The 10 Newspaper Comic Strips that Need to F**king End
Posted at 5:06 AM Sep 18, 2008
By Alicia Ashby
So, Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse ended not that long ago. Well, not “ended” ended. In an example of true comic strip insanity, she’s opted not to simply retire the strip from papers, but to send the strip into reruns that are interspersed with new strips created in the style of the old strips. In the wake of the long-awaited Foobocalypse, the strip has become some sort of horrible shambling zombie that desperately needs to have its head blown off by a shotgun shell.
This is a clear example of why today's newspaper comics page is an increasingly sad, run-down place. In our youth, we were able to read The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes; sure, we were sad when they ended, but in retrospect it's much better being able to enjoy re-reading them, rather than have the strips continue indefinitely and inevitably become terrible. When strips continue past their prime, they needlessly clog space which could be given to new, potentially funny strips...and thus, this is why the newspaper's comics pages feature the same bland horrible pieces of shit we all hated as a kid. These strips are terrible, shambling zombie that long since stopped making any sense or even being mildly funny, and have been in papers for longer than most of us have been alive. And like all un-living monstrosities, these 10 comic strips desperately need to die.
type="text/javascript">
10) The Amazing Spider-Man, 1977+
There are a few things I’ll give the newspaper's Spider-Man credit for. It’s the only adventure strip launched after the genre’s heyday in the '50s to pick up an audience, and the only place where you can read Spider-Man stories written by the character’s co-creator, the indefatigable Stan Lee. The stories are upbeat and cheerful, and feature Spider-Man with a supporting cast that hasn’t yet been turned into evil aliens, corpses, or evil alien corpses. He hasn’t even traded his marriage to the devil yet!
That’s all the credit I can give Spider-Man, though, which is otherwise a real mess. While it was originally drawn by John Romita Jr., the current artist is far less talented at cramming superhero fights into three tiny panels a day. Spider-Man has a tendency to become a surly asshole during the brief action scenes, which are brief respites from weeks-long stretches of Peter Parker loafing around watching TV.
There are worse things than this strip in the papers now, but it’s obvious from the sitcom writing and total lack of major storylines that it really has no particular point to make. Stories amble along, using the premise of a married Peter Parker that the comics threw out not too long ago, and using villain designs that sometimes acknowledge the '90s and other times don’t acknowledge major stories like Kraven’s Last Hunt. It basically makes no sense if you don’t know anything about Spider-Man, and makes no sense if you do, and at this point is just trudging along out of sheer inertia.
9) Funky Winkerbean, 1972+
I remember reading Funky Winkerbean for a bit when I was a kid. Even back then I could tell it was something of a stoner’s comic, telling slice-of-life jokes about school life in a sort of dreamy haze. I checked back on it earlier this year, just in time to see the “Cancer” phase of the strip in full stride, which gave way to the mind-boggling melodramatic Death of Lisa and her even more ridiculous afterlife of dancing with some jackass dressed up like the Phantom of the Opera.
Now the strip is still sad and depressing, but in a more subtle and poignant way. Now we see all of those once-vivacious college stoners as broken-down old men and women, energy blissfully sapped away by their children, still talking to each other out of the sheer inertia of daily routine. There is very little I can count on to depress me more in a day than a new Funky Winkerbean strip, provided I don’t go try to read letters to the editor.
Do you know why people stop talking to each other after college? Because they don’t want to see their wild frat buddies begin the slow slide into becoming middle-aged, emotionally drained shells of humanity. For whatever reason, the creator of Funky Winkerbean has decided to document that degenerative process in excruciating detail. Why not just toss a little snapshot of an animal carcass passing through the stages of decay onto the comics page while you’re at it? It’s about as easy to look at as modern Funky Winkerbean.
8) The Wizard of Id, 1964+
When you see Wizard of Id in your newspaper, you’ll see it’s still credited to “Parker and Hart.” You might assume this refers to creators Johnny Hart and Brant Parker, but both men died in early 2007. What Wizard of Id has become is the very definition of a zombie comic, an assemblage of terrible panels with no clear source and no real point. The Parker now might refer to Brant’s son Jeff Parker, who assisted in the creation of the strip prior to his father’s death, but the Hart side of the equation could only be carried forward by one of his many faceless assistants.
Wizard of Id originated in the '70s as a comic strip about people living in a squalid kingdom of misery, which America could easily relate to at the time. As its creators aged and it got into more papers, its satire became more watery and its jokes less coherent. Now it exists as a sad parade of human misery, where the joke is inevitably some variation of the simple truth that we will all work excruciatingly hard, and then die alone and unloved due to the incompetence of our rulers. Doesn’t that sound like fantastic breakfast reading?
The best thing Wizard of Id could’ve done is gone into rerun after both creators passed on, if it had to stay in papers at all. The early strips are sharply written and cleverly drawn, and manage to say a few timeless things about the sordid facts of the human condition. The zombie version of the strip running now is a bland horror without so much as a discernable creator, and even less to offer in the way of identifiable entertainment value.
7) B.C., 1958+
When I was a kid, sometimes you’d go into a Hallmark and find weird little B.C. gift collections waiting there, the skinny ones printed in landscape ratio. They were usually stocked alongside the much funnier early Far Side collections in the same format, and I preferred to read those. When I was through with them, though, a B.C. or two was decent enough for passing the time until my mother had gotten her fucking fill of ogling quaint porcelain statues of angels.
What the fuck happened between then and now? It’s like the strip developed a degenerative brain disease. It was never fantastic, but I can recall a time when you could count on B.C. for a gentle chuckle. In the years building up to the death of creator Johnny Hart, the strip turned into an increasingly right wing, bizarrely Christian screed that failed to mock liberal depravity because it couldn’t form coherent sentences. Now that Hart’s passed on, his grandson Mason Mastroianni is drawing the strip… which is still credited to Hart in the strip’s opening panels… but which Mason is signing with his own name, anyway.
This is another strip that would’ve been well-served by going into reruns upon the death of its creator, if it really needed to stay in papers. I tracked down one of those ancient skinny collections recently, and the early strips hold up. Instead, we’ve got… what the fuck is even going on in this strip anymore? There are jokes where characters comment on how the strip is dull and boring. Jokes about cavemen playing golf? There’s even a joke about a turtle trying to fuck a piece of headgear that doesn’t exist yet. Why is anyone getting paid for this shit?
6) Gil Thorp, 1958+
Seeing the way shrinking strip sizes have castrated once-great adventure strips is pretty hard. Most of these strips had little to offer besides beautiful art to begin with, and now they’re somehow expected to advance coherent plots with roughly three tiny panels a day. For most strips a sense of overwhelming despair has set in, but perhaps nowhere is it more evident than in Gil Thorp. The Chicago Tribune has a sample of the original strips drawn by series creator Jack Berrill in 1958 up, and they are beautiful work.
Jump up to the current run of strips, which have suffered through a series of religion-oriented strips by one of the jerks who created Left Behind and a round table of artists who have no idea how to fit dynamic figures legibly into the tiny spaces allotted for them. We’ve got storylines about teenagers with life-ruining heart conditions in lieu of anything that might be harder to draw than random football practices, characters mutating so much in appearance that following storylines is impossible, and some really horribly inconsistent anatomy.
Gil Thorp is a mess. You can read it every day for a year and have pretty much no idea of what’s going on in it. This is yet another strip that could’ve ended on a high note when its creator retired in 1996, but no, instead, it had to go through a stultifying series of alternate writers and artists who appeared to have no particular idea of how to make a comic or what it could be about. I guess people just couldn’t bear the thought of losing the daily strips about… football practice? Doing poorly at baseball? Poorly-drawn Basketball? … man, whatever the fuck it is Gil Thorp is about by now.
5) Cathy, 1976+
Cathy’s in a unique position, relative to the other strips on this list. The original creator isn’t dead yet, and much like Amazing Spider-Man, it’s a relatively recent creation in a genre little-explored by comics. Cathy was one of the first strips to tackle the daily life of a working woman, and deal extensively with women’s problems in a way that wasn’t related to living as a dutiful housewife with a numbskill husband and a passel of funny kids. By all rights, Cathy should be a great addition to the comics strip page… but no, it isn’t. In fact, it completely sucks ass.
Originally the strip was based on Guisewite’s life as a working woman, and so they have a certain bite to them. As the strip settled into comfortable formula, her fictional avatar’s problems became increasingly predictable, bland, and vain. Cathy has featured possibly thousands of strips about how she wants to stuff herself like a pig but is then saddened by her inability to lose weight; about how her job, which clearly pays for a comfortable lifestyle, is somehow unbearably lousy and terrible; how she has difficulty meeting men, possibly due to what a boring impersonal crone she is; and, finally, how she feels inferior to her mother, because she quite frankly is.
Cathy rapidly degenerated into a caricature of what a woman’s problems were, all but enshrining the detestable neurotic tendencies of a white upper-middle class that had grown too wealthy, too complacent, and far too self-centered. Cathy as a character long since ceased to be anything a modern woman could identify with, and is instead a pitiable and hateful remnant of the Mary Tyler Moore era of failed feminism. On top of this, her strip hasn’t been funny in roughly twenty years, and Guisewite’s recent decision to marry Cathy off to her recurring boring love interest Irving has only made it more clear that the creative well has long since run dry. This comic, through sheer virtue of how hard it sucks, needs to get the hell off my comics page.
4) The Lockhorns, 1968+
My earliest, dimmest childhood understanding of the Lockhorns, that I can recall, is that it appeared to be a comic strip about two people who hated each other so much that they had no greater goal in life beyond insulting and belittling the other. Later on I found out they were supposed to be married and realized some terribly depressing things about modern American lifestyles.
The Lockhorns hasn’t changed much since that early, soul-crushing exposure. It’s for the most part still a comic about existential urban dread, about the inevitability of misery in any sustained relationship, but occasionally pauses to discuss all manner of mundane irritations, like the hell that is air travel. The key theme here, the leitmotif if you will, is unrelenting misery and hate. Now, a newspaper is a fairly appropriate place for all this, but the misery of The Lockhorns is strangely one-note and eternal.
It is also, frequently, not funny at all. I mean, look, I find hate as funny as the next guy. Actually I probably find it a lot funnier than the next guy, actually. The Lockhorns is just relentlessly depressing, though. It’s a domestic incident occurring forever, a rolling pin coming down on a head forever. It is the perpetual reminder that the most horrible people on Earth are out there, failing at life entirely, with only these sad little panels of bitter non-humor to show for it.
3) The Born Loser, 1965+
I haven’t seen early strips from The Born Loser’s run, but a cursory glance at its cast and its horrifyingly outdated art style identify it as a nightmare of the '60s. He has clearly long since suffered death of the spirit, and is just waiting for his damnable shell of flesh to cease moving.
This is a fucking terrible strip, and how it ran for over forty years is baffling to me if those first thirty years are anywhere near as bad as the last ten. The Born Loser of recent memory is one of those strips that makes you want to go drink a fifth of whiskey and then blow your brains out to end the suffering. Its sole theme is this unending agony of white suburban middle-class life, and day after day we watch the protagonist humiliated persistently by a callous employer, a hatchet-faced cow of a wife, and his cold-hearted, ignorant children. It’s like reading a Kafka story, only at no point will the protagonist enjoy the blissful release of turning into a cockroach.
