Dropping 'Garfield'

The Times added a new comic on Monday: "Brevity," by Los Angeles cartoonists Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry. The same day, "Pardon My Planet" moved back a page in the Calendar funnies section and "Mutts" moved to the Kids' Reading Room page. The upshot is that the Times dropped "Garfield" from the daily paper (it still runs Sundays). In a story today at Editor & Publisher.com, Washington Post humor columnist Gene Weingarten says the LAT showed "the kind of cojones missing in too many places" and described "Garfield" as "a strip produced by a committee, devoid of originality, devoid of guts, a strip cynically DESIGNED to be inoffensive and bad, on the theory that public tastes are insipid." It's also the most widely distributed syndicated comic, E&P says.