Downstown was an American syndicated comic strip created by Tim Downs that ran from 1974 to 1986.
History
Origins
During his junior year at Indiana University at Bloomington, Downs created the comic strip Downstown for the campus newspaper, Indiana Daily Student, which immediately began to publish the strip as a daily feature.
Downs said, "I went to college to be a sculptor and a painter. In my freshman year, I became a Christian and soon my attitude began to change toward a career in the fine arts. The problem was that sculpting and painting were intensely personal, almost like therapy, and I had things I wanted to communicate. That led me to graphic design, then comic strips…."
Downstown was syndicated to other college newspapers across the United States. The second college to publish the strip was the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, New York. Between 1974 and 1979, the strip expanded to 30 college newspapers and one non-student paper, Vidette-Messenger of Porter County, of Indiana. The editor of the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois, one of the first to purchase the strip, said, "I think Downstown is the most consistently funny and insightful strip I had ever read. Ever."
Syndication
In the fall of 1979, Universal Press Syndicate agreed to begin syndication of Downstown. While Universal and Downs made plans for national syndication, the 30 newspapers that carried the strip in its college version had a gap in service as Downston was no longer available.
Universal felt that a college setting was too narrow for a commercial strip, so Downs changed Downstown to be a strip about singles. The first syndicated Downstown strip was released on March 24, 1980, in 46 newspapers. Downstown appeared as a daily and Saturday/Sunday feature for the next six years. Universal promoted it as "a comic strip that captures the humor and lifestyle of a new generation." This snapshot of current singles life "appealed strongly to baby boomers who recognized themselves and their friends," One reviewer said it "bore a resemblance to early Doonesbury, before Garry Trudeau turned political."
Through syndication, Downstown appeared in more than a hundred major newspapers worldwide, including Chicago Sun-Times, The Detroit News, Edmonton Journal, Miami News, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tokyo Student Times, and Washington Star. Along with Bloom County and The Far Side, the Los Angeles Times called it "one of the few new comic strips offering original and relevant humor for the '80s…."
After 11 years and about 3,000 comic strips, Downs discontinued Downstown on February 1, 1986. Downs said, "It’s gotten harder and harder for me to do Downstown. I finally had to ask myself if it was the kind of strip I wanted to be drawing 10 years from now, and realized that it wasn’t.” In short, Downs was living a married life with a son in San Bernardino, California, making it challenging to continue writing about characters based on his college roommate. He noted, "In some ways, the strip is the victim of my growth. To bring it in line, I would have to make radical changes—like marrying Chuck and giving him kids. I'd rather fold it up and start something new."
However, Jim Creighton, features director of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, noted, "Tim Downs decided to give it up because the strip was not being purchased by enough newspapers to make it worth continuing." If fact, the Los Angeles Times dropped Downstown in 1985, only to bring it back when "extremely loyal" readers sent a "flurry of angry letters." When it ended, Downstown was only in 15 newspapers, representing about 2 million readers.
Downs ended Downstown with a week-long farewell party attended by characters from other comics, including Charlie Brown, Duke from Doonesbury, Cathy, Little Orphan Annie, Garfield, and Spider-Man. (In what appeared to be a collaborative effort, Garry Trudeau killed off Duke the same day.) The last day, the character Josh used a pickaxe to break through the panel border, letting the characters fall through, with the final panel being empty white space. Downs says, "I feel that the Downstown characters will always be floating in the margins of the newspaper somewhere."