Formats

[Lionel English]

Can someone help me enumerate the different strip formats?

We have panel strips.

"regular" strips -- is there a name for the normal daily strip format?  Daily strip?

Sunday strips -- are there commonly recognized subdivisions?  Full page?  Half page?  Not sure how to describe the non-full-page Sundays, given that individual papers can print them at varying sizes.  Should we stick with just Sunday?

What about something like This Modern World?

Are there other formats?

--
Lionel English

San Diego, CA
lio...@beanmar.net

[Merlin Haas]

>Can someone help me enumerate the different strip formats?
>
>We have panel strips.
>
>"regular" strips -- is there a name for the normal daily strip
>format? Daily strip?

multi-panel?

>
>Sunday strips -- are there commonly recognized subdivisions? Full
>page? Half page? Not sure how to describe the non-full-page
>Sundays, given that individual papers can print them at varying
>sizes. Should we stick with just Sunday?

Old-time strips were full pages. Then 2/3 pages with 1/3 page
toppers. Then half pages. Then thirds and halfs for a long time.
Then fourth pages were added to the mix. In addition you had full
tabs, half tabs (same as half pages, just reduced), and edited
half-tabs (panels deleted). In the last decade all sorts of sizes
have been added.

Chicago Tribune ran Peanuts in a vertical strip for years. (with
Dick Tracy in basically a tab format to fill out the page.

Maybe best to just go with Sunday for the moment until we get a
better handle on how to handle the formats for individual newspapers.

Daily strips also came in varying sizes. Old broadsheet newspapers
usually had eight columns of type. Strips would run in four column,
five column, or six column sizes in the 20s-30s. By the 50s most
strips were four columns, though some (San Francisco Chronicle) were
still running 5 column size in the 1960s and Chicago Tribune ran Dick
Tracy in larger size for many years. There was one newspaper in
Wisconsin which ran Popeye in huge 8 column size in the 1930s.
During the paper shortage in th 1970s, some strips were shrunk to
three columns. The current trend to cutting page width has shrunk
the strips again. Maybe best to just say daily to start with.

>
>What about something like This Modern World?

Multi-panel block?

best -- Merlin Haas

[Lionel English]

On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 8:27 PM, Merlin Haas <mvh...@elpaso.net> wrote:

"regular" strips -- is there a name for the normal daily strip format?  Daily strip?

multi-panel?

 

 

Too vague.  That could describe Sundays as well.  Daily is not very precise either, but at least its meaning is fairly clear.

 

 

Sunday strips -- are there commonly recognized subdivisions?  Full page?  Half page?  Not sure how to describe the non-full-page Sundays, given that individual papers can print them at varying sizes.  Should we stick with just Sunday?

Old-time strips were full pages.  Then 2/3 pages with 1/3 page toppers.  Then half pages. Then thirds and halfs for a long time. Then fourth pages were added to the mix.  In addition you had full tabs, half tabs (same as half pages, just reduced), and edited half-tabs (panels deleted).  In the last decade all  sorts of sizes have been added.

Chicago Tribune ran Peanuts in a vertical strip for years.  (with Dick Tracy in basically a tab format to fill out the page.

Maybe best to just go with Sunday for the moment until we get a better handle on how to handle the formats for individual newspapers.

 

 

Is topper a separate format? 

 

Maybe we should just stick with Sunday.  Or maybe we should describe strips by their height to width ratio?  I hate to reinvent the wheel, but I guess I've only ever heard strips described as dailies, Sundays, and panels.

 

 

Daily strips also came in varying sizes.  Old broadsheet newspapers usually had eight columns of type.  Strips would run in four column, five column, or six column sizes in the 20s-30s. By the 50s most strips were four columns, though some (San Francisco Chronicle) were still running 5 column size in the 1960s and Chicago Tribune ran Dick Tracy in larger size for many years.   There was one newspaper in Wisconsin which ran Popeye in huge 8 column size in the 1930s. During the paper shortage in th 1970s, some strips were shrunk to three columns.  The current trend to cutting page width has shrunk the strips again. Maybe best to just say daily to start with.

 

 

I'm not sure yet what to do with that, but it's pretty fascinating.

 

 

--
Lionel English

San Diego, CA
lio...@beanmar.net

[Tony Rose]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lionel English" <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-s...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 3:19:51 PM
Subject: Re: [gcd-strips] Formats

On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 8:27 PM, Merlin Haas <mvh...@elpaso.net> wrote:

"regular" strips -- is there a name for the normal daily strip format?  Daily strip?

multi-panel?