No, The Born Loser is a mobius strip that leads to and exists in hell. It’s the endless wheel of samsara, grinding a man ever more finely into dust for our supposed amusement. It would be one thing if The Born Loser’s endless parade of hate was a good hilarious black comedy, but most of the jokes are like malformed one-armed Ritalin babies, too deformed and nonfunctional to live. This strip is never funny, never interesting, never even passably well-drawn… it’s like a perfect diagram of everything wrong with the vast majority of insufferable, “family oriented” newspaper strips.
And yet, somehow, it’s not the worst strip on this list That’s how fucking miserable the state of newspaper comics is at this point.
2) Snuffy Smith, 1934+
In the '30s, a weird and terrible transformation took place in American comedy. People discovered the hillbilly stereotype, the eternal bane of West Virginia. Hillbilly jokes were like ethnic jokes, but since you were telling them about poor white people, nobody minded. In fact, many old jokes about the Irish seem to have transformed themselves into hillbilly jokes as a survival mechanism, possibly because most of the actual hillbillies at the time were dirt-poor, uneducated descendants of oppressed Scots-Irish mine workers.
People went nuts for hillbilly humor in all forms. It was all the fun of racism without any chance of one of those darn pesky unpleasant race riots! The craze spawned movies, radio shows, comic books… and it infected the funny pages, too. Not everything to come out of this trend was negative, mind you. Both Al Capp’s excellent Li’l Abner and Walt Kelly’s equally excellent Pogo owed a lot of their backwoods flavor to the hillbilly craze. Both Li’l Abner and Pogo weren’t content just to repeat redneck jokes, though, instead injecting their farcical settings with a lot of clever social commentary. Also, not incidentally, both strips were amazingly well-drawn, and both graciously ended their runs in the '70s, both as a result of cultural changes and aging creators.
Good art, biting satire, clever jokes… you won’t find any of these things in Snuffy Smith, which stands now as one of the worst strips currently running in newspapers. Such was the power of the hillbilly craze in the '30s that a one-off hillbilly character inserted in the long-running Barney Google strip could pretty much take it over, almost overnight. Snuffy Smith is everything horrible and tiresome about the hillbilly premise without any of the funny bits Li’l Abner and Pogo added. Snuffy is lazy and awful and shiftless, his wife is a horrible man-faced hag, everyone speaks in godawful phonetic accents…
Oh, and did I mention Snuffy Smith is a legacy strip? Of course it is, if it’s been running since 1934. It’s actually gone through the creator, the creator’s assistant who took it over, and now the assistant’s assistant is in charge. By this point the strip has reached an insane level of inertia, a totally ossified status quo, and jokes that rarely conform to any linear concept of human thought or behavior. At this point Snuffy Smith is like something drawn and written by aliens who have no concept of human life save what they’ve learned by watching Beverly Hillbillies reruns, and I believe it is mathematically possible to prove it is incapable of entertaining anyone, anywhere, at any time.
1) Family Circus, 1960+
Hey, speaking of things that are incapable of entertaining anyone! God, how do you even make fun of the Family Circus at this point? It’s made out of the equivalent of spent-comedy uranium, dense and impenetrable. You can do all the nasty little frat boy parodies with sex and cursing and eviscerations you want, and yet Family Circus still exists, undamaged, oblivious and eternal. Someone must enjoy this comic strip, given the sheer volume of newspapers it runs in, but I cannot begin to fathom who this person is… perhaps someone’s quaint grandmother. Does this country really have that many quaint grandmothers left in the population?
Family Circus is on a basic level flawed in pretty much every way a newspaper strip is going to be. It runs in a single cramped circular panel most days, which means utilitarian and unattractive art. The Sunday strips occasionally look better, but not terribly often given the stiff and unnatural character designs. The family-oriented jokes are safe and predictable and profoundly incapable of being funny. It’s a legacy strip, with the usual awkwardness made much stranger by the fact that creator Bil is still around to write, in collaboration with son Jeff, who is telling stories about his dim-witted melon-headed fictional child self, Jeff.
Like so much on the newspaper comics page, Family Circus is a curious artifact from an earlier era, and reflects a frustratingly naïve view of family and gender dynamics. It seems it’s meant to be comforting, but its assertion of cheerful reality is so insistent that you start feeling outright guilty if you happen to read it while having any sort of emotional dysfunction. And, let’s face it, most people are going to experience more emotional dysfunction than the endlessly saccharine fake family seen in Family Circus, with only their own horrible imperfections as people to blame.
I would also point out how fucking unfunny the strip is, but at points I’m not sure it’s even all that interested in bothering with the gags. Sometimes the strip tries to be inspirational, which results in flagrant insanity. Sometimes it’s whimsical and childish, which just gets tedious in newspaper strips after awhile. Family Circus is really the terrible newspaper strip at its apex, something that can’t possibly amuse anyone that is still on the equivalent of every single channel. It’s the tyranny of an invisible, utterly idiotic majority.
Comments
I was SURE that Garfield was going to be #1. Where the hell is Garfield on this list?
Posted 09/18/2008 at 05:51:50 AMNo, Garfield MUST continue . . . . if only for this website:
http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:23:09 AMOkay the commentary on Born Loser is perhaps one of the funniest bits of prose I have read ever read on this site.
I would also add the following strips for consideration:
Hi & Lois is like a poor man's Family Circus. All the unfunny family crap...now in strip form.
Beetle Bailey has beaten the dead horse of being a lazy private to the point the dead horse isn't even there anymore.
Marmaduke just sucks. I don't know if it's been funny in my entire life.
Peanuts reruns need to stop too. Yes Charles Schultz was the master of the comics page. Even after his strip had had stopped being funny or relevant. But seriously, if we can't let go of dead strips, then nothing new will ever make it into the comics page and it will continue to die. Painfully.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:29:49 AMI am aghast. You've written an article on lifeless, soul-crushing, b&w dullness and didn't mention Marmaduke? Marmaduke supersedes not just every other comic strip, but its equivalent in every other form of media, as the most tired, non-entertaining piece of coprolite still on display in America. I know octogenarians who find the humor old and outdated. I don't even know anyone who likes Marmaduke in an ironic way, thats how unhip it is.
I petition you. reconsider!
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:33:00 AMI think it's a good list and THANK YOU for calling out the hateful mess that B.C. has become. And For Better For Worse. Who decided the comics page would be the venue for giant downer lessons in morality?
But... Marmeduke?
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:37:40 AMGarfield still inspires Garfield minus Garfield, so it has some redeeming value.
I met Jeff of Family Circus fame. Actually have a sketch by him. Let me tell you, he creeped me the hell out. I still shudder remembering it.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:46:49 AMI think "Garfield" has been redeemed in some fashion by "Garfield Minus Garfield".
Also, a comedienne friend of mine produces "Lockhorns Aloud", which provides a deeper insight into a strip with no particular insight to begin with. She has expressly stated her contempt for this strip, so that makes it more enjoyable.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 07:09:04 AMI figured that Garfield and the beloved Peanuts gang would be like #2 and #3. I remember Garfield possibly being funny when I was like 10 years old Oh so many years ago and Peanuts stopped being funny after the 10 thousandths time Marcie said to Peppermint Patty, "You're weird sir" in place of a working punchline in the strip. Plus Charles M. Schulz has been dead for like 8 and a half years now! Though I still force the half-hour animated features upon my son on whenever they are on.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 07:16:55 AMFamily Circus should be #1 IMHO. Not funny at all!
This list makes me want to mainline non-shitty comic strips right into my jugular just to counteract the venom of these horrible pieces of noxious runny shit. QUICK! Somebody throw Krazy Kat and Ignatz in the blender and get the syringe!
Posted 09/18/2008 at 07:24:27 AMWhat? No Fred Basset? The worst "comedy" to come out of Great Britain since Benny Hill?
Posted 09/18/2008 at 07:41:01 AMA comedian friend of mine, Jill, who is apparently insane, recently decided to blog audio posts wherein she reads and interprets Lockhorns aloud. It's called...Lockhorns Aloud.
http://lockhornsaloud.livejournal.com/
Posted 09/18/2008 at 07:59:01 AMUmm... Ziggy anyone? He's like the kid with down syndrome they hire at goodwill so they can get a tax break. seriously, I'd rather cut my fingers off and eat them machine girl style than turn that page to see that miserable little bastard in the top corner of the comics section.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 08:07:30 AMBravo! Of course, if you want to see a real example of how tragic the loss of a creator and the shrinking size of comics can be when it attacks a venerable action strip, you need to check out Dick Tracy. Not only is the artwork - once impressionistic and flowing - stiff and cardboard, but the stories themselves - which used to move quickly and with a minimum of excess fat - are padded out to infinity with many strips seeming to be panel-by-panel reprises of the strips immediately before them, just with slightly different artwork.
Case in point, in a recent storyline the character of Shirl Locke bursts into a room where the villain Baskerville has just released, um, hounds. Everybody with a dog whistle is safe, but she naturally doesn't have one - and we are treated to roughly six strips based around the same sequence of events.
1) Shirl Locke bursts into the room.
2) Tracy *notices* Shirl has burst into the room.
3) Tracy points out that she has no whistle as the dogs advance.
By the end of the week, I was screaming, "Will you just rip her to shreds and be done with it already?"
No respite, either. The audience for Tracy is currently in its second week of being reminded every day that Diet is the man who created Tracy's two-way wrist communicator, followed by a teaser of an even greater invention in the final panel - only to have the next strip begin with Diet reminding Tracy that he invented his two-way wrist communidator....
Posted 09/18/2008 at 08:07:39 AMI was expecting Gasoline Alley to be somewhere in the top (bottom?) three. Have you ever read that thing? Because...wow. "Complete shit" doesn't even begin to cover it.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 08:09:50 AMAnyone who thinks "Funky Winkerbean" should be discontinued without
Posted 09/18/2008 at 08:13:44 AMgiving even a thought to "Wee Pals," "Heathcliff, "Hagar the
Horrible," "Ziggy," "Shoe" or "Marmaduke" simply has no business
commenting on the funny pages.
The sad part is that the list should be 20 at least. Every Sunday I have to read the comics because I know my 8 year old daughter will ask me what does these mean. They are so un funny now that even 8 years olds don't think they are funny- a sad state of affairs.
Last Sunday the LA Times announced that they will be polling their readers as if they should continue with For Better or Worse. I think they need to re-do their entire comic page. So very few that they have are funny. If I write a note to them do any of you have any suggestions as to what they SHOULD run?
Posted 09/18/2008 at 08:57:41 AMAlicia Ashby needs to get a life.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 09:03:37 AMI am a cartoonist. I am not a professional cartoonist. I love the art of comic strips. I love the history of comic strips. I do not love 95% of the crap that passes for comic strips in newspapers nowadays (and having worked in many newspapers, what is going to happen to comics once newspapers die off?).
I really hate the process of replacing dead artists with their wannabe children, or cousins, or a neighborhood kid that would hang out at their mansions. I hate reruns. I hate that syndicates don't try harder to have new products. Find new talent. Promote new talent. Make a new Garfield instead of milking the one that died so very long ago.
I think there is a shelf life of 10 years for any comic strip. There is a rare few that stayed relevant after 10 years... okay maybe it was just peanuts, but that degenerated so much by the end that it should have stopped in the early 80's.
I want a future where you read comics daily (or at least weekly) and are not insulted by 30 to 60 year old dinosaurs telling the same fucking joke everyday!
The closest we come to that is in alternative newspapers, but let's face it. Those only run the same three comic strips, which get more repetitive, the older they get. Yeah, I'm talking to you Tom Tomorrow.
I'm glad Calvin and Hobbes ended when it did. I just wish Watterson would have done something new. It's been like 13 years and we don't even know if he is alive, much less drawing!
