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