 

 

Too vague.  That could describe Sundays as well.  Daily is not very precise either, but at least its meaning is fairly clear.

And lots of dailies are single panels.  And a lot of Sundays, too.






tony

[a]

I think the correct terminolgy in printer's terms would be -- lines??

Some early strips like Alley Oop were designed to run 2-tier, 2 panels per tier (and drawn that way) as well as 4-panels across.

 

Others were designed to have the botton fifth dropped off so the paper could get more strips per page.

 

I once tried to look at original art sizes to see if there was some standardization there; I think I found in the 30's and 40's there was some grouping by syndicate, but there was wild variations in the strips I looked at from other syndicates (Buck Rogers vs Connie vs Secret Agent X-9, for instance); I was looking for a common width to height ratio since some strips, as printed, appeared stretched.

 

Art Lortie

--
Group discussions are archived at
http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips/topics
 
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
gcd-strips+...@googlegroups.com
 
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips?hl=en

[Lionel English]

What about tiers?  A daily is (normally) a one tier (or sometimes two tier), a Sunday is... uh....

And of course most dailies are really dailies + Sundays, as the Sunday format is different.

I strongly feel that we should be able to classify strips via a drop down list or checkboxes as one of only a few valid formats, but I'm having a hard time pinning down the values that should be included in that drop down or those checkboxes.  Should we just leave the field free form?  But then it would have to be multilingual as well, which would make it harder to search (it would be easier to internationalize a standardized list).

I guess a frequency (daily, weekly, etc) paired with panel or strip would be sufficient--a daily strip implies one thing, a Sunday strip implies another, a Sunday panel implies a third, a weekly strip implies something else.  Only problem I'd see with that would be things like Dennis the Menace--daily panel + Sunday strip.  I suppose the tech guys could work that out.  So if we just allow panel or strip for format (or cartoon, if we add cartoons) then the frequency indicator will be suggestive enough, and exceptions can be spelled out in Notes?

[Merlin Haas]

>
>Is topper a separate format?

No. Topper describes the relationship of a secondary strip to the
main strip on the page. The two together would form a full page.
Usually, but not always by the same artist. (Jungle Jim was the
topper to Flash Gordon. Sappo was the topper to Thimble Theatre
(Popeye).) The secondary strip would usually be at the top of the
page, hence "topper". Most started as 1/3 pages, though some like
Corky (Gasoline Alley) and Josie (Harold Teen) were full half pages
which sometimes ran on different pages. There were also single tier
companion strips that ran across the bottom as space fillers that
could be pulled for ads -- Maw Green (Little Orphan Annie), Little
Brother Hugo (Gasoline Alley) , etc.

best -- Merlin Haas

[Donald Dale Milne]

With all the various sizes I've seen and what Merlin relates, I
don't believe physical size is a useful definition for strips. I think
we should class them into single panel vs multi-panel, and daily vs
Sunday for our Format definitions. Then allow the indexing of number of
panels and physical size as sub-classes of the Format. Physical size
can vary so much that we should record it as unformatted text, as I
doubt we can create any reasonable drop-down list.

Sample of what I'm thinking:
Strip Name: I Made This Up
Format: single panel
Panels: 1 (auto-filled)
Size: 3cm x 20cm
Type: Sunday

Strip Name: Another Example
Format: multi-panel
Panels: 7
Size: 6cm x 20cm
Type: Daily

- Don Milne

[Edgar Loftin]

I'm not sure why the distinction between single and multi-panels.

Most strips occasionally run a one panel strip;
many of them do like 1-2 single panels a week, and 4-5 multi-panels a week.
What are we trying to find by making that distinction?

-el

[Tony Rose]

There may be too many different arrangements of panels to make a drop-down selection menu practical.  It will vary by newspaper as well as strip.  Not an intractable problem, but a pretty tough one.  Maybe the drop-down could have a few iconic representations of strips (2x2, 4-in-a-row, three tiers of 3, etc) and then notes to smooth out the bumps.

On the daily panel + Sunday strip problem with Dennis, I'm gonna hold out that daily strips and Sunday strips aren't the same strip.  A paper can easily have the daily Dennis and not carry the Sunday and vice versa.  Some strips do not have a Sunday.  There are probably some Sunday only.

