Media Research Failure/Newspaper Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


A handful of small panels proves to be plenty of room to get the facts twisted.

  • Parodied in the comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug, in which a news anchor says, "And now that we have reported this story, we plan to research it as thoroughly as possible."
  • Numerous examples of people apparently thinking the main character of the comic strip Peanuts was named Peanuts, rather than Good Ol' Charlie Brown. This even showed up in a pop psychological text!
    • Charles Schulz actually disapproved of calling the strip "Peanuts" for that exact reason, which is why he pushed for the additional title "Good Ol' Charlie Brown" to be included for so many years in the Sunday panels.
  • The comic strip Zits did a week of strips parodying Love Is... titled "Love Isn't", starring Jeremy and Sara as everyone's favorite married naked 8-year-olds. At least one newspaper editor not only completely missed the parody aspect but ID'ed the naked couple as Jeremy's parents.
  • In an early Dilbert strip, Dilbert accidentally employed the "Vulcan death grip" on a co-worker. Many readers wrote in to explain that "There is no such thing as a Vulcan death grip" (a direct quote from the relevant episode, "The Enterprise Incident"), though there is a "Vulcan nerve pinch" that only causes unconsciousness. Scott Adams says that's when he really understood who his audience was.
  • One part of this review of the Pokémon comic chastises the cartoonist for drawing Starmie shooting water from its jewel. However, the reviewer himself made an egregious error: he mistook Staryu (who, to his credit, can't shoot water from its jewel either) for Starmie.
  • An in-universe example in Calvin and Hobbes: When they are being chased by an evil snowman Calvin brought to life, Hobbes wonders, "Now, how did they finally kill Frosty?"
  • Another in-universe example: A lot of Sally Brown's school reports. Just a few examples.
  • FoxTrot: During a short storyline where Paige dreamed that she was in the land of Christmas Special's, Hermie was indicated as HerBie.
    • Bill Amend pointed this out in the The Best Of Foxtrot commentary, and tried to justify it by saying "Paige doesn't proofread her dreams."
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Media_Research_Failure/Newspaper_Comics?oldid=1638630"