I am writing this letter as a reasonably longtime subscriber (17 years) to strongly protest your dropping the comic strip Dilbert from your daily newspaper. What are you trying to get me to do -- go back to buying The State every day, or reading the strip online and having one less reason to peruse The T&D -- just at a time when I was annoyed with you (though understanding the financial situation) for altering your Sunday comics format to a decidedly inferior format?

As one who has been a comic book writer for well over 40 years (mostly for Marvel and DC), and as the un-bylined co-writer of Stan Lee's Spider-Man newspaper strip since 1999, I'm well aware of the need for change on the comics page. I can understand wanting to add new strips. And it's nice to see an old favorite, Herman, of which an original hangs on my wall. The new strips seem pretty lame to me, and unlikely to be the next Far Side or Calvin and Hobbes -- and I suppose I should simply rejoice that you kept Alley Oop (drawn by my pen pal Jack Bender) and Zits and the truly inventive Monty.

However, you must be aware that Dilbert is one of the best-written (as well as funniest) strips introduced since the glory days of the aforementioned Calvin and Hobbes and Far Side. It has never stopped being innovative as well as entertaining, and at least half the time is the best thing on the comics page. Any comics page.

I don't care which of the new strips you drop in order to do it, but please bring back Dilbert. You have made a serious aesthetic mistake, in addition to any other kind, in dropping it.

P.S. I sat silent for the late presidential campaign while your editorial page featured not a single editorial cartoon really negative toward Barack Obama, indeed constantly tilted toward him instead of toward John McCain (or toward neutrality), but this is too much.

-- Roy Thomas, St. Matthews

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