When I was a kid, I lived in a household that got two great newspapers every day--The Washington Post and the Washington Star, both with multiple pages of daily comic strips, in a much larger format than in today’s newspapers. Comics were my entrée into a lifelong love of reading newspapers, as each morning I wrestled my dad for the comics sections and read each strip, even the really crappy ones like Mary Worth and Judge Parker.

There was a time in the sixties when one comic strip had a huge influence on popular culture—Peanuts, by Charles Shultz. It was an offbeat strip for its time, with kids saying mean things to each other, and Mr. Shultz’s alter ego, Charlie Brown, always losing the baseball game or getting the football yanked away by Lucy as he tried to kick it. In its heyday, Charles Shultz earned $40 million a year from the strip and commercial tie-ins, a huge sum back then. The animated Christmas special, with its unusual jazz score, was a huge hit, and Peanuts characters were on t-shirts, backpacks, and every other product you can imagine.

These days, with many newspapers facing an uncertain future, comic strip fans are wondering if the art form can survive the inevitable move to the internet--but I think that the strips that do make the transition successfully will be stronger and better. Newspaper comics pages have always suffered from a kind of inertia. Once a strip makes it into syndication and into your local paper, it tends to stay there, even if it has not been funny or relevant for years. This is because the predominant readers of newspapers are older people, and they don’t like changes. They especially don’t like “edgy” humor aimed at younger, hipper readers, and any comics page editor who tries to replace “Apartment 3-G” with “Brewster Rockit: Space Guy” will suffer the wrath of the Loyal Subscribers, who will fill his inbox with angry letters until he relents.

As a result, comics pages are filled with strips that are way past their prime, and newer ones that offer a kind of bland humor that is designed not to offend anyone. Some years ago, my local paper, the Tennessean, had to stop running the terrific and enormously popular strip, “Calvin and Hobbes,” when its author retired it. After a search and public comment, they replaced it with “Red and Rover,” an insipid comic about a kid and a dog. That’s like replacing a priceless diamond with a piece of broken glass. But my mom likes it, and thinks it’s funny.  She even cut out a Red and Rover strip and sent it to me last week. But keep in mind she’s 86, so I guess that comic is reaching its target audience.

The Tennessean is still running tired strips like “Beetle Bailey” (how come they never got sent to Iraq?) and “Nancy” (aren’t she and Sluggo about 90 years old now?), but they also have great strips like “Arlo and Janis,” “Zits,” “Baby Blues,” and “Get Fuzzy.” These are the kind of strips that may be able to maintain an audience on the internet, although probably never as large as in the heyday of newspapers. It will be nearly impossible for a strip to ever again build as large a following as “Peanuts” once had.

But I, for one, will still seek out and read comic strips, wherever they appear. Because after looking at the news headlines, I’ll always need a good laugh to brighten my day.