Art News

Annie Comic Ends, but the Redhead’s Fate Uncertain

By: Sharon Cohen, AP National Writer
CHICAGO (AP).- Talk about a hard-knocks life: She has been jailed in North Korea, kidnapped repeatedly, accused of murder, trapped in a cave, roughed up by gangsters. And she’s just a kid — more precisely, a red-haired girl named Annie. Over 86 years, the spunky (and forever young) orphan has endured hundreds of curly hair-raising adventures, not to mention homelessness, poverty and other Dickensian hardships. She’s even survived the death of the man whose pen and imagination turned her into a comic-strip heroine. Annie, the character, may be indomitable. But Annie, the comic strip, is not. Facing a shifting media landscape — the closing or shrinking of newspapers, a dwindling audience for comic adventures and an explosion of new forms of entertainment — Tribune Media Services has determined there will be no more newspaper tomorrows for Annie. After Sunday’s strip, Annie, her father figure and frequent rescuer, Daddy Warbucks, and her belove