Even Little Orphan Annie can't fight the tide against print newspapers. The daily comic strip will end its 85-year run on June 13, reports the Chicago Tribune. But fear not, Annie fans, the strip will end with a cliffhanger, not her demise. "Annie is definitely not dying," says a Tribune Media Service executive. She "will definitely have a life beyond this newspaper incarnation." The strip currently runs in fewer than 20 newspapers.
"The daily newspaper strip will go away," says the executive. "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." Phil Rosenthal of the Tribune has a more complete history of the strip here, including the nugget that it once (temporarily) killed off Daddy Warbucks in a protest against the New Deal.
(More Little Orphan Annie stories.)