When you pick up a copy of The Daily Universe, do you read it front to back? Look for the Police Beat? Read letters to the editor? Start puzzling out the crossword or Sudoku or check out the comics?

Comic strips got their start at the end of the 19th century and have been around ever since. Some older folks remember Alley Oop and Nancy and Sluggo. Peanuts, The Born Loser and Beetle Bailey have been around for decades. Then there are newer comics like Baby Blues, Zits and Get Fuzzy.

Currently, The Daily Universe includes six comic strips: Zits, Garfield, Get Fuzzy, Peanuts, Frank & Ernest and Dilbert, and two one-panel comics: Ziggy and Non Sequitur.

Judgment calls are made every day here at the paper and sometimes the strip for the day needs to be pulled for content, usually for "taking the Lord's name in vain, sexual content and bathroom humor," said Nicole Smith, advertising production supervisor for The Daily Universe. When this happens, a comic strip, usually from the previous Saturday, is inserted, sometimes causing a sequence problem in the story line. To prevent this from happening so often, several of the current comics will be replaced with less objectionable ones.

We anticipate some die-hard fans are going to groan at that news. Many people have favorite comics, using them as kind of a daily habitual fix, whether we laugh or not.

Some are like soap operas, leaving us hanging until the next day. The characters in some comic strips never age. In Zits we get to follow the adventures of a gangly, teen-age boy and his exasperated mother and clueless father.

In others, like For Better or Worse and Baby Blues, the characters grow up and the comic strip artist gives a glimpse into what "real" life is like in a house full of kids.

Some comics are just veiled opinion columns, most noticeably Mallard Fillmore and Doonesbury. Just recently, for two weeks around Memorial Day, Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury filled his Sunday colored comic space with all the names of those killed in the war in Iraq since it began. The names were printed in tiny font to accommodate the huge number of casualties. Not very funny, but Trudeau has that daily and weekly opportunity to make sure his views are seen and understood.

One popular cartoon, Far Side, touched on things biological. You can wander the offices in the Widtsoe building, the Earth Science Museum and Monte L. Bean Museum and see Far Side cartoons hung up because of the many scientists whose lives mirror the Gary Larsen view of science. Is there anyone who doesn't know the real reason dinosaurs went extinct?

The Adventures of Calvin and Hobbes was a hit as well, and writer Bill Watterson sometimes used the forum to tout, among other things, environmentalism. Both Larsen and Watterson quit when they felt they had exhausted ideas and story lines.

Whatever The Daily Universe decides to run instead of the current comics, let's just all get along.

Before you get your socks in a knot about the issue, remember - they're just comics. And of course, there's always Sudoku and the crossword.

This editorial represents the opinion of The Daily Universe editorial board. Opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of BYU, its administration, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Copyright Brigham Young University 6 Jun 2007