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Comics page fans, here’s some news for you:

“For Better or For Worse” is back. Well, it should be back today if all has gone well at the place that assembles the Daily News-Miner’s comics pages.

That’s right, I asked readers what they liked and didn’t like about our daily comics page, and last year’s dropping of “For Better or For Worse” was clearly something that people didn’t like. So the Patterson family is back, and readers can enjoy creator Lynn Johnston’s current retelling of the family’s activities.

You’ll also see some other changes on the comics page today. Many of the changes were made in response to the many e-mails and phone calls I received after asking for your opinion about our funnies page. I couldn’t accommodate everyone’s recommendation, but I do hope to have made a number of people happy. The Sunday comics page is dealt with separately, by the way, so the changes you see today only apply to the Monday through Saturday pages.

The one big thing that I learned out of all of this is that people sure are passionate about their comics.

Here’s some of the evidence I received that led me to that observation:

“Rose is Rose” is no longer a funny or entertaining comic. I recommend discontinuing it.”

“These are the comics that I consider a waste of space: Rhymes with Orange and Get Fuzzy.”

“Pickles is by far my favorite comic strip followed by Luann and Sally Forth.”

“I cannot stand Rose is Rose, Sally Forth, or Mallard Fillmore.”

“Please keep Get Fuzzy. It takes a brain to enjoy it and it helps me start my day.”

“There is one cartoon that I just don’t like: Mutts. Thanks for letting the public put in our 2 cents.”

“I think the comics section of the paper needs an overhaul, the sooner, the better.”

“I really miss For Better or For Worse. Just the Sunday strip doesn’t cut it.”

“I am writing to ask you to please drop the comic Get Fuzzy. It is stupid.”

“I appreciate your asking for input on the comic section. I would like to see you get For Better or For Worse back so I don’t have to go online to read it.”

“One of my favorites is Pearls Before Swine. He has a very different flavor of humor to what has is currently in the News-Miner.”

“If you are looking for ones to get rid of, I would nominate Mutts, Get Fuzzy, Rhymes With Orange, and Blondie. They’re boring and not particularly funny.”

And so on.

I had several favorites among the comments but particularly those that sounded like this one:

“Thanks for the opportunity to vote. We thoroughly enjoy reading the paper.”

It’s good to revisit the comics lineup every so often, and I’m sure we’ll do it again some day.

Thanks for your help.

Community news

It’s late at night (sometime back in March), and I have an idea. I don’t know about you, but that’s when I seem to get ideas. Then I either have to get out of bed and write the idea on a scrap of paper or, as I’m doing now, bang it out on the laptop.

But here’s the idea: Write for us. Not in the usual way, through letters to the editor or columns on the editorial page. But write small newsy items for us — for other readers — about your neighborhood.

Tell us, in no more than a few paragraphs or maybe a little longer, about something interesting in your part of Fairbanks or beyond. I’m not talking about the not-so-good stuff that ends up in our police report. What I’m talking about are things like neighborhood clean up efforts, who’s got the best flower gardens, which mom and dad has raised two Eagle Scouts. You get the idea.

Neighborhoods are full of good news that doesn’t make it into the paper, and that’s a shame. We can’t be everywhere, but we can if we have you as a partner.

If we get a steady supply of reader-submitted items from within Fairbanks and from the outlying communities, well, we could end up with a sort-of “Neighborhoods” page written in part by the people who read the paper. We’re heading that direction now with a new weekly community page we have in the works and that will be start in just a couple of weeks.

Let’s hear from you. We all need to read some light stuff about Fairbanks.

If you’ve got good news from your neighborhood, send it to me at rboyce@newsminer.com.

As always, thanks for reading.