Behind the scenes on why Bugs was taken out of NC Times News

For the past month I have been posting mainly about the Bugs Bunny comic strip in the 80s. This based entirely from the newspaper Times News in North Carolina.

According to Mark Kausler, This is the national history (not just in NC) history of bugs strip... In the 1980s, the Bugs Bunny strip was drawn by Lee Holley (creator of "Ponytail") from Jan. 1980 to Jan. 1988, then Owen Fitzgerald did the art from Jan. 1988 to to Sep. 3, 1989, then Shawn Keller took over from Sept. 4, 1989 to Dec. 30, 1990, the end of the strip. The writers during the 1980s were Al Stoffel, Frank Hill and Brett Koth, who was the last writer on "Bugs Bunny". John Cawley also did some writing in the 1989-90 period, and Phil Ortiz, Scott Shaw! and Bob Scott (who draws "Molly and the Bear" now) did inking. the early Sunday ones, started Jan. 10, 1943. Originally the art was by Chase Craig, then Roger Armstrong and Mark's favorite, Carl Buettner. The daily didn't start until Nov. 22nd 1948, drawn by Ralph Heimdahl and written by Jack Taylor.

In North Carolina, The 1980s strip had a deeper story, here it is.....

In around May 1980, The times news began publishing the Bugs Bunny strip only on weekdays. There newspaper comics were always in Black and White. The print would mistake bugs and born loser a lot because of the lously press!! This would go on until May 1982 when the newspaper wanted to choose a new comic selection. So readers would go and vote what comics they wanted to add so they could take some out.The add (second image) contained mostly comics not even in their own paper!! The first image is the paper before the ad, the third is the paper after the ad which caused bugs to be taken out. later bugs was replaced by garfield..

newspaper in march 11 1982

1st image: before the ad
2nd image: The ad
3rd image: after the ad 

The weekly comics in the newspaper had winnie the pooh, peanuts, born loser, bugs bunny, frank and ernest, and a few others but not family circus or garfield which were in the ad below...

so in May 1982, Times News said goodbye to Bugs Bunny and unfortuneatly said hello to Garfield 

Credits: 

Mark Kausler

Comic strips ---- Internet news archives (over 13 different ones)