POLITICS NOTHING NEW IN THE FUNNIES.(LIFE & LEISURE)

Byline: MARK McGUIRE Staff writer

``Little Orphan Annie,'' Harold Gray's beloved comic strip about the plucky orange-haired adventuress, was pulled from newspapers several times in the 1930s due to Gray's habit of using it to criticize the New Deal.

(Just imagine how ticked off Gray would have been to see how his nemesis Franklin Roosevelt emerged as a hero in the Broadway and film adaptations of his strip.)

The funnies -- from ``Little Orphan Annie'' to ``Li'l Abner,'' ``Pogo'' to ``Doonesbury'' -- have often provided a stage for serious political commentary. In the rapidly changing sensibilities of the post-Sept. 11 world, Aaron McGruder's 2-year-old strip ``The Boondocks'' is at the center of the debate over how far cartoonists can go in times of war.

While late-night comics, …