Amend Scales Back Output of Fox Trot

In a press release issued last week, Universal Press Syndicate announced that Bill Amend, creator of the long running comic strip Fox Trot, will cease producing the strip on a daily basis. Fox Trot will continue, however, on Sundays only. The final daily strip is set to appear on Saturday, December 3o. (So, given how far ahead most syndicated cartoonists work, he probably really stopped doing the dailies six weeks ago.)

Meanwhile, the Columbus Dispatch now finds itself with an opening on its comics page, and is offering its readers the chance to vote on Fox Trot's replacement from a fairly lame field of five finalists. Of these, the only one that I would want to read on a regular basis is Lio. However, it is the derivative animal strip Pearls Before Swine that seems to be garnering the most votes so far.