Oh, and some of the early strips ran as seven-days-a-week dailies, no special format for Sunday, same old 4-panels-in-a-row, in black and white for Sunday.




tony

"regular" strips -- is there a name for the normal daily strip format?  Daily strip?

multi-panel?

 

 

Too vague.  That could describe Sundays as well.  Daily is not very precise either, but at least its meaning is fairly clear.

And lots of dailies are single panels.  And a lot of Sundays, too.






tony

--
Group discussions are archived at
http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips/topics
 
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
gcd-strips+...@googlegroups.com
 
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips?hl=en

--
Group discussions are archived at
http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips/topics
 
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
gcd-strips+...@googlegroups.com
 
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips?hl=en

--
Lionel English

San Diego, CA
lio...@beanmar.net

[Merlin Haas]

>There may be too many different arrangements of panels to make a
>drop-down selection menu practical. It will vary by newspaper as
>well as strip. Not an intractable problem, but a pretty tough one.
>Maybe the drop-down could have a few iconic representations of
>strips (2x2, 4-in-a-row, three tiers of 3, etc) and then notes to
>smooth out the bumps.
>
>On the daily panel + Sunday strip problem with Dennis, I'm gonna
>hold out that daily strips and Sunday strips aren't the same strip.
>A paper can easily have the daily Dennis and not carry the Sunday
>and vice versa. Some strips do not have a Sunday. There are
>probably some Sunday only.

>
>tony
>

Strips are sold separately, which means when the syndicate says a
strip is in 700 papers, it is probably in 350 dailies and 350
Sundays. Some papers run the Sunday, but not the dailies, and vice
versa.

As to Sunday only strips, Prince Valiant is the most famous example.
Fox Trot is currently Sunday only.

And I just happened to think, what are we going to do with features
in Sunday sections that aren't comics? Like Cappy Dick, Hints from
Heloise, Beakman and Jax, etc. Just ignore them? Put them in
notes?

best -- Merlin Haas

[Lionel English]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 6:31 AM, Merlin Haas <mvh...@elpaso.net> wrote:

And I just happened to think, what are we going to do with features in Sunday sections that aren't comics?   Like Cappy Dick, Hints from Heloise, Beakman and Jax, etc.    Just ignore them?  Put them in notes?

I'd say ignore them.  Unlike the comic book database, we don't have to account for everything in the paper (or even in the funnies section); just the strips we're indexing. 

[Donald Dale Milne]

I also still believe that frequency plus single panel vs.
multi-panel is sufficient to define the format. There's too much
variety to define the physical, printed shape and size as anything other
than free-form text. Even your example of tiers not only falls apart
with Sundays, but when a paper prints a normal one tier daily as a block
of 4 panels.

- Don Milne

> <mailto:gcd-strips+...@googlegroups.com>

>
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips?hl=en
> --
> Group discussions are archived at
> http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips/topics
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> gcd-strips+...@googlegroups.com

> <mailto:gcd-strips%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>

>
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips?hl=en
>
>
>
>
> --
> Lionel English
> San Diego, CA

> lio...@beanmar.net <mailto:lio...@beanmar.net>

[Donald Dale Milne]

Wouldn't Beakman and Jax be a strip, perhaps of a fact or science
genre?

- Don Milne

[Tony Rose]

If it looks like the two samples at the Universal Press page, then it isn't a strip because it isn't comics.




tony

----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald Dale Milne" <dond...@att.net>
To: gcd-s...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 12:18:44 PM
Subject: Re: [gcd-strips] Formats

[Lionel English]

I'm not familiar with it, so I won't say yay or nay.  I'm simply saying that just 'cause it's in the comics section doesn't mean we have to index it.  We only need to index things that are actually strips (or cartoons).

[Merlin Haas]

>I'm not familiar with it, so I won't say yay or nay. I'm simply
>saying that just 'cause it's in the comics section doesn't mean we
>have to index it. We only need to index things that are actually
>strips (or cartoons).

Beakman and Jax is text and illustrations, focusing on a scientific
question posed by a reader. Probably falls into the gray area like
"Believe It or Not" or "Strange as it Seems" which are also just
text and illustrations.

best -- Merlin Haas

[carch...@aol.com]

Ah gotta love those grey areas. Those features that borderline comics may need to be included. If you think about it Believe it or Not is as much a comic and Prince Valiant is. Maybe we could create a term for those examples and just say for the purpose of indexing, the GCD considers them to be comics.