I could go on for hours.... I am such a dork.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 09:25:24 AMThe Cathy panel at the tops reminds me of the last (and maybe only time) I laughed at Cathy...
On 30 Rock when Tina Fey recreated that panel.
HILARIOUS!
Posted 09/18/2008 at 09:27:35 AMI think you've been away from 'BC' for too long. It has returned to its 1970's form of being funny. The jokes are funny and sometimes a bit naughty.
The 'new' BC is every bit as good as the BC that I recall from the 1970's. In fact, I would argue that BC is the one of the few legacy strips that ought to be kept because the new artist is a good comic strip writer.
Now if we could only find a way to drive a stake through the heart of For Better or For Worse....
Regards,
Posted 09/18/2008 at 09:59:29 AMDann
I had no idea they still printed Born Loser and Spider-Man ( haven't seen either since the early 90's).
Posted 09/18/2008 at 10:20:53 AMFor daveh, who asked for suggestions as to what a paper should be
running in place of zombie and just general crap strips, check out:
Pooch Café (funniest talking animal strip ever ... maybe the funniest
strip ever, period)
Boffo (in a better world, federal law would mandate inclusion of Boffo
in every comics page in the nation)
Ballard Street (very weird, but pretty good)
Pearls Before Swine (a little dark, but rarely outright in appropriate)
Sally Forth (this is not your father's Sally Forth, it's been amazingly
great the last few years)
Speed Bump (one of the better "Far Side" imitators)
Bizarro (uneven, but brilliant often enough to merit consideration)
Get Fuzzy (not as great as it was five years ago, but still good)
Monty (offbeat enough to gain a following in LA, I think)
Mutts (see comments under "Boffo")
One Big Happy (very amusing family strip, just edgy enough to keep
adults' attention along with the kiddies)
Tank McNamara (been around forever, but not a "legacy" strip, and
often very incisive)
Willy 'n' Ethel (why does "The Lockhorns" even exist when this is out
there?)
Arlo 'n' Janis (brilliant)
Frazz (Calvin grows up and becomes a songwriting janitor; it's WAY
better than that sounds)
Fusco Brothers (maybe I'm the last guy left who likes this one)
Ink Pen (terrific)
Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! (hilarious, if not that well drawn,
spoof on space opera)
Housebroken (hip-hop talking dog
Candorville (another "black" strip
Big Nate (great strip with broad appeal)
Brevity (an even better "Far Side" imitator with -- as the name
implies -- a truly witty edge)
Mallard Fillmore (just kidding!)
Posted 09/18/2008 at 10:28:56 AMAny list of this nature that does not include MALLARD FILLMORE is an Epic Fail of Chernobylistic proportions.
Hammering nails into my lifeless gray grandpa organ provides more laughs than MALLARD FILLMORE, and it doesn't leave me any stupider afterwards.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 10:35:19 AMI'm stymied that nobody has mentioned "Mary Worth", maybe it has a bigger following than just me.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 10:40:49 AMAgreed on Marmaduke, Shoe, Heathcliff, Hagar the Horrible, Gasoline Alley, Beetle Bailey, etc.
Daveh, I have no idea what the LA Times does and doesn't carry. But ones you might want to look at include (in no particular order): Cul de Sac, My Cage, Pearls Before Swine, Get Fuzzy, Lio, Monty, Agnes, F-Minus and Sally Forth (if you've seen it from years ago, don't be put off; the new writer, Francesco Marciuliano, is top-notch). And since you mentioned having an 8-year-old, I'd like to put in a special plug for Slylock Fox (it's geared to kids, but it has an intensely loyal adult following on the Comics Curmudgeon as well). No guarantee you'll like all of them -- I consider some of them hit and miss myself -- but they're better than a lot of what's on the comics page today. I'd look at two or three weeks' worth of old ones to get a good sense.
Be aware they're unlikely to go for a complete overhaul. Upheaval on the comics page is very risky, and people will threaten to cancel their subscriptions; that's why your paper's trying to make this as democratic a process as possible. As much as it may need a complete overhaul (and there's no harm in saying so), you may want to pick your battles and suggest two or three that are your least favorites. Provide compelling reasons those two or three shouldn't be run any more (easiest here, probably, to go after the legacy strips that aren't even drawn by the original artist any more. Wiz of Id, BC and Marmaduke all made that transition very recently, so there's a timely reason to bring them up for debate). Tell them you understand that upheaval on the comics page is risky for newspapers, but as long as they're talking about FBOFW, they should consider getting input from readers on some of these other legacy strips that have just been passed on.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 10:44:53 AMWhere the fuck is Marmaduke? That is by far THE WORST comic strip in the history of time. It has NEVER ONCE been funny.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 11:06:37 AMWhere is Boondocks?
This strip only got worse once the great and talented Aaron McGruder stopped drawing it so that it could become more anime to flow better with the cartoon.
I hate that comic strips are treated as merchandise and not art.
I worked for the same newspaper company as Jeff Mallet (the creator of Frazz), just a few years apart. His daily strips are better than his Sundays.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 01:13:26 PMMagical Shrimp NAILED it. 'Gasoline Alley' makes me want to hug a blind person and let them know how lucky they are. Worst. Shit. Ever.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 01:45:44 PMLOL, I am surprised the "White Ninja" is not on that list! LOL, I think BC has been around since BC LOL
Slappy
Posted 09/18/2008 at 01:48:33 PMwww.anonymize.us.tc
comics don't reflect real life anymore
and maybe that's a good thing:
filthyrichmond.com
Posted 09/18/2008 at 01:50:48 PMMany of the strips mentioned above have ceased being funny. However Momma was never funny to begin with. Horribly drawn, it's been tooting the same note on a dented trumpet for years.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 01:54:00 PM1. For Better or For Worse
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:06:43 PM2. Hagar the horrible
3. Marmaduke
4. Zippy (did this comic ever make sense?)
5. Fred Bassett
6. Garfield
7. Sally Forth
8. Cathy
9. Pluggers
10. Frank and Ernest
Not Cathy! I have a soft spot in my heart for that strip :)
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:12:03 PMDude, you're wack. The Lockhorns is the beans supreme!
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:12:33 PMAnd where are Mary Worth, Dick Tracy, Phantom and the like.... blearghhhh...
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:14:54 PMI met Bill Keane (Family Circus)some years ago. He seemed like a miserable dirty old man, telling non-stop unfunny and disturbing dirty old man jokes. I'd be surprised if he's still alive.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:16:02 PMMany of the strips mentioned above have ceased being funny. However Momma was never funny to begin with. Horribly drawn, it's been tooting the same note on a dented trumpet for years.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:16:06 PMWhy hasn't anyone mentioned Rex Morgan MD and all those crappy "soap opera" comics? As a child WTH would I ever want soap opera's in my funny pages?? As an adult WTH would I ever want soap opera's in my funny pages?? I can't even begin to describe how ludicrous it is to have "soap opera" comics in with the funny pages. It always disgusted me to even have to pass my eyes over that useless crap as I moved on to the next comic.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:17:54 PMI cannot believe "Prince Valiant" is not on this list. That garbage has been around for WAY too long. I'm insulted every time I open the Sunday funnies. I'd rather ANY of the above comics than that boring snoozefest. It's badly drawn, uses storylines that go nowhere, and is so antiquated my kids think it's an ad for old people.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:18:15 PMYou're wrong about Cathy.
It started off as unfunny crap in the first place and then went south from there. My brothers have always bitched about how much it sucked and now, after years of repeating the same self-defeating unfunny "jokes", it's not just bad it's Abu Ghraib.
Well at least it's drawn well.
If I had a daughter like Cathy I'd slap her across the lips.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:22:33 PMIn Australia you could add Snakes Tales to that list. It was somewhat quirky and interesting years ago but has since lost any redeeming value. Most of the strips are just puns which don't work all that well.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:24:52 PMWhat about Blondie?
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:29:14 PMDidn't really think many people actually read them, anyway?
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:31:04 PMMarmaduke is a disgrace to dogs and comic strips everywhere. I hate very few things, but Marmaduke is definitely one of them. Humorless, unamusing, not memorable, and I've seen doggy tales done much better elsewhere, without that bastardized, not-so-great dane.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:36:58 PMLots of good suggestions by people with far better memories than mine. My father would always read Prince Valiant. I never got it...it looked dumb and boring. Rex Morgan and Fred Bassett are also notable suggestions.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:49:30 PMJD Baldwin: Don't forget Foxtrot. That and Get Fuzzy reign supreme.
I am glad Garfield isn't on the list, and not just for Garfield minus Garfield. There has been some improvement since they did that arc to get Jon and Liz together... I'm curious to see if they can keep that going, or better still, build on it.
The Lockhorns, though... it's like a comic strip version of Married... with Children without nearly as much bite.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 02:50:02 PMLOVE IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted 09/18/2008 at 03:00:26 PM!!!!!
!
!
!
!
!!!!!!yah
Incomplete.
Fred Bassett is a Point and Say. The bassett says something and we see it, and that's ALL it does. "Bert and I...are two of a kind!" and we see two bassets walking along the sidewalk next to each other with the same sappy smiles on their doggie faces. Every time I read this strip I wind up saying, "Yeah...so?!?"
Hi & Lois - Known at my house as Scenes from Suburban Hell. Hi is constantly miserable and henpecked from his Non-Name Corporate Job and Lois is a perpetually put-upon working mom by their own dictates of how life in suburbia should be. Teenage Chip is OF COURSE the standard lazy teen drawn in excruciatingly 1960's groovy-hippie style (What the hell, there've been FOUR DECADES since then, didn't Walker & Browne get the memo?!) Dot and Ditto are astral twins to the horror that is Family Circus, and Trixie the baby continues to talk to her damn sunbeam at every every chance, not that she makes any sense or humor of it.
Beetle Bailey - what can we expect from Lois Flagston's lazy assed little brother (obviously Chip's hero)? More 1960's setting showing the worst possible reasons to join or stay in the Army; it's a wonder this strip has not been visited by Special Ops and napalmed. Look, if not for the astonishing subtle love story between Beetle and Sarge, I'd toss this strip long ago. As it is, I do continue to read it just to see just how far Browne and Walker are going to take Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The only funny thing about this strip is that papers who tout "family values" are not paying attention to their own bullshit.
Dennis the Menace does not even menace any more. He's been Political Corrected and watered down until he's just a mild annoyance to a couple of people. He used to be VILE, absolutely terrible, the kind of kid who would gladly blackmail his father or sell minutes to kids to peep on his mother. In the old days we would have seen him artfully terrorize a hapless victim; now it's just a case of walking in to Mr. Wilson's house and eat a cookie, or into the old man's bath. Even his barbs toward Margaret have lost their cut and zing. Yeah, Dennis is no menace. He's on Ritalin.
