Changes not so comical

Except for a seven-year stint in the Navy, I’ve read “Peanuts” every day of my life since 1961, when I was in the first grade.

I know that things are bad.  I read your paper every morning, I watch Katie Couric every night. ...  So when you announced you were removing “Peanuts” from the Sunday paper, I thought I understood.

It wasn’t till Sunday morning — when I sat there with the funnies in hand and saw that Lucy and Linus and Woodstock and Schroeder truly weren’t there anymore — that a part of the kid in me just died.

Then the grown-up part of me that’s been waking up at 4:30 a.m. lately realized that I actually didn't understand, that this isn’t just The N&O’s isolated decision to save some much-needed cash.  It’s one more symptom that we’re broken, that things will never be the same again.

The economists are wrong. When a major metropolitan daily newspaper can’t afford to put Charlie Brown and Snoopy in the Sunday funny pages anymore, we’re not in a recession.  We’re in a depression. 

And another part of America has just died.

Mark Hamblet
Chapel Hill

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It has died.  The body has shriveled up. Give it a decent burial and be done with it.

The Sunday Comics are no longer comic. They have been compressed, twisted, turned sideways, stacked vertically and emasculated to the point that they are no longer fun to read either to myself or to a child. They are now so small, that in fact some print is difficult to read! 

The pleasure is gone. End the agony.  Bury the body. Just eliminate the so-called comics. You may see circulation go up when people like me are not aggravated by unenjoyable and almost unreadable “comics.”

Jay Hargrove
Carrboro

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The new Sunday comics have shrunk the font size way too small.  Have a heart for us old people. Tell those young whippersnappers who made the decision that they’ll be old eventually and will also give up on squinting to read the funnies.

Phil Hanna
Raleigh

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Your revised Sunday comics section, with its shrunken pictures and tiny printing, arrived just in time. I have an eye exam next week, and I’ll take this along to show the optometrist why I need new glasses.

David Thomas
Raleigh
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I was disappointed in the small print, reduced size of the comic section Sunday'. I believe you will find that some of us older people will not be able to read them without a magnifying glass and thus will not enjoy them, should you keep this small print in the future.

Please consider going back to the previous sized print/presentation. 

Rick Welch
Chapel Hill

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Watching a particular commercial of a person walking, showing no facial clarity, only that of showing red lungs of her body. The purpose of this ad was to apply a certain medication to the nasal openings as to clear the airways in a period of 15 minutes — 15 MINUTES!?!

The point of reality not stated is that if a person’s airways are blocked and if air is not available, she will become brain dead in 6 minutes.

The crux of this is that it is not the medication or what it does but of The News & Observer’s changes in Channels (last old one in October) and the change of the comic strip section on March 1.

In all probability these changes were noted by other subscribers thinking along with myself that less paper was used in the old Channels section. And in the “new” comics section, some of those strips are very difficult to read  because of the print reduction.

The main point of this short note is to ask who at The News & Observer was not given the medication to clear his airway in six minutes?

Don Leu
Clayton

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Gee, thanks. Now the print in the Sunday comics is too small to read easily, too. I gave up reading the daily ones for that reason when you squeezed too many onto the pages, but I still enjoyed the Sunday ones. Now I’ll have to give that up, too.

Marilyn Allis
Raleigh