Look for some changes to comics

My mailbox is never so full as when there’s even a hint of change to The Gazette’s comics pages. I’ve cleared out my mailbox. It has been four months since I asked you to think about five old faves on our comics pages — “Peanuts,” “B.C.,” “Wizard of Id,” “For Better or For Worse” and “Frank & Ernest” — and to vote for the two comics strips you’d most like The Gazette to keep.

It’s time to reveal what you thought, and our plan for change. In the course of about two weeks I heard from about 600 readers who sent 77 letters and 499 e-mails and made one phone call. Some e-mails and letters contained votes for more than one person. Others didn’t contain votes at all, merely comments about comic strips that run in the paper, used to run in the paper, run in other papers or have been defunct for decades.

You said you wanted to keep “For Better or For Worse” (325 votes) in The Gazette — at least while creator Lynn Johnston is continuing her experiment to mix old and new story lines. “B.C.,” which received 244 votes, also will remain in The Gazette — until you tell me otherwise.

We’re going to continue running “Peanuts” (169 votes), too, at least until we find a comic strip with characters that appeal to kids as strongly as Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy and Linus van Pelt and the gang do.

In the place of “Wizard of Id” (110 votes) and “Frank & Ernest” (96 votes) we’re going to start the “Comics Test Center.” There will be two strips that run on a test basis in the top left corner of the second page of comics. I’m asking you to critique these comics in coming weeks, evaluating them on their own merit as well as how they compare with other comics in The Gazette.

As I’ve written before — and said to many of you by phone or e-mail — my goal is to create a mix of comic strips that appeals to a wide swath of readers: young, old, male, female, workers, students, retirees, those who love puns, those who love dramatic story lines, those who love teenagers, those who question teenagers, those who are teenagers . . . You get the idea.

We’ve purchased “Family Tree” for an extended trial run because I was impressed by creator Signe Wilkinson’s artwork and her take on the modern family. Wilkinson, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning (in 1992), focuses her strip on the Tree family: Ames, Maggie, Twig and Teddy.

“‘Family Tree’ combines my interests in raising tomatoes and raising children, neither of which ever goes exactly as we plan,” Wilkinson said. “Even though my husband and I were consistently brilliant parents, we managed to create enough detours from perfection to provide inspiration for ‘Family Tree.’”

The other strip debuting today is “Cul de Sac,” created by Richard Thompson. It has run in The Washington Post since 2005 and has earned rave reviews from “Calvin and Hobbes” creator Bill Watterson and editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant.

“Thompson has a sharp eye, a fun sense of language and a charmingly odd take on the world. I’m delighted to see ‘Cul de Sac,’” Watterson said.

“Cul de Sac” also features wonderful artwork. The strip centers on a 4-year-old named Alice Otterloop and her family — Petey, Madeline and Pete — and other preschoolers who attend Blisshaven Preschool.

I showed a preview of the strip to students at Carmel Middle School in District 2. Half of the students said they loved it or liked it, so I’m interested in hearing other opinions.

After you’ve read these comic strips for a couple of weeks, let me know what you think. Keep reading, too, and let me know if these strips can hold their own on our pages.

If you love them, we’ll talk about replacing current strips with these new ones. Regardless, every two months or so, you’ll see new strips in the Test Center.

To share your thoughts, send a letter to Dena Rosenberry, Newsroom, The Gazette, P.O. Box 1779, Colorado Springs 80901, or visit our blog, In Good Humor, at gazettecomics.blogspot.com.