For Better or For Worse needs to be stopped, dropped, and rolled. After enduring 28 years of Michael Patterson glomping and munching and slopping his way through spittle-inducing food, and watching Elly Patterson parade herself as the Font of All Motherly Wisdom despite her life-sized inability to be right, and Liz Patterson morph into a limp-spined apron-clinger who married the pasty-faced manipulative cheater she's been leading around by the dick for years and her parents pushed on her, and John Patterson The World's Biggest Living Asshole in Suburban Dad's Clothing, we sure as hell don't need to REPEAT or RETELL this shit. The only one who came out of the original story well was April, whom the whole family eventually despised for I guess being honest. Lynn Johnston is about to embark on wallowing in the Love of Farley, that big lovable annoying dog who was not so much during the run of the strip but somehow achieved Sainthood status after death when he saved April from a water-filled ravine. Never mind that Elly never locked the gate and it was actually HER fault for not looking out after her own child; never mind that the dog was older than dirt and should have shuffled off its mortal coil long ago; this is FARLEY, and somehow that means Glurge and Adoration. Add the fact that nothing the Patterson Elite do is EVER called on or seen as less than wonderful and they never have to struggle. Mike wants to be a writer? Boom! he not only finishes writing his book and even saves his laptop instead of his family from a fire: less than a month later this first time author is offered a contract AND a $25,000 advance for a sappy, purple prose historical non-romance, all without an agent. And Liz fails to learn anything except how to re-live her mother's life. But instead of following Liz's story, we have to rush back to the Bad Old Days and start all over again despite the fact that Lynn Johnston can no longer write believable childrens' dialogue or draw them age-appropriate, and keep it interesting. This strip just needs to Shut the Fuck Up and retire already.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 03:11:52 PMwhoa, where is Gasoline Alley on this list? i hated that strip when i was ten, and today i can't even get past the first two panels. half the time it doesn't even end on the punch line, like they had more panels than it took to tell the joke. it's the most horrible excuse for humor i've ever experienced. far, far worse than Family Circus.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 03:13:57 PMIn 10 years there won't be anymore newspapers, much less a comics page.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 03:17:25 PMSad but true.
The survival of Gil Thorpe probably has much to do with its current author, Jerry Jenkins, who is also the co-author of the LEFT BEHIND series. Millions of people read Jenkins' post-Rapture Christianist drivel, and newspaper editors probably fear that they'll lose those readers (or incite them to violence) if they seem to be dissing their icon.
Meanwhile, Family Circus has at least given us one pleasant spin-off: the Nietzsche Family Circus. (http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/)
Posted 09/18/2008 at 03:30:06 PMYeah I have to agree , great list, but you missed Blondie.
Other than that and one or two others that could probably make the cut (Marmaduke I am looking at you)
Posted 09/18/2008 at 03:39:15 PMAll true, but really there aren't any newspaper comics any more that don't make me feel like crapping myself. They're all this bad.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 03:56:30 PMThis would have been a good article except for the pointless swear words you used. You clearly have a better command of the English language than that, or were you trying to sound like a tough guy whilst writing about the funnies?
Posted 09/18/2008 at 03:56:37 PMNancy: Loved Ernie Bushmiller's version which was surreal and odd. The people who "draw" it now? Yuck.
Momma: Ugh
Love Is: Disgusting
Posted 09/18/2008 at 04:08:17 PMJudging by your language, I think you wouldn't know good humor if it came up and bit you. At least the strips on your list are decent enough for children, unlike your column.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 04:46:44 PMHere is a challenge for you: Write a column about the cartoon strips you think are good, and try to write it so that I wouldn't be ashamed to show it to my kids.
Sandy Cheeks: "Pinhead Larry, You're Pure Evil!!! Just like Newspaper Comics!"
Well said, Sandy. Well said.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 04:54:54 PMI just read through all the comments and the artical. I would have bet my life savings that Moose Miller would have been mentioned somewhere on this page. Its a good thing i don't bet. Family circus is by far my most hated comic, but friggin Moose Miller is in an extremely close second place.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 05:27:52 PMWhat about Mark Trail? I did recently see a hilarious commentary on it though. Ones I would like to see even in reruns would be all the ones from the old National Lampoon magazine (I think only Zippy the Pinhead made it out) and Matt Groening's "Life in Hell"
Posted 09/18/2008 at 05:39:38 PMSee, when human beings get very angry, they swear. That's what swear words are for, to convey that you are very, very angry. Hence, the swear words in the article.
As for whether you'd show this article to your young'uns, frankly, who the fuck cares? This is the grownup world, not Gymboree. Grow the hell up.
See, your patronizing self-righteous attitude made me very angry, so I used some swears. That's how it works here in All Growed Up Town.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 05:45:47 PMI grew up in DC with 3 FULL pages of comics and now have a piss poor paper with weak comics... but we do get Mark Trail... It is the slowest comic strip in the history of comics... but I love it!
Posted 09/18/2008 at 05:50:20 PMOh, and before I forget, I agree with you on all these strips, though like others, I cannot believe those animal horrors Garfield and Marmaduke missed the cut. I know, I know, it's a top ten list and really, the state of the art is so god damned bad that it would have been easier to write "The Ten Newspaper Comic Strips That Don't Need to F**king End Just Yet", assuming there's ten left.
The funnies pages is dead, dead, dead. Webcomics are where it's at now. From the cartoonist's POV, why on Earth should be try to break into the syndicates when he can just put up a website, attract an audience, and make a little off advertising and possibly a LOT off hardcopy "dead tree" editions, T-shirts, mugs, and other merch?
And for those of us who love the form too much to read any of the shambling horrors on the newspaper pages today, webcomics are easy to get and there's just so many good ones out there (and of course, Stugeon's Law, way way more really BAD ones) that you can develop your list of strips almost without limit. I read around 40 myself.
So really, it's the funnies page that will f**king die.
And I will mourn its passing, but I will probably not actually miss it one bit.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 05:55:31 PMyou know Lynn Johnson is a very sick lady and that is why the comics have ended. i enjoy the reruns.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 05:59:47 PMNailed it. There are certainly lots of other terrible strips you didn't mention, but I can't think of a more suitable #1 than Family Circus. I wouldn't even submit those to my editor for the fear that he'd say 'You know the comics are supposed to be amusing, right? This isn't even a joke!'
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:03:54 PMDKSP, coming right up! You want a shot of Nemo with that? Or I got a special on Yellow Kid too ;).
Ah, nothin' like the oldies...
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:09:42 PMComics that should've been retired AGES ago:
Peanuts (no relevance to present times, and I've never really understood what is just SO entertaining about both the strip and the half-hour holiday features network TV channels just can't get enough of)
Nancy (WTF?)
Arlo & Janis (I've never really grasped what was funny or witty about this strip)
Garfield (Bleh.)
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:12:20 PMComics that should've been retired AGES ago:
Peanuts (no relevance to present times, and I've never really understood what is just SO entertaining about both the strip and the half-hour holiday features network TV channels just can't get enough of)
Nancy (WTF?)
Arlo & Janis (I've never really grasped what was funny or witty about this strip)
Garfield (Bleh.)
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:13:37 PMComics that should've been retired AGES ago:
Peanuts (no relevance to present times, and I've never really understood what is just SO entertaining about both the strip and the half-hour holiday features network TV channels just can't get enough of)
Nancy (WTF?)
Arlo & Janis (I've never really grasped what was funny or witty about this strip)
Garfield (Bleh.)
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:13:56 PMAll newspaper comics should be wiped. They've sucked for years and no one is doing anything about it.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:15:02 PMThese days, it seems like there are more bad strips than good ones. Too much of the humor has been homogenized. As for stuff that has to go:
Howard Huge: Bunny Hoest takes time off from The Lockhorns by recycling old Marmaduke jokes. See, there's this dog named Howard, and he's really really big. Are you laughing yet?
Garfield: Once one of the funniest strip being published, there hasn't been anything new in this one in over a decade, except maybe that Garfield has lost his last ounce of charm and become even a bigger dick than he used to be.
Prince Valiant: This strip was kinda cool when Val and his wife Aleta were young and adventurous and romantic. Now they are a cranky, middle-aged couple who constantly bitch about being apart for months at a time, but barely tolerate each other when they are together. It's like The Lockhorns with swords.
Opus: Yeah, I know. Berke Breathed is a frickin' genius and this one hasn't been around very long. Wrong on both counts. Berke is a shell of his former sharp-witted self, and this strip wore out its welcome the week after it was first published. Note to Breathed: Cynical political satire doesn't mix with the word "doody-head".
Doonesbury: Some papers have caught on and started putting this strip on the editorial pages, where the rest of the biased, one-sided, condescending political propaganda belongs. Garry Trudeau expressed his opposition to the Iraq War by building a series of strips around a war vet who took shrapnel to the brain from a land mine. What a prick!
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:30:32 PMI've have to say the comic I hate the most is Doonesbury. Christ it's terrible. SO TERRIBLE.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:31:07 PMWho finds Family Cicus funny? Not me.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:31:14 PMWhy hasn't anyone mentioned Blondie? That strip is downright painful to read. I haven't bothered for years.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:49:02 PMI dont think you need to really need to advocate shutting these down....my newspaper only carries 2 out of all of these, so evolution is naturally occurring.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 06:54:21 PMAnd yet no mention of Hagaar the Horrible. Same exact strip as the other dreadful ones: stupid guy, horrible man-faced cow of a wife--only THIS ONE'S A VIKING!! Gee, that makes everything totally different!
nope. still sucks.
And "Myself" above, what, you think so little of children that there can be no funny comics that kids can read? You think that stuff like the Lockhorns, dripping hydrochloric acid of hate, is appropriate reading? Interesting.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 07:08:10 PMI like Funky, everything else though can go. All it does it keep new artists off the funny pages and stops younger readers from buying papers.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 07:14:44 PM"Pearls Before Swine" is the funniest comic since "Calvin and Hobbes". I have not laughed out loud at a comic strip in years until I started reading it.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 07:15:30 PMAm I the only one that finds some of the older comics comforting? Something that you loved from childhood that's still there every day. Peanuts, BC, Blondie, Lockhorns, Family Circus, Beetle Bailey, Hi & Lois...etc. I gotta tell you, as a 42 year old guy in this crazy world, it's nice to open the comics and see the same old familiar faces I used to see when my father would read the "funnies" to me.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 07:18:57 PMWe need a punch line quota. Cathy would have self-destructed long ago, along with some of these other franchises.
Bengo
Posted 09/18/2008 at 07:41:16 PMhttp://lilnyet.com
webcomics are better than newspaper comics
I freakin' love the Lockhorns. What's wrong with you? Their witty comments on their horrible relationship are worth taking notes over. I've never found it any more depressing than any other meant-to-be-comedy depressing scene. There's a difference between it actually happening (in which case the comments would still be lol-worthy) and it being in a comic strip.
Posted 09/18/2008 at 09:12:13 PMYou know I actually thought family circus was hilarious. But that's due to the fact that the first family circus cartoons I read were in a Mad Magazine parody - I actually looked forward to reading one after that piece (it had the kids trying to kill each other off at some points I think). Pity I eventually found some. It took me some time to realise there wouldn't be any dark humour (or any humour) whatsoever.
Posted 09/19/2008 at 12:31:24 AMObviously the Family Circus strip is too deep for some of you bastids. You're trying to measure it on some scale of funniness or "laffability." The level of ha-ha in the strip is not the appropriate criterion. Bill Keane (now w/his son Jeff) is attempting to explore/explode the myth of the "Perfect Family." No one in real life has these kind of relationships, so when we look inside that circle, what we first notice is the contrast with our current world. The images of idyllic family life create a seed of frustration and longing in the reader. These are people you wish you were. These are things you wish you had. The true measure of this strip is not how it feels to you, but how it makes you feel. A little angst injection, every time you view it.
Posted 09/19/2008 at 10:05:01 AMTrade Spider-Man for Hagar and ya got a list.
Posted 09/19/2008 at 10:39:28 AMI colorize comics for a syndicate – there are several I'd like to never see again – Mallard Fillmore and Mark Trail being the top two.
