Little Orphan Annie Leaving Newspapers

One of the most beloved newspaper comic strips is leaving the printed page, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Little Orphan Annie, which dates back to 1925, will run its last newspaper strip June 13, reports the Tribune's Phil Rosenthal.

“The final Sunday panel of the strip, once seen in hundreds of papers but now run by fewer than 20, will end with Daddy Warbucks uncertain over what happened to Annie in her latest run-in with the Butcher of the Balkans,” Rosenthal writes. “And, leaping lizards, what about her dog, Sandy? Arf.”

Adds Steve Tippie, Tribune Media Services vice president of licensing: She “will definitely have a life beyond this newspaper incarnation. ...The daily newspaper strip will go away. Now, that doesn't mean that Annie won't come back ... whether it's (in) comic books, graphic novels, in print, electronic. It's just too rich a vein (not) to mine.”

It could not be too upsetting, the strip is only in 20 newspapers these days.