1:20 PM -- Sad news for newspapers: As of Jan. 1, Foxtrot will be no more, at least as a daily strip.

Creator Bill Amend announced this week that he's going the Opus route and publishing only on Sundays. I guess we should be thankful he didn't give it up completely, as did Gary Larson or Bill Watterson.

Comics didn't used to be this way. The popular ones were considered immortal. Some live on even after their creators die -- witness Blondie still guzzling space in newspapers. But the newer breed of cartoonist, led by the example of Doonesbury's Gary Trudeau, goes on sabbaticals, posts reruns, and, sometimes just walks away.

The result is an uneasy Darwinism: The new stuff has a shelf life, while the old, outdated, unfunny stuff gets to live on.

Foxtrot doesn't attain Pearls Before Swine cynicism or Calvin and Hobbes poetry, but it's still a favorite of mine. You gotta love a strip filled with accurate references to math, computers, and Star Trek. (I'd link to better examples, but comics syndicates are careful not to leave archives lying around the Web for free, the bastards.)

How to fill that daily 10-second void where Foxtrot used to be? Although it gets too cuddly sometimes, there's the equally nerdy Sheldon. Or if you want to abandon the family-oriented comic for something more PG-13 yet still goofy, and don't mind wading through nine years of back-story, try Sluggy Freelance.

— Craig Matsumoto, Senior Editor, Light Reading