News-Record.com

On Sunday, 11 newspaper cartoonists will protest the lack of a greater number of cartoonists of color on newspaper comics pages.

But for one day -- this Sunday -- 11 cartoonists of color will be drawing essentially the same comic strip, using irony to literally illustrate that point. In each strip, the artists will portray a white reader grousing about a minority-drawn strip, complaining that it's a "Boondocks" rip-off and blaming it on "tokenism." "It's the one-minority rule," says Lalo Alcaraz ("La Cucaracha"). "We've got one black guy and we've got one Latino. There's not room for anything else."

On Sundays, we have two comic strips with dominant minority characters -- Curtis and Jump Start. That's out of 22 total strips. Pretty bad.

I can't imagine an editor saying "we already have a black strip." But it is true that we look at categories -- a few serials, a few single panels, a few family based strips, a few based around kids, a few with animals. And then there are those old boring standbys that you can't get rid of because your audience goes ballistic. Some readers just don't like new. Bottom line: we look for funny and clever.

I've made my sentiments about the comics pages known: don't actively mess with them. The pain isn't worth the gain.

But when one of the current strips ends its run as happens every so often, it's time to further diversify the page.