Cleveland Plain Dealer who a year ago cut Dennis the Menace, Judge Parker, Cathy, Spider-Man and others, and is still getting letters brimming with reader wrath.
ELIZABETH McINTYRE: They range from how could you do this to me, my waffles will never taste the same in the morning to you stupid idiot, what were you thinking, you should be fired. A lot of the anger came from Spider-Man.
BOB GARFIELD: Anger. You said the right word. That's the word you meant to say.
ELIZABETH McINTYRE:That is the word I meant to say. Anger. There was one woman -- she was torn apart by it! She was very upset that we would abandon Spider-Man. She kept saying, you know, this is serious to me. Don't think that I'm joking about this. This is serious. One of the saddest calls I got was from a 4 year old saying you're the one that killed Spider-Man.
BOB GARFIELD: Oh, my goodness! That is [LAUGHS] sad! What did you say to the child?
ELIZABETH McINTYRE: I felt awful! [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD:You took Spider-Man to the farm. Spider-Man's happy with the ooother super heroes, romping on the farm. [LAUGHTER] I'm just curious. At the time you were getting this hate mail, did you talk to the news editors to find out on any given day how much reaction they were getting to page one stories about oh, I don't know, the future of the planet and war and various other things that were in the news at the time?
ELIZABETH McINTYRE: Don't fool yourself. They will always call and complain about the comics and puzzles more than they will anything that's on page one. I mean that is just the way it is.
BOB GARFIELD: To what do you attribute this intense emotional reaction to the funny papers?
ELIZABETH McINTYRE:They're people's friends -- for a lot of readers that's who they visit first in the morning with their cup of coffee; they flip to the comic pages before they even look at page one. And they build relationships with these characters; they look forward to -- I know here's what I'm going to get - this is what I'm going to get from Marmaduke; this is what I'm going to get from Family Circus. And they can predict that in a world that's sometimes very unpredictable.
BOB GARFIELD: Now let's talk briefly about Family Circus. It's just not funny! Has it ever made you laugh?
ELIZABETH McINTYRE:No, it hasn't. I mean it's not a punch line strip. It's a sweet strip, and there's a difference. At least in my mind. Some readers like strips that'll make them go "Oh, that's so sweet!" And they can relate to it, but they're not looking to get a fall down laugh over it.
BOB GARFIELD: Do you find it may be a little ironic that--the things that they call comics and funnies are neither?
ELIZABETH McINTYRE:Yeah, I do. But-- what's funny to me may not be funny to you. I'm one person. I am not the queen of comics. I, I can't even begin to speak to what all of my readers want, so I listened to what they had to say because a lot of them had perceptions that I hadn't even begun to think about.
BOB GARFIELD: You drew the line at Marmaduke, though, didn't you.
ELIZABETH McINTYRE: We only dropped Marmaduke from Sunday. Marmaduke rated very high. He was in our top 5.
BOB GARFIELD: Well you know the author of Marmaduke has had a chance to refine that one joke-- [LAUGHTER] seven days a week for-- about 4 decades, so--
ELIZABETH McINTYRE: Do you mean Marmaduke's the big dog?!
BOB GARFIELD:[LAUGHS] Yeah, my goodness-- [LAUGHTER] the scrapes he gets into. What's your goal in surveying your readership. When you're trying to revamp the page, are you trying to--freshen it - to cultivate young readers or just antagonize the smallest number of people?
ELIZABETH McINTYRE: I think the goal ultimately is to try to bring new strips in and to put some other strips out of their misery at that point, and if you don't have that churn going on your comic pages, you don't provide an opportunity for the next great strip to come on to your pages.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, well Elizabeth McIntyre, thank you very much!
ELIZABETH McINTYRE: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD:Elizabeth McIntyre is the futures editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer where she is now living by the decisions she made a year ago to revamp the funny pages. [MUSIC]