New additions to comics include 'Bo Nanas,' 'Frazz'

Advertiser Staff

If you're the sort of reader who goes straight to the comics pages, and you've picked up a copy of today's Honolulu Advertiser, you already know that the paper has a few new additions today.

In our continuing effort to mix old favorites such as "Hagar the Horrible" and "Beetle Bailey" with the best and most up-to-date new comics, The Advertiser is happy to welcome the following new comic features:

• "Bo Nanas" is a brand-new comic by artist John Kovaleski. It features a 3-foot-tall talking monkey making his way in the human world.

• "Frazz" by Jef Mallet chronicles the comic interactions between the students and staff of Bryson Elementary and the school's most respected educator — Frazz the janitor.

• "Jump Start" by Robb Armstrong centers around young married couple Joe and Marcy and their boy and girl. Armstrong, by the way, is one of only a handful of black cartoonists with a nationally syndicated strip.

• "One Big Happy" by Rick Detorie finds humor in a "traditional but contemporary" extended family, especially 6 1/2-year-old Ruthie and her grandfather, Nick.

• "Pearls Before Swine" by Stephan Pastis stars "a megalomaniacal rat who thinks he knows it all and a slow-witted pig who doesn't know any better." The pig is named Pig, the rat is named Rat, and the cartoonist used to be a lawyer.

These new comics replace "B.C," "Born Loser," "Frank & Ernest," "Marvin" and "Family Circus." "Shoe," a long-running feature in our Sunday Comics, also has completed its run in the Advertiser.

But don't despair, "Family Circus" fans. Billy, Dolly, Jeffy and the rest of Bil Keane's comic family will continue to appear on weekdays.

Starting tomorrow, the weekday roster will include our five new Sunday offerings plus "Go Figure," J.C. Duffy's wry one-panel comic about a psychiatrist.

To make room, we're bidding a fond aloha to "Buckles," "Cats with Hands," "Hi & Lois," "Quigmans" and "Six Chix."

"Ziggy" will no longer appear weekdays, but it remains a feature on Sundays.

Here online, we'll continue to offer Peanuts and Dilbert.