Posted 09/19/2008 at 01:03:33 PMAll good suggestions! I'd add Peanuts to them--simply because the current Peanuts comic strips are Reruns (and that's no play on one of the names of the characters in the comic strip). It's time for the Peanuts gang to step aside and give some new strips a try.
Posted 09/19/2008 at 01:37:55 PMKevan, If I were you I wouldn't admit you colorize comics for a syndicate. The color job SUCKS! The strips would be better off left black and white. Maybe you people are working on an extremely tight deadline, but the color work is lazy and completely unispired.
Posted 09/19/2008 at 02:29:38 PMJust to be clear, I was talking about the colorized daily strips in my previous post. The Sunday Color is done by the the creators of the strips.
Posted 09/19/2008 at 02:37:25 PMWho the Hell is Alicia Ashby?
Posted 09/19/2008 at 05:04:32 PMHow dare she set herself up as a comic strip maven.
The strips will die when the public is no longer interested in them.
The Shadow -
You're an idiot. Doonesbury is the ONLY comic that is published daily that has anything to do with the military and reality. Beetle Baily certainly doesn't. Having an opinion doesn't make it a crappy cartoon. Doonesbury has been one of the most insightful, intelligent, and funny comics for years. It hasn't let up in the last few.
Posted 09/19/2008 at 08:01:59 PMAt least there's no more "Nancy" to destroy brain cells. Wish I could say the same about "Mallard Filmore," the most unfunny and mean-spirited "comic" ever.
Posted 09/19/2008 at 09:19:36 PMThe main issue is that the majority of people that still read the newspaper on a daily basis are retirees or older. Readership dictates what's in the funny papers. How many hip 18-34's out there are really getting the daily paper -and- using the comics page as a source of humor?
Strips like Family Circus still survive because there are a LOT of aging grandparents out there that still look at Jeffy and the other "FC" kids and go Awwww! as they are reminded of their own grandkids by way of inane dialog.
The other legacy strips last for a similar reason that Alicia refers to a couple of times; inertia. Those same grandparents want to open the paper everyday, go over the obituaries to see who they know who's died, and read the same damn unfunny comic strips they've been reading for years. Because that's their life! They don't want change. They don't want sharp, witty humor they can't relate to.
Posted 09/19/2008 at 09:57:13 PMThese are the same people who come into the grocery store every damn day to buy 1 or 2 things just to have something to do.
How did Doonsberry miss the list? It's the horrible strip ever created.
Posted 09/20/2008 at 06:05:28 AMWhat about Hagar? My god, it's been played out.
Posted 09/20/2008 at 07:32:35 AMI cannot tell you how utterly sad it makes me that any newspaper anywhere still runs Snuffy Smith. If not for the Family Circus, if for some reason Family Circus would be "disqualified" from this list, Snuffy Smith would take the number 1 spot with a bullet. There is no comic strip that intentionally tries to be funny on a daily basis that fails so utterly miserably to make anyone laugh than Snuffy Smith. Seriously, can we start a petition to have it removed from every newspaper?
Aside from that, totally agree with all of the rest of the article.
My recommendations: Pearls Before Swine, Candorville, Rudy Park (same creator), Pooch Cafe (whoever said it was the best animal comic ever, right on), Non Sequitur, Red Meat, and New Adventures of Queen Victoria (so weird, you have to laugh).
Posted 09/20/2008 at 08:06:03 AM"No, you can not read Parade!"
I loathe Marmaduke and The Lockhorns/i>, and for that matter almost every strip currently in syndication.
But I have a special place of rage when it comes to For Better or For Worse. This maudlin preachy treacly mess is the Family Circus rewritten for the NPR crowd.
Posted 09/20/2008 at 08:53:54 AMAmazing the consensus on this list. I agree with virtually everything, except I'd keep Shoe. B.C. may be back up to form a bit but that born-again phase was just awful. I would definitely kill Get Fuzzy, which was never funny, at least to me. The only funny strip it ever ran was a few days ago when it played on Michael Palin and Sarah Palin sharing names and riffed some good Monty Python puns. Once in ten years is just not good enough. Overboard has crappy art and is unfunny to boot. I'm surprised nobody mentioned "Blondie," which long ago mined out the lode. I like both Doonesbury and Mallard Fillmore - if you can't deal with someone having opinions, you're a pretty sad case. And maybe I'm not qualified to comment, not being black, but Boondocks always struck me as lousy art and mean-spirited to boot. But I'll defer to the judgment of black readers on that one.
Posted 09/20/2008 at 09:36:10 AMYou can't take Blondie out. She's about the only cartoon left with boobs and a figure. And it's still got the goods on occasion.
Our paper dropped Zippy a couple of years ago, ostensibly because nobody here knew what the hell it was about (although a large minority probably hate clowns). Still, much as I tried not to read it, I usually did.
One I used to enjoy was Non Sequitir. But the Sunday version keeps venturing into Prince Valiant territory with pointless fantasy stories. What's up with that?
The only ones I find humorous these days are Dilbert and Zits.
I suppose one reason so many "old" comics survive is because most newspaper readership is, well... old.
Posted 09/20/2008 at 02:13:38 PMLoved the commentary on those cruddy strips.
I'd like to add some of my own that I hope you'll write about in the future:
Blondie, Marmaduke, Ziggy, Garfield, Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois, and Hagar the Horrible: All of them needs to die. The same lame jokes have been repeated so many times that they lost all of their funny many years ago.
Posted 09/20/2008 at 06:50:48 PMClose to Home: This strip has never been funny. Maybe it appeals to eight year olds.
Housebroken: Don't know how many newspapers this strip is in, but can't bear to read it anymore. It attempts to be funny using ghetto stereo-types that just don't work and never have.
97 reponses so far, and to my astonishment absolutely no one has menitoned Alley Oop! It's "celebrating its 75th anniversay nowadays--unbelievable. Since 1933 readers have been shown how cavemen rode on dinosaurs, for Pete's sake.
LOTS of other strips I'd love to see gone, of course. But you know what? I suspect a large number of posters are people who really never read the funny pages at all. A lot of comments sound just like the ones you always hear from "sophisticates" who decry television, but never actually watch any of the programs they dismiss.
I read every strip every day, except for Rex Morgan and Judge Parker, the soap opera ones. I can't stand some of them, but I read them from habit and from forlorn hope that TODAY there'll be something good. I don't like Hagar or Born Loser or The Middletons or Family Circus or Ziggy. I do like Get Fuzzy sometimes--not lately, though; something's gone wrong there but--and I love Frazz. Thing is, I love Prince Valiant every Sunday, too. As someone said earlier, it's nice in a way to read the same comics you read as a little kid, decades later. Hell, I wish they still had Ella Cinders, Katzenjammer Kids, and Red Ryder!
Posted 09/20/2008 at 10:45:54 PMI was a big fan of FBOFW. I practically grew up with Elizabeth. I still remember my grandmother helping me read one of the Sunday strips when I was 4. I was sad to see it go.
That said, I wish my paper would run something new, daily and Sundays, instead of FBOFW reruns. Once a comic is in permanent reruns, there's no point to having it in a newspaper. If I want to rehash Mike's romance with Rhett, or Elly's bookstore, or Farley's death, or Lawrence coming out of the closet, I'll read a FBOFW collection.
My picks:
FBOFW
Andy Capp (another horrible British zombie strip)
Zippy (does anyone understand is strip?)
Beatle Bailey
Classic Peanuts (for the same reasons as FBOFW)
Marmaduke (was it ever funny?)
Baby Blues
Mallard Fillmore
I like Doonsbury, but I think it and Mallard Fillmore (which I loathe) belong on the editorial page, not the comics page.
Posted 09/20/2008 at 11:09:47 PMAgree with all of those on your list, but startling by its omission is Frank n Earnest. Also, Marmaduke and Heathcliff need to be euthanized.
Posted 09/20/2008 at 11:37:35 PMHow do you make fun of Family Circus, you ask?
Fucked if I know. This website's quite good though.
Posted 09/21/2008 at 04:36:37 AMMany of my personal additions to the list have already been mentioned (Mallard Fillmore especially. You're a dick of a duck, and I'm gonna throw you off the deck of the dock if you don't shut it), but I'm going to use this space to mention a strip with the following egregiously bad traits:
--A main protagonist with a penchant of saying at least one impossible (as it regards his 11 years) thing in most of the strips, showing the writer's tendency to slip into "adult mode." The other stuff isn't anything to write home about, either.
--Endlessly recycled strips where it seems that the only things that change are the names of the relevant elements. Even the annual special arc (which used to be genuinely interesting) became repetitive.
--Shoehorning elements of reality, which, while this should be commended, ultimately do more to highlight the banality of the rest of the "canon" than anything else.
--Elements shamelessly cribbed from other comics, specifically the penchant for stuffing one's face.
--An annoying tendency to put the word "rap" in quotes. It's the equivalent of still putting the word "cool" in quotes. The previous sentence doesn't count. Really.
By now, you must have guessed it (especially with that last one). I'm talking about you, Curtis.
Posted 09/21/2008 at 06:07:51 AMInteresting article. I have to admit there are quite a few comics mentioned that really do need to be ended. I am fortunate to have a paper that has a diverse comic section, that I have seen change over the years. There are a few still included that I really dislike...Get Fuzzy being most notable...though I have tried for years to like it..Finally gave up and just skip it.
That said, I must say how much I admire ALL comic strip artists/writers. What a talent, to be able to look at every day with a different eye, to see things that are out there for everyone to see, and interpret it with the hope that it will make someone smile, or perhaps laugh out loud. And I do laugh out loud, usually several times a week. So I say thank you. Perhaps every day does not provide the hoped for laugh. But the fact that the comics are there, with a few smiles for the day, will leave me grateful to each who work on them.
Posted 09/21/2008 at 06:48:22 AM...Two points:
1) The Family Circus exists for one reason and one reason alone. Do a google on "Dysfunctional Family Circus" and you'll find that reason.
2) You could have added Boondocks to that list. The strip got old and boring the first time Huey copped his angry black man attitude.
...All in all, a list I still agree with, even if Peanuts isn't on it :-)
Posted 09/21/2008 at 12:04:22 PMPrince Valiant.
ick
Posted 09/21/2008 at 04:55:12 PMI agree with your list, those are horrible comics. But...
To those above that say all newspaper strips are terrible. check out Lio. It has partially restored my faith in comics.
Posted 09/21/2008 at 06:48:05 PMSeriously. Garfield is the most purposefully unfunny piece of cynical consumer-cash-in crap ever to appear in a newspaper. Tom Davis should be choked to death on reprints of classic Krazy Kats.
Posted 09/22/2008 at 11:06:04 AMI do not believe someone actually *recommended* Mister Boffo, The Fusco Brothers, and Brevity up there! All of them are boring as wallpaper. I get more laughs from Rose is Rose and the 50th redraw of a garbage-taking moment than those three strips combined. And the artwork? Puh-lease. I find the degradation of art quality in comics to be one of the sadder aspects of the history of the genre. Give me good enough writing and I'll forgive a strip a lot of artistic laziness (I'm looking at you, Pearls Before Swine). But bad art with mediocre writing turns me right off.
For good ones with not enough play, I second the mentions of Rudy Park and Candorville. Liberty Meadows would've been a great strip if the syndicate weren't so damn scared of Frank Cho's sense of humor. For tweaking the three-panel with people to interesting effect, I have to mention Elderberries. I also dig Lio. Bizarro is the one successor to Larson that I find readable. And The Knight Life is a new strip with some real backstory to it and a gentle humor that still makes its point.