 

my best

-ray

-----Original Message-----
From: Merlin Haas <mvh...@elpaso.net>
To: gcd-s...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, Sep 22, 2010 1:54 pm
Subject: Re: [gcd-strips] Formats

[carch...@aol.com]

Everyone, I strongly urge us all to find a copy of Hogan's Alley #16, and go to Allan Holtz's article "How to Speak Strip Collecting".

Some of the terms we need to consider adding.

Newspaper size: Full Size and Tabloid Size makes a difference in how a strip is shown.

Drop Panels. Quoting "In half-page format, this Beetle Bailey strip starts out with 9 panels. The quarter page format drops panel 3, and the third page format drops two more panels. Drop panels are the most common way to handle strip re-sizing."

"While most cartoonists use drop panels to handle re-sizing, some go to a lot more trouble. Milt Caniff reformats panels for the half-page and tab-page formats. Look closely to see the differences. Not that with Steve Canyon there is no one 'best' format because each contains art missing from the other!"

I wish I could show you the examples, but this gives an idea on the kind of formatting that can vary on a strip from paper to paper.

Circumcised Dailies - "When syndicates started offering dailies in truncated heights, some cartoonists like Frank King began drawing the truncation line right on their originals to ensure that they don't draw anything important in that zone. Note also the two syndicated stamps, each placed at the 'bottom' of the strip."

Columns

Era Typical strip column size

to 1918 7

1918-35 6

1936-41 5-6

1942-49 4-5

1950-70 4

1971-present 3

modern newspapers, today so small that what was quarter-page strips now fit 5 per page

my best

-Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>

[Lionel English]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 6:31 AM, Merlin Haas <mvh...@elpaso.net> wrote:

Strips are sold separately, which means when the syndicate says a strip is in 700 papers, it is probably in 350 dailies and 350 Sundays.  Some papers run the Sunday, but not the dailies, and vice versa.

I know some strips ran separate daily and Sunday continuities, while others interwove them (and some went from doing it one way to the other, and others didn't have continuity so it didn't matter).

Is the group feeling that we should index daily + Sunday strips as two separate strips, or as one?

[Lionel English]

I wasn't really thinking of differentiating between individual installments of a strip, I was just thinking in general terms of how much  space it takes up relative to other strips.  Things like Marmaduke, Dennis, Far Side, etc, are essentially panel strips even though they occasionally split the panel.  Things like Peanuts, Blondie, or B.C. are essentially strips, even though on some days they may just use a single panel to fill the space.  I'm not sure if people want to categorize cartoons as panels or as cartoons--anyone have any thoughts?

[Merlin Haas]

I'd go with two separate strips. That way you could index complete
Sunday sections easier. And the format field would be different for
a Sunday than a daily.

best -- Merlin Haas

[Jan Roar Hansen]

Lionel English wrote:
>Strips are sold separately, which means when the syndicate says a
>strip is in 700 papers, it is probably in 350 dailies and 350
>Sundays. Some papers run the Sunday, but not the dailies, and vice
>versa.
>
>
>I know some strips ran separate daily and Sunday continuities, while
>others interwove them (and some went from doing it one way to the
>other, and others didn't have continuity so it didn't matter).
>
>Is the group feeling that we should index daily + Sunday strips as
>two separate strips, or as one?
>
>--
>Lionel English
>San Diego, CA

Merlin Haas wrote:
>I'd go with two separate strips. That way you could index complete
>Sunday sections easier. And the format field would be different for
>a Sunday than a daily.

In the strip / feature index it should be two separate strips (series).
A few features had daily and Sunday as one series.

Jan

[carch...@aol.com]

As one strip, but a distinction between the two types like the difference between a comic periodical and a comic maagzine, or a comic digest, et al.

 

my best

-Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>

To: gcd-s...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, Sep 30, 2010 10:54 pm
Subject: Re: [gcd-strips] Formats

[carch...@aol.com]

I say yes, because they do represent a presentation definition used by fans and newspaper people alike. When you say one or the other, you get a size and dimension of what it looks like in your head automatically.

 

my best

-Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-s...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, Sep 30, 2010 11:23 pm
Subject: Re: [gcd-strips] Formats

[Leonardo De Sá]

Ray Bottorff Jr. wrote:

 

> As one strip, but a distinction between the two types like the difference between a comic periodical and a comic maagzine, or a comic digest, et al.

