ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, September 12, 1996           TAG: 9609130195
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 6    EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: REG GALE KNIGHT-RIDER/TRIBUNE

COMPUTER USERS CAN CATCH UP ON FUNNIES WITH COMICS SITE

You read the front page with furrowed brow. And you alternately shake your head and smile as you burrow furiously through the sports pages. But who among us doesn't end a visit to the daily newspaper by stopping at a favorite comic strip?

Yes, I know. There are all those serious folk out there who read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. But even the people who get their news from those snooty gray ladies of journalism will search out the comics when they read their New Yorker.

My favorite is "Ziggy." There, I've finally said it. And I like "Peanuts." Heaven help me (I know I'm a child of the '60s, and what I'm about to say is heresy), but these days I find "Doonesbury" tedious. Oh, well.

If you're in your office, check out the bulletin board. There's a "Dilbert" tacked up there somewhere.

Where else can you find "Dilbert"? On the World Wide Web, of course. The first stop is ``The Comic Strip'' page at http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/

There, United Media - which supplies comics to newspapers - offers an introductory page for 18 different strips, including "Peanuts," "Dilbert" and the "Alley Oop" of my childhood.

The page offers links to sample strips, allows you to read back on two weeks' worth of strips, provides the artists' last Sunday strips and lets you e-mail the artist.

It lists several old favorites - "The Born Loser," for instance - and some contemporary offerings that are interesting enough to be noteworthy, including strips focusing on minority characters, like "Jump Start," which features a loving black couple with children, and "Rose is Rose," which features a strong black woman raising a child alone.

Some links, like the one to the popular "Dilbert" page, allow you to order merchandise such as shirts, books (such as ``It's Obvious You Won't Survive By Your Wits Alone'') and of course, given the Dilbert subject area, mouse pads.

But there is a weakness here. The page has comics from only one newspaper service, United Media, so "Ziggy" and "Doonesbury" aren't represented.

Also, United Media offers a link to The Inkwell, a similar service for the syndicate's political cartoonists, at http://www.unitedmedia.com/inkwell

LENGTH: Short :   47 lines