I will be the sacrilege speaker and say that Dilbert needs to die. Ever since Adams got full of his own bullshit and left PG&E, the strip's devolved. I also agree that Boondocks went to hell after the first year or two.
Posted 09/22/2008 at 12:05:55 PMFinally, someone else who knows the pain of the current incarnation of Dick Tracy! I used to love reading collections of the classic Gould years when I was a kid, and this is horrible, horrible stuff. I have to mildly defend Gasoline Alley, which I also loved as a kid, although it's still too hung up on the hillbilly humor. It appears next to Dick Tracy in my GoComics subscription, and by comparison it's a marvel of pacing and artistic talent.
Pooch Cafe is indeed the funniest strip out there today.
Posted 09/22/2008 at 12:55:04 PMFunky Winkerbean was never about college. (Maybe you're confusing it with Doonesbury.) They were high schoolers for 20 years (1972-92). Then they aged into adulthood, skipping the college years altogether. I don't recall exactly when it started to suck, but once it got "poignant" it was definitely time to pull the plug.
Posted 09/22/2008 at 02:50:34 PM"See, your patronizing self-righteous attitude made me very angry, so I used some swears. That's how it works here in All Growed Up Town."
Hahahahahahah. So he's being patronizing. The sad thing is, you probably believe your own "I swear coz I'm all a-growed up" crap. C'mon, look at your comically irate answer. You swear on your page because you're just a cynical jerk who needs the approval of the hip crowd, plain and simple.
But don't let this get in the way of your chest beating or your schedule of South Park reruns. Don't forget to chomp casually on a cig -more manly cred-, play console shooters, that's how things work in your All Growed Up Town.
Posted 09/22/2008 at 05:09:07 PMAs Runelock said, the problem is that the paper's read mostly by old folks.
It wasn't always that way.
Papers started cutting cartoons down in the 70s because of the paper shortage.
The problem is, this lost younger readers who usually began reading papers because of the comics page. As the editors market more and more towards an older crowd and believe "don't nobody make waves," newspapers say less and less. Will Rogers is credited as saying he didn't know the secret of success, but the way to failure is to try and please everybody. And that's what newspapers are about today. Studies show investigative, in-depth and hard news stories sell papers, but they also make for complaint calls.
And that, wally, is why bad strips won't die when people get tired of them. Some schmuck wiill call and complain, and an idiot editor will cave in. And so ends another uniquely American invention and cultural item.
JTK: I find my collection books of old strips comforting. I find spiritually dead strips discomforting and rather sad.
Many have mentioned Mallard Fillmore. I see more and more papers dropping that strip -- and for good reason. The creator is everything he accuses liberals of: mean spirited, clueless, humorless, unaccepting. Plus, he throws in his own set of stereotypes ("I worked for an editor at a small Indiana paper who was liberal like this, so all liberals must be like this.") and mean-spirited caricatures.
A shame no newspaper has thought about bringing back Spirit sections and doesn't care about letting this art form die.
Posted 09/23/2008 at 12:51:24 PMGasoline Alley started out in 1921, done by Frank King. The early strips are being reissued by Drawn and Quarterly, a la Fantagraphics and Peanuts, etc. I have to say that the early strip is quite good. King's sense of line and of humor are both very strong. The strip was a phenomenon, not the least for being the first to age characters naturally, something not done again until For Better or Worse, for better or worse.
I agree that the current ones by Scancarelli are kinda bad, although the ones where he focuses on the actual Wallet family aren't too bad. I mention all this because I hate to see King tarred with Scancarelli's brush. He and the early strip don't deserve it.
Posted 09/24/2008 at 09:08:16 PMNot only were Frank King's early GASOLINE ALLEY strips great, but his successor Dick Moores was even better. Unfortunately, Moores (who spent a lot of time drawing Disney comic books for Dell before working on GA) passed away in 1986 and his assistant Jim Scancarelli was never able to maintain the high standards Moores set.
Our paper, The St. Petersburg Times, has carried most of the strips on this list in the past, but only FAMILY CIRCUS currently. I agree that it is a pitiful excuse for humor, and am reminded of the "Pinky & the Brain" sequence in which Pinky cries and wails that "The Family Circus" isn't funny anymore. Brain replies "The Family Circus was NEVER funny, Pinky." How true, how true.
We may never see the likes of THE FAR SIDE or CALVIN & HOBBES again, but I think LIO comes very close to achieving that high level of wit and weirdness...sort of like CALVIN & HOBBES as done by Gahan Wilson. I still enjoy the heck out of DOONESBURY (unrepentant liberal am I), PEARLS BEFORE SWINE, DILBERT (Adams HAS to have worked for the Post Office, as I do), FOX TROT (what there is of it) and even SALLY FORTH (will Ted cheat on Sally with his new office friend?) and LUANN.
Strips I'd love to see our paper drop are MARK TRAIL (a real Sunday snooze!), PRINCE VALIANT (hasn't been any good since Hal Foster died a quarter of a century ago), FAMILY CIRCUS (has NEVER been any good), MARMADUKE (a big dog that eats everything...we get it), and just let FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE die a natural death. And for God's sake, just take PEANUTS off life support. Our paper doesn't even do the reprints justice...the square panels have been forced into a vertical rectangle format so the characters look like NBA players. How can Snoopy call Charlie Brown "that round-headed kid" when Charlie Brown's head is an oval? It's as if they were going to print posters of the Mona Lisa but only had 1' x 4' sheets of paper..."Well, we'll MAKE it fit." A total lack of respect for a once great comic strip.
But the problem is, those who read newspaper comics are generally older (kids don't want to read ANYTHING) and are creatures of habit. Even if they (we) don't particularly enjoy a strip, we find a certain comfort in seeing the familiar day after day. I hate THE FAMILY CIRCUS and yet I still read it, day after day. WHY? I can't explain, except that it takes about two seconds, and what else do I have to do?
History shows that the comics page is the one part of the paper that produces no revenue but will generate the most angry feedback if you mess with it. Even THE FAMILY CIRCUS has its devout followers and a howl will rise across the land if you even think about dropping it.
Posted 09/28/2008 at 08:31:40 AMAaah! I saw my strip mentioned and this entry's title in a Google search, and I was hoping that my strip was one of the ones that needed to f*ing end.
Posted 10/04/2008 at 05:55:50 PM"A piece of headgear that didn't exist"
But the English language did?
Clown.
Posted 10/08/2008 at 01:07:11 AMNo one mentioned Drabble. As Homer Simpson once said, "He's an unfunny version of me."
Posted 10/14/2008 at 11:58:22 AMTHE BOONDOCKS,DOONSBURY and GET FUZY this is crap i mean not worth wasting comic strip space over this junk
Posted 10/16/2008 at 01:18:39 PMNo drubbing of the unfunny comics is complete without mentioning the Comics Curmudgeon.
Posted 10/25/2008 at 11:07:05 AMYes, Family Circus had to be #1. I have discovered a way to make it funny though. It's the absolute only way. Read the caption from another comic on the page and pretend it goes with the Family Circus drawing. Well, it's not always funny but it is always funnier than the actual caption.
Posted 10/25/2008 at 03:06:12 PMI really agree with this list, and most of the comics mentioned in the comments. They rehash the same storylines - over, and over, and over, and over. "Garfield" just went through about a month of Jon telling Garfield "Remember my old girlfriend (name)?", Garfield saying "No," and Jon saying "She was the one (insert disgusting but memorable trait here)," and Garfield makes some lame comment in response.
I don't like "Doonesbury" at all. It's a socio-political (mostly political) commentary published in lame cartoon form, with the artist constantly pushing his own liberal agenda. The only strips I've ever liked were where it listed the names of soldiers who've died in Iraq and Afghanistan, because I think people shouldn't forget that.
On the other hand...I LOVE "Pearls Before Swine." It's sarcastic, and it's not afraid to make fun of other comic strips. Last week, it was "Cathy." I think it was last year, or maybe a couple years ago, that the "Pearls" characters discovered Osama Bin Laden living in "The Family Circus." Seriously, I love this strip. One of my favorites...
(Pig comes in, hands over his eyes, obviously upset)
Rat: What's the matter?
Pig: Our soap hung himself in the shower.
Rat: That's called 'soap on a rope.'
Pig: This is no time for poetry!
Duck: Do you come from a large family, sir?
Pig: Well, a couple of them were a little pudgy.
Duck: You're a couple candies short of a pinata, sir.
LOVE IT!
Posted 10/26/2008 at 02:18:53 PMHere in Japan we have an English circulated newspaper called the Daily Yomuri. It has 2 strip comics- a 'Calvin & Hobbes' re-run and 'The Pirahna Club'. I go out of my way to avoid Pirahna and chuckle to a Calvin that I've already read 5 or 6 times, but then Pirahna ends up drawing my attention- just like a car crash. Oh how I loathe the pirahna club and its writer, who, according to his strip, believes himself to be fucking hilarious. Don't just end this strip- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind erase it from my memory forever please.
Posted 11/09/2008 at 11:34:51 PMAlright...no Fred Basset?
No MARDAMADUKE!?!? =/
You need to add 10 more.
Posted 11/10/2008 at 02:37:57 PMHow about Donesbury - its become nothing more than a liberal equivalent of BC ...
Posted 11/13/2008 at 05:38:46 AMWhat about dilbert?
didn't dilbert get its own tv show? well i think it sucks....
Posted 11/13/2008 at 07:18:30 AMOne of the strips worthy of inclusion that I was actually glad to see wasn't on the list, The Quigmans, gives me hope. It means that so few papers even bother to run that piece of garbage, and thereby let Buddy Hickerson get away with recycling the same gags over and over (quite literally, as the reason why he hasn't put out a Quigmans collection since 1991 is because then fans would realize how often he reuses previously published strips), that it'll fall into limbo just out of a lack of papers willing to keep it on the comics pages. Maybe then, Hickerson will go back to a career more suited for his abilities, such as sucking farts out of dead cats.
Naw, I kid. No matter how bad his artwork, or how condescending his "jokes", he can always rest assured that he'll get commissions from the Dallas Observer, and support from the frumpy fiftysomethings running the used bookstores he frequents in search of attention. So long as he can convince idiot editors that he's "edgy", he'll always have a place alongside other zombie weekly newspaper comics such as This Modern World (rapidly approaching Millard Fillmore levels of humorless preachiness), The City, and the absolutely pointless Tom the Dancing Bug.
Posted 11/13/2008 at 11:33:23 AMAs a kid up till today I never understood a damn thing about Snuffy Smith and I agree with your point. Actually anyone mention Prince Valiant? That one sucks too.
Posted 11/21/2008 at 01:26:37 PMHas nobody read "Wee Pals?" It's so sickly sweet obnoxiously p.c. that once a week it doesn't even bother to try to be funny. Instead it runs "soul circle."
Posted 11/26/2008 at 10:47:46 AMI agree with everything that's been said here, yet...
Posted 11/28/2008 at 08:11:00 PMI still read the comics everyday
OK, I haven't read all the comment on here, but I want to know--has anyone mentioned "Zippy" as an inclusion to this list? Seriously, that comic was dumb and crappy from the beginning, and only got worse. It makes worse than no sense.
Posted 12/04/2008 at 06:46:53 AMThe newspaper I work for tried to nix Family Circus a few years ago. We had so many complaints - people threatened to end subscriptions. So it was put back. Other comics that need to be retired are: Beetle Bailey, Blondi, Hi & Lois, Hagar the Horrible. It's time for Better or Worse to bite the bullet too. The guy retired or whatever, so it's being recycled from the beginning as "memories."