 

I’m truly sorry I still don’t have the necessary time to argue any of this in detail, but please consider that other countries also have different comics’ formats in newspapers (or magazines, but I believe those were excluded in the first draft) than the strict six-days-a-week daily strip or Sunday page format, which have always been published on Sundays or Saturdays in the USA and Canada.

 

You may find other countries’ newspapers might have the equivalent of a Sunday page running in *any* other day of the week, probably in B&W or with limited colors, though. Another format might be a weekly strip which mostly resembles American dailies more than a Sunday or weekly page. In recent times some newspapers (& mags) also ran complete *albums* in pre-publication in weekly installments normally with one page per week (Blueberry, Blake & Mortimer spring to mind in France), which would be the equivalent of running a complete graphic novel by Eisner or Art Spiegelman in an American paper.

 

Other formats might include comics supplements that are far from the USA model, again appearing in any given day of the week. These can of course be indexed, if ever, in the GCD proper. FYI, the longest running such comics supplement in Portugal was called Pim-Pam-Pum! and started in 1925 and ended in 1977, with issue #2555. Here’s a pretty picture and some info (or lack of it) regarding that last issue in my blog:

 

http://historiasdosquadradinhos.blogspot.com/2009/02/o-derradeiro-pim-pam-pum-suplemento-do_19.html

 

Is any of this useful, I wonder?

 

Leo

 

[Lionel English]

Leonardo, I'd very much love if you could find the time to broaden our horizons a bit--I'm well aware of the constraints imposed by my limited U.S. only perspective.  You remind me, for one, that I forgot to acknowlege color as a data point.  Some strips are intended to be in color and others in B&W.  And we need to avoid describing a strip as a daily + Sunday.  So we could have daily (7/wk), daily (6/wk), etc, and a weekly (rather than specifically a Sunday).  I'm perfectly willing to let things remain open for another couple of weeks or so if I could gain some further input on the international considerations, given that that will hopefully be one of the things that distinguishes us from other projects.

--

Group discussions are archived at
http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips/topics
 
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
gcd-strips+...@googlegroups.com
 
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips?hl=en

[Merlin Haas]

Leo's viewpoint is valid and I'm as guilty as
anyone with focusing only on US/Canada formats.
The use of color gets a bit sticky, as many daily
strips are printed in color now (whether intended
to be printed in color or not) and the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch ran (badly) colored daily strips as
far back as the 1960s.
Sunday strips were also printed in black and
white on Saturdays (or Sundays) in some papers
pre-WW II. So color is almost going to have to be
a check box for each strip, if we are going to
use the index by newspaper format that was
brought up before.

best -- Merlin Haas

>Leonardo, I'd very much love if you could find
>the time to broaden our horizons a bit--I'm well
>aware of the constraints imposed by my limited
>U.S. only perspective. You remind me, for one,
>that I forgot to acknowlege color as a data
>point. Some strips are intended to be in color
>and others in B&W. And we need to avoid
>describing a strip as a daily + Sunday. So we
>could have daily (7/wk), daily (6/wk), etc, and
>a weekly (rather than specifically a Sunday).
>I'm perfectly willing to let things remain open
>for another couple of weeks or so if I could
>gain some further input on the international
>considerations, given that that will hopefully
>be one of the things that distinguishes us from
>other projects.
>
>On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 2:37 PM, Leonardo De Sá

><<http://leonardo.de.sa>leonardo.de.sa@<http://netcabo.pt>netcabo.pt>

><http://historiasdosquadradinhos.blogspot.com/2009/02/o-derradeiro-pim-pam-pum-suplemento-do_19.html>http://historiasdosquadradinhos.blogspot.com/2009/02/o-derradeiro-pim-pam-pum-suplemento-do_19.html

[carch...@aol.com]

I wouldn't consider this arguing Leo. I would say that getting to know and list the formats from outside the U.S. is important too. Not my area of expertise so we need your knowledge of this as well.

 

my best

-Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: Leonardo De Sá <leonard...@netcabo.pt>
To: gcd-s...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, Oct 1, 2010 5:37 pm
Subject: Re: [gcd-strips] Formats

[carch...@aol.com]

I agree with Lionel. Our viewpoints are limited to North America, we need to know what others out there exist and add them to the mix.

 

my best

-Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-s...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, Oct 1, 2010 5:57 pm
Subject: Re: [gcd-strips] Formats