Just nine months after a major redesign included the return of comic strips, the City Paper has axed the funny pages again.

City Paper’s lineup of comics last disappeared when its parent company, Creative Loafing Inc., cut costs afterbefore going bankrupt in 2008. CL was bought in May 2009 by Atalaya Capital Management LP, a private equity firm in New York, and has consolidated further since then, spinning off papers in Tampa, Fla. and Charlotte, N.C. Besides City Paper, CL still owns the Chicago Reader and Creative Loafing Atlanta. (Disclosure: I have been a City Paper contributing writer since April 2010.)

When the paper brought back the funnies last year, fans of titles like Wondermark, Clown Time, Up All Night and The City were thrilled, as were the artists behind them. Dirt Farm, by Ben Claassen, is still part of the alt-weekly’s content, City Paper editor Michael Schaffer wrote in an email to DCist. (Its most recent episode was posted earlier today on Arts Desk.)

The decision to cut the comics again was, like before, brought on by the need to save money.

“We’ve had to reduce some spending in making a budget for 2012, and this was a place where we very reluctantly opted to cut,” Schaffer wrote. “Even if I hadn’t been such a fan of our comics page, this would have been a really tough thing to do.”

On his website, John Backderf, who draws The City under the name “Derf,” lamented the end, once again, of the City Paper’s comics page. He was also let go from The Hook, an alt-weekly in Charlottesville, Va., at the end last year. Unsurprisingly, Derf doesn’t have great expectations for The City going forward:

So what now? Well, I still have a few weeklies in the fold, and the Cleveland daily, so I’ll soldier on, since I have commitments to fulfill there, am still making some money off the strip, and am still drawing good cartoons. I’m loath to walk away from something I’ve loved so much. But I’d be lying if I said I had much hope for the future of the strip.