Oh how I miss Fox Trot.
Posted 12/08/2008 at 04:10:44 PMyeah, it is quaint Grandmothers who like Family Circus. In fact, My Grandmother knows Bill Keene, the creator, personally. He even drew my cousin a comic when she was in a bike accident as a kid.
Posted 12/10/2008 at 07:54:33 PMIt doesn't make me like Family circus though, just because my grandma knows him...
Never Liked 'For Better or for Worse', the only thing worse is 'Sally Forth'.
Posted 12/21/2008 at 11:06:05 PMTerrible art, same bland facial expressions every day no matter what, no storyline, and aren't there supposed to be at least attempts made at writing jokes ? I think they've been wearing the same clothes since the 70's , and they weren't particularly stylish back then.
For Better or For Worse is pretty bad, but on occasion it would turn out a pretty good storyline (I actually personally liked the one about Michael's gay best man, since it broached a subject that was pretty uncomfortable to mention in comic strips at the time). It's a lifetime comic strip, so it started with some direction and, of course, ended up shitting on itself by having no clue where to go for three or four years, and then finally just throwing it out the window, having a grand wedding at the end, and summarizing the plot in a few succinct paragraphs crammed into the strip. I know, it's probably because Johnston is very ill, but still... it's no real excuse for crap.
I'm utterly surprised that a few of the soap strips haven't been mentioned on here (probably because they're so damn easy to make fun of. Fucking Apartment 3-G, anybody remember this shit? It's a terrible, terrible, terrible travesty of a strip, even though the bar for soap opera strips is already pretty fucking terrible. I forced myself to follow the storyline just to see how bad it was, and it turns out that it's nothing more than some bullshit about 3 women living in an apartment (gee, wonder what its number is) who have social, romantic, financial, and of course, sexual problems ALL THE TIME. It's a shitty strip that goes nowhere, none of the characters grow, mature, or have any consequential action occur with them. They're also ungodly, incredibly, fucking stupid. One chick goes on a cruise for a month on a whim and thinks she's getting married, then comes back to find out the guy is a cheater to her complete surprise (despite ALL hints that he is) and that she's been fired from her job. No fucking shit, you can't just run off for a month and expect to come back and get paid.
Then there's Rex Morgan, M.D..... seriously, what a piece of shit. I have yet to encounter any other strip with a stronger gay subtext than this. He's a doctor who goes around on stupid adventures which usually end up being boring, stupid, pointless, or a combination of all three. And it's also not funny, like most soap strips. The characters are, as usual, incredibly, unbelievably stupid. His wife suspects him of being a philanderer and never has the sense to question where he goes or tell him to settle the fuck down and stop getting into situations where he could be killed. The only intelligent person seems to be his 5 year old daughter and his dog, for christ's sake. Beyond that, I'm repeating myself when I mention other strips like Mark Trail and the like.
Also, I notice a lot of people keep wondering why the Family Circus keeps running. It's incredibly simple. The strip is run by a fundamentalist Christian and is the only one who depicts "family values", so if they pulled the strip from their papers, the Christian Coalition would try and skewer their guts on spears meant for heathen heads. Same with other equally shitty ones like Hi and Lois, which are run by the "family values" crowd which probably practices family values through their triple alimony payments and threats to their spouses. They're the same people who insist on Mallard Fillmore as some sort of "alternative" to Doonesbury, even though the former is a piece of shit and the latter actually uses real world irony and dry wit.
@Theodore Trout: I actually enjoy Sally Forth on occasion, because it has some incredibly nerdy jokes which usually hit the mark. They lambasted the Star Wars Christmas Special this past year, it made me laugh quite a bit, and they're actually trying to progress somewhere (the kid isn't a ten year old now, she's a teenager who - instead of going the stereotypical slutteen route, she's an outcast with only a few very close friends, a situation which is usually far more realistic than the super-popular, smart, hawt girl).
Also, dead agreement with anybody who likes Pearls before Swine. That strip is amazing, I don't think any other strip has the audacity that it does to make fun of other strips (except maybe Get Fuzzy, which actually corroborates a lot with Pearls, so not entirely). I'm pretty sure all of the other strip artists loathe and despise Stephen Pastis too, since he mocks their material, but hey, who says they need any respect?
Posted 12/23/2008 at 06:31:36 AMAlso, honestly, I don't understand why people hate Dilbert. My mother can relate to it almost directly, since she worked in an engineering firm and hated it for exactly the same reasons that Dilbert's job sucks - sheer incompetence, devalued HR management, idiocy and a complete inability to move up without being a personal crony of the boss(es). That's exactly how the engineering world is, much of the time, particularly software engineering in which Dilbert appears to be working.
I think Scott Adams has some annoying libertarian qualities which make him a naive idiot, but he also points out that the capitalism in the workplace fucking sucks.
Posted 12/23/2008 at 06:43:51 AMwhat about marmaduke. fail.
Posted 01/01/2009 at 11:25:12 PMI find that Family Circus can still be quite funny if you just replace its caption with the caption of another comic. Examples:
http://www.comicsremixed.com/?tag=the-family-circus
Captions from The Lockhorns work quite nicely on other comics, too. Don't take these treasures away from me!
Posted 01/02/2009 at 10:27:27 PMwtf???? marmaduke didnt even make the list?????? thats messed up he ruins the paper every time. ok i agree family circus it the biggest peice of garbage but marmaduke is definetly a close second.
Posted 01/03/2009 at 02:43:21 PMIt's nice that someone here mentioned "Curtis". The barber and the kid with the screwed-up eyes are all right, as are the parents, but Jesus, one can only read so many strips where Curtis gets shot down by Michelle, but doesn't get the hint or Curtis and Barry getting at each other's throats without wanting to kill someone. Namely myself.
Okay, not really, but hopefully, I can communicate that Ray Billingsley needs to man the fuck up and admit that he's out of ideas.
Posted 01/14/2009 at 06:07:01 AMMaybe I'm bitter and jaded, but I'd be all for the complete destruction of the funny page. I picked up the local newspaper recently and frankly was horrified by the comics page. Most of the old standards were in fact absent. In their places were wretchedly unfunny amateurish garbage. Piss poor art across the board, all the humor either cliched or nonsensical... and not the funny kind of cliche or the good kind of nonsense.
Posted 01/19/2009 at 12:09:00 AMIt reminded me of this time in college. A girl was going around to all of us in the art building asking us to sign a petition to force the school newspaper to publish her strip. She felt the school was somehow censoring her radical viewpoint and creativity in its refusal of her submission. I asked to see the strip... the truth was that it was fucking horrible and made no sense. She had been rejected because she was a talentless hack with the artistic ability of a shredded wheat biscuit. Judging by the current crop of daily strips however, she may have a shot at the big time.
Let's face the fact... the dailies have more yesterdays than tomorrows. I am sure the last thing they are trying to do is break the budget hunting funny page talent. They are gonna fill the fish wrap with whatever hacks will keep scratching out three panel turds until the printocalypse renders the point moot.
Honestly it's been a downhill slide since the 30's... but if I was to make a list of artists that I find influential and inspirational in reference to my own art style, the bulk of the top tern would be comic strip artists from the 30's/40's, so I'm not exactly impartial.
The worst comic strip of all time is F Minus. Dear GOD, is that horrible.
Posted 01/19/2009 at 09:00:14 PMAll of you people who want to see the end of Marmaduke are overlooking one tremendously important contribution that cartoon makes to modern humor: JOE MATHLETE EXPLAINS TODAY'S MARMADUKE (http://marmadukeexplained.blogspot.com/).
It hasn't been updated recently, but the archives are enough for hours of laughs.
Posted 01/20/2009 at 12:37:17 PMF-Minus was aptly named however The Wizard of ID and B.C. were once the best of the best. It's sorry to see them both slide so far down the hill in recent years. Comic strips today just aren't funny at all. That's why I no longer read them.
Posted 01/24/2009 at 12:56:05 PMim glad that no one has put in Pickles I LOVE PICKLES!!!!!!!
Posted 01/26/2009 at 06:45:48 AMMutts sucks like a cheerleader at a frat party. I think it's written and drawn by six year old kids.
Posted 02/12/2009 at 12:14:42 PMha ha, I like family circus, or the fact that it is still in our daily paper, because it drives my lady nuts as I read it it and laugh every time with a comment like 'oh jeffy, will you never learn'.
Posted 02/16/2009 at 09:26:37 AMOf course the laughter is fake as the comic is a piece of trash but the look of amazed dis-belief in reaction to my laughter is worth it.
But no tears would be shed at it's loss.
A strip that died a long, lingering death that has mercifully been gone for years is DONDI. I swear that was a strip in the 60s I could be away from for months, come home from college, and still pick up the story line! As for strips we like and strips we loathe, there is no accounting for taste.
Posted 02/18/2009 at 12:02:51 AMcompare auto insurance is focused on car insurance online quote sterling heights The best Before top auto insurance companie .sometime [url=http://librivox.org/wiki/moin.cgi/AirTickets?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=car-insurance-chicago]cheap car insurance chicago[/url] .so .car insurance comparison orem car insurance groups uk ,also aarp auto insurance can was .
Posted 02/21/2009 at 01:35:25 AMNot to worry about comic strips for long with newpapers imploding and closing down. I'm a product of the 1920's.30's and WWII. Today's world has gone beyond comic strips, funny pages. There's little to laugh about these days and 'comic strips' are no longer relevant. I feel sorry for the generations that have and will follow me.
Posted 03/01/2009 at 04:01:11 PMThe sky isn't falling, it has fallen.
With newspapers closing down we need not worry about the future of comics. There's little to laugh about in thos modern world...take it from a 1920'3, 1930's and WWII guy. The comics are no longer relevant and I feel sorry for current and future generations.
Posted 03/01/2009 at 04:05:14 PMDoes "Henry" still run? The comic about the mute child with the enormous, bulbous bald head? I perused it as a child, and never understood why it was supposed to be funny.
And it didn't get any better when I got older.
Posted 03/02/2009 at 11:54:45 PMI like "Prince Valiant", though I admit that for a long time the format put me off and I had to make a conscious decision to start trying to *read* it rather than just let my eyes skim over it like most newspaper comics. Whomever it was that said the art sucks, however, either has impossibly high standards or is just engaging in asshattery. The strip is drawn by Gary Gianni, who paints and has done illustrations for reprints of Conan and Solomon Kane stories - his work is beautiful.
"Doonesbury" is tiresome to me, though I admit it's mostly because I despise its politics. I'm happy to see it placed in the Editorial section, though, along with the other political cartoons.
Frankly, some of the best comics - and just about the only ones I keep up with - are webcomics. Thank God for the internet allowing artists to get around the stranglehold of creativity-and-humor-stultifying syndicates. I agree with Mister Droid in saying that the comics page needs to either be dramatically shaken up or just discarded. It's accompanying newspapers in their downward spiral into irrelevance.
Posted 03/04/2009 at 12:26:58 PMNO-- All of those comics are wonderful, if only because they inspire josh reads.
http://joshreads.com/
Posted 03/05/2009 at 10:30:19 AMIn the 7th grade, the Scholastic Book Fair came to my school and I bought a "Momma" book. It was mildly amusing to my 12 year old brain--this was in 1979.
I'm 41 now and it's time for Momma to die already. Mel Lazarus or whoever is doing the script needs to end it--perhaps they can show Momma and her brood boarding a plane for a much-needed family vacation and then the last panel can be the plane plummeting down into a volcano. That would tie things up nicely.
Posted 03/05/2009 at 07:07:00 PMNot sure why you insist on using the 'F' word in your review but I find it disturbing that someone named Alicia would sound more like a Dock Worker. If you can't sell your opinion without resorting to that kind of language then you're not as good as you think you are.
Posted 03/13/2009 at 04:10:48 PMNobody mentioned 9 Chickweed Lane? That has got to be one of the lamest comic strips ever. Other than Get Fuzzy (and even that is pushing it), I find nothing funny in the funny papers and I wouldn't miss it at all if they got rid of it.
Posted 03/18/2009 at 08:47:26 PMSince most liberals(or progressives if you will)have no sense of humor, comics written by them are best used to light a campfire as they're a total waste of time.
That being said, Brevity, Mutts, Doonesbury, Boondocks and Watch Your Head are just a bit too much to stomach while having morning breadfast and drinking coffee.
The art of the really funny strip has been lost to political correctness and since most newspapers are failing anyway because editors today are mostly biased leftists, most stories in newspapers today are written by Associated Press hacks who have a hatred for conservatives or good, honest reporting, then sooner or later the daily comic strip will be a thing of the past.
Posted 03/19/2009 at 01:48:21 PMOn Arlo & Janis never seen as funny...
I found this blog while looking FOR a specific Arlo & Janis strip.
Arlo & Janis sold out!
The writer & toonist named the characters for Arlo Guthrie & Janis Joplin apparently, but their arteries hardened immediately. They joined the mainstream.
There were several profound strips created. But they've been few & far between. The 'toonist may have told his own story.
I pause to wonder if the last poster who thinks liberals are too politically correct is perhaps the audience for Arlo & Janis. Because the premises he presents are topsy turvy.
Posted 03/21/2009 at 06:26:03 AMOnly one mention of The Piranha Club, and that was a bad one. I likes it, I does. Another non-mentioned is Zits, which is the one I most frequently wave at my wife, except for Pearls Before Swine. Lia is too surreal for me to enjoy, and Tokyopop is an egregious wast of comic page space that could be better used by a total rerun of Terry and the Pirates.
Posted 03/28/2009 at 12:03:44 AMzippy the pinhead.
That "comic" seem like the writer throws a typewriter down stairs and keeps whatever types.
Most retarded comic ever.
Posted 04/01/2009 at 07:07:18 AMI'm surprised that Sally Forth and Rose is Rose is not on it. The animation is insipid, the humor is gorked, and the dialogue between characters is nothing but vacuous prattles.
Those strips are good enough to be used for ass-wiping and nothing more.
Posted 04/02/2009 at 11:32:06 AMI suppose technically it's now dead since only reruns are printed now, but I can't believe "Peanuts" isn't #1. The most popular strip of all time often didn't even attempt to make jokes. I recall a series of strips in which the only punchline seemed to be the word "zamboni". The strip which put me off was one where Sally decides her new motto is "Speak to my secretary", or something like that. In panel two she asks Charlie Brown to ask her a question and when he does, she says, "Speak to my secretary". How does that approach being a joke? At least "Family Circus" attempts some diabetes inducing sweetness, but Charles Schultz flat gave up!!!
Posted 04/20/2009 at 07:32:31 AMHad to look at the local paper to be sure what still runs. I have developed the skill of gliding my eyes past FAMILY CIRCUS, ZIGGY, HAGAR, BLONDIE, WIZARD OF ID, and several others. I agree with every strip on the Top 10, and most of the other suggestions.
But the one *no one* has mentioned (to my amazament) is ADAM. Is it only us Northwesterners who are assaulted by this unfunny, mean-spirited waste of newsprint? Brian Bassett was a brilliant political cartoonist, but he isn't drawing the strip any longer (I checked, haven't read it in a long time, but there's a different signature on the strip), and it had lost whatever amusement value it had long before that.
As for funny PEARLS BEFORE SWINE is consistently funny, MOTHER GOOSE AND GRIMM is usually good (though it sometimes misses the mark), and I often find myself laughing at ZITS. Less consistent, but funny often enough to be worthwhile are PICKLES, and LUANN. That's five strips out of a two-pages spread. Add in FOXTROT, which we only get on Sunday, that's six.
Sad.
Posted 04/21/2009 at 07:11:27 PMLists are cool, so:
Strips I like:
Get Fuzzy -- Usually a good laugh
Zits -- Teen parody that doesn't get too old
Pearls Before Swine -- Plain brilliance
Non Sequester -- Odd, but worth it
My Cage -- Cute and fresh
Dilbert -- Stale... but still hits the mark at times
Gotta admit to liking Wizard of Id now and then... I'm a sucker for satire, even watered-down cartoon strip satire.
Online I read xkcd, Dinosaur Comics, and Questionable Content, and they are LIGHT YEARS ahead of any newspaper comic out there today.
Garfield must be on here -- except as has been said Garfield Minus Garfield almost rescues the strip.
But CRANKSHAFT! Don't even remind me...
Peanuts reruns should be a lot higher too...
I really wouldn't mind seeing the whole comics page be replaced with Calvin and Hobbes!
Posted 04/24/2009 at 07:22:34 PMThe shorter list would be the newspaper comics that are actually decent.
Boondocks is the only one that comes to mind.
God bless the Calvin and Hobbes guy for quitting before he ruined it.
Posted 04/30/2009 at 08:29:26 AMMarmaduke should have been up there. That dog just irratates me.
Posted 05/01/2009 at 03:14:30 PMI don't think it exists anymore,but "Love Is..." was the most nauseating,vomitable,just-plain-wrong comic panel ever done based on the premise of two naked 4-year-olds with no genitalia. Family Circus has always been sickeningly awful. In the last several years,out of sheer laziness I suppose,they've found a new way to suck: Sometimes in place of a joke,they'll drop a "modern" reference{E-mail,I-Pods,the internet}in order to show how "with it" they are,despite the fact that the characters,situations,and settings are all frozen in about 1959...
Posted 05/02/2009 at 01:32:28 PMI TOTALLY agree! Some of these comics just linger for so long, not giving any opportunity for new ones. You don't see a television show stay on the air for as long as some of these damn comics! When will it end?
Posted 05/21/2009 at 07:38:13 AMIt's probably a good sign about the state of Finnish newspaper comics that three of the listed comics I've never even seen before and a further five I've never seen in print (tho I have seen a lot of peeps thruout the Internet complaining about them). But yeah, we still could do without Beetle Bailey and/or Garfield… also possibly Blondie and Hagar.
As a predominantly webcomic reader tho, I really can't bring myself to care about any of this stuff. Both because of all the incredible things out there (the local Metro actually carried Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal for a while - now that was a blast) — and because of the sheer terror of Lovecraftian proportions that only webcomics can reach. Ctrl+Alt+Del is really only the peak of the iceberg…
Posted 05/21/2009 at 12:51:08 PMI'm very surprised at the lack of Hagar the Horrible and Prince Valiant. Mostly Prince Valiant. Every time I read it it manages to make LESS sense. It's also older than my Grandma. On both sides.
Posted 05/24/2009 at 09:41:21 PMyou forgot garfield. I loved the first few years. I don't know what the fuck it has degenerated into now.
It is good that Far Side and Calvin stopped before they were bad ... only good memories!
Posted 05/25/2009 at 04:21:54 PMHere are some gems from my local paper that need to stop...
Posted 06/02/2009 at 09:44:50 AMBeetle Bailey
Hi and Lois
Funky Winkerbean
Tiger
Snuffy Smith
Hagar the Horrible
Mark Trail
Rugrats
Dennis the Menace
Marmaduke
Ziggy
Family Circus
Hazel....Jesus Fucking Christ......HAZEL!! That strip is so horrendous, you can't help but to read it.. then your eyes bleed while laying in the fetal position in the corner. Didn't they have a tv show based on this comic like in 1950??
They keep printing this stuff and wonder why the newspaper industry is going in the shitter...
With regards to some strips that are around, let me make a few suggestions for those that aren't in the list:
1. Mallard Fillmore: The only reason the comic exists is to serve as a conservative opposite of "Doonsbury" (the Fairness Act of comics, folks). If you see it, the strip serves less of a commentary like Doonsbury and more like an echo chamber, with recurring themes like "Liberals: the Early Years" and "Liberal Lexicon", that focus less on humor and more on trying to state that liberals are the bane of society (even if you aren't into politics, and still try to read the comics for laughter, you have to ask "How is this funny? All this strip does is talk about how much these people suck without making an attempt at laughter?"). That, and the fact that Mallard is poorly drawn and has a lot of inconsistancies with color and movement.
2. Momma: Before I learned this comic and its creator, Mell Lazarus, all I can remember is the Simpsons episode "They Saved Lisa's Brain" joke where they made the statement that only Lazarus wasn't at the top of his field when Frink commented on several members. Much like B.C. and the Wizard of Id, it's badly drawn and poorly written.
3. The Spats: This one is a hard one, as I have only seen it in the Indianapolis Recorder and, despite being published by "King Features Syndicate" (that publishes several comics on this list, including the Family Circus), I can't find it on their webpage. If you ever see this, trust me, it's lame. It's actually a watered-down version of "the Lockhorns".
4. Drabble: Very unfunny. The artwork's bad, and the joke layouts are very pathetic. Try to find the Comic Strip Doctor and you'll see a comment on this strip.
I'd throw in "Pluggers", but the Comics Curmudgeon has a lot of good comments on the various strips.
Posted 06/06/2009 at 09:46:15 AMThis list is pretty hilarious, exspecially the bit about Kathy. But I disagree with some of the above comments regarding Marmaduke. While most of the time its not funny in any sense of the word, it still can induce notalgia. And while I'm no fan of Family Circus, I bet it might have the same affect to quite a few people.
Posted 06/09/2009 at 05:05:48 PMI don't buy the "Mallard Fillmore" as equality for Doonesbury. Doonesbury has a pretty long history and fairly fleshed out complex characters. It sets up fairly good points, not always cleverly, but its funny.
Mallard's strips are all plays on "Here is a made up argument on liberals being stupid that doesn't make sense on first read and makes less sense on second read." There's really not a comparison there.
If you removed all overt political commentary, Doonesbury would still have several years worth of humorous, well-developed characters. Mallard would have nothing.
Posted 06/12/2009 at 05:48:50 AMWow! I remember reading some of these as a kid, both in the regular bit and the comics, and feeling guilty I didn't find them funny. I felt half-sacreligious thinking "boy, Peanuts went downhill, didn't it?" I figured the newspapers knew better than me. Oops.
I'll put in a vote for Broom-Hilda, which is somehow still not dead yet. At least Moon Mullins is over.
Posted 06/20/2009 at 09:30:16 AMThe entire comics section should be scrapped. The only things that even occasionally provide any kind of entertainment value are Dilbert and that one with the psychotic cat (Get Scratchy/Fluffy, or who the hell knows?!). Other than those, there's maybbetween 1 and 3 comics that maintain an even level of tolerability (and never anythign actually good), while everything else feels like a punishment for existing. The unweildy size, shape, and structure of the newspaper is punishment enough without the content being torturous as well.
Posted 06/20/2009 at 11:02:34 AMI don't know why yall said that Snuffy Smith wasn't funny. You need to read it aloud to get that it is a cople of down home rednecks, if you can't understand the language.
I do like having a big book of comics, like the complete Calvin & Hobbes, or The Far Side, they are fun to look at, and mostly funny.
Posted 07/03/2009 at 11:40:16 AM