Comic Strips

[Deleted]

ernestine, I like Clear Blue Water, too! Wow! And here I thought I was the only one reading it! I have autistic kids, so that aspect of CBW hits me right in the heart (in a good way). I also love how snarky Eve & Manny are to each other. So you're Eve? Does that mean you're married to Manny? ;D

I LOVED Calvin & Hobbes. I used to like For Better or For Worse but it's gotten so shitty lately that I no longer read it. Why is Lynn Johnston writing so poorly nowadays? She used to be great.

I also like Mutts and Pearls Before Swine. Those are two strips that I can read and just laugh about because they don't require any thought to appreciate 'em. Simple humor is nice sometimes.

Overall, though, my fave at this time remains Clear Blue Water. I'd like to see it in our local paper, but for now I have to read it at ucomics.com.

[laconicchick]

I also like a strip called "Overboard" about pirates and their lazy dog Louie. Mostly I read it for Louie.

I would like this comic more if every strip didn't use the same. Freaking. Setup. The first two or three panels are a setup for a joke, and then, "Surprise!" (those are sneer quotes, not talk quotation marks), it's not what you expected! In fact, it's the very opposite! Like the recent one where Raymond (I think) the dog was looking at something "dirty" online, and it turned out to be a dumpster! Ha. Ha. Ha.

I think I've already expressed my dislike of Calvin & Hobbes in this thread. So overrated in my opinion. My boyfriend loves it, though.

Oh, and I cannot express how much I hate Drabble. It is the most boring, unfunny, sexist, ridiculous strip I have ever read, and I'm including such crap as FBoFW and Family Circus in that. UGH!

[ernestine]

Clementine, unfortunately I'm married to WORSE than Manny! LOL!

I forgot about Overboard. Years ago this was my favorite strip. I have the first two book compliations and they were little jewels. Every strip was funny and unexpected, and snarky. The first Overboard book is probably my favorite cartoon book of all time. Then my paper dropped it and I lost contact with it for years. I found it online again and now it's got a dog, it's no longer funny and the pirates are nice to each other and into their dog. So sad. I read it occasionally, but it's a shadow of what it once was.

Mutts is another favorite. I rarely read it, but when I remember I love it. Rose is Rose was much better before Pat Brady gave up the artwork. It IS saccharine, but I think it's going for that. I like Peek-a-bo the kitten.

About Monty, I believe Jim Meddick was hired by the syndicate to do the strip Robot Man as a marketing device to sell toys. (They tried to give RobotMan to Bill Watterson before Calvin and Hobbes, but he turned it down.) It was not his concept, but he made it his own. He kept RobotMan in the strip for years and finally dropped him to do his own thing with his own strip. I never read it as Robotman, but I love Monty.

[Deleted]

"Luanne" reminds me of those weekly sitcoms in which you are assured that, no matter what goes on this week, by the end nothing will change and we will be right back to zero to start next week. The Aaron Hill storyline also dragged out for years before it fizzled out into nothing, and now the same thing with the Toni one.

"Rose is Rose" Man, these people are seriously emotionally retarded. They seem to walk around all day in a drug-induced stupor, fantasizing that they are still six years old, and hallucinating little hearts and flowers and rainbows floating everywhere. A few years back, we learned that she fantasizes about the dad being bald, and the dad fantasizes about Rose being 150 lbs overweight. Whatever.

I don't know how many local papers carry it, but I read "Spot the Frog" online at comics.com. Pretty consistently cute/funny with all the different froggie characters.

Loved today's Pearls Before Swine with the zeeba eatahs going religious and praying for god to kill the zeeba.

[Mugsy]

Best and worst lists are limited by what each of us has available, but my favourites currently are Zits and Foxtrot, only because I can relate so much via my own family.

I think that's why many comic strips are popular - because they put into pix and puns what many people experience. Hence, the proliferation of strips cut out and tacked on bulletin boards, filing cabinets and fridges.

I faithfully read For Better or For Worse, even though it's crap, because of the hiliariously snarktastic thread here.

I never understood the popularity of Garfield, and I read Drabble for a long time before I understood that the grey-haired, aproned woman in a print dress was the mother and not the grandma. Terrible artwork, there.

Bizarro is usually pretty good, in a bizarre way (heh), and because of my years of working as a waitress, I appreciate Tina's Groove. Cornered is very Herman-ish, the art is quite similar, and I probably would have enjoyed Baby Blues when my kids were young.

Between Friends, Rhymes with Orange, and Pardon My Planet are often good, and because my parents are getting older, I can sometimes relate to Pickles and Crankshaft.

Close to Home is my favourite one-panel, and Herman and The Far Side are my favourite classics. We own several anthologies of both.

It reminds me of a great bit from Cheers: Woody is reading the paper and says, "I don't get 'The Far Side'." Someone (probably Cliff) goes into a long-winded explanation of the meaning of that day's strip, acting quite pompous and intelligent. Woody sighs and says, "I know what it means. It's just that I don't get 'The Far Side' - my paper doesn't carry it." Heh.

It's funny to me that, having had babies and toddlers and now kids and teens and pets and older parents, I can relate in some way to almost every comic strip out there at one time or another, except For Better or For Worse, which is marketed directly to my type.

[topher]

Sherman's Lagoon was replacemnet strip in my paper and I loved it. I t got promoted to daily and somehow I just don't enjoy it anymore.

PBS, IMO, is the best strip out there right now.

[Deleted]

Guess I'll thow in my top 10. Some snarky some sappy, but here goes.

1. Pearls Before Swine as I have mentioned up thread, simply for the crocs. They crack me the hell up and I find myself missing them when they are not there everyday. And word to whomever posted about this weekends comic. Croc struck by lightning was hysterical.

2. Get Fuzzy because as I have also mentioned, 2 of my four pets remind me of Bucky & Satchel. I am still unsure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

3. Mother Goose & Grimm because my other two monsters remind me of Grimmy & Atilla, particularly Grimmy's shit eating grin when he gets busted. My dog Archie has a similar grin went he gets busted as well.

4. Garfield because I have grown up with him and I still crack up whenever he dances. And pulling pranks on Odie really never gets old.

5. Beetle Bailey, yet another classic that even though the theme is repetitious, it never gets old to me. I will add Hagar to that list as well. Classic

6. Fox Trot since I am convinced if I ever have a son he will be just like Jason. And that frightens me a little. Still love the strip.

7. Arlo & Janis- I just really like these two. No particular reason but I think they are cute.

8. Rose is Rose-same as Arlo & Janis, no real reason but I think they are all cute especially when Rose & Jimbo's inner child breaks out. Plus I think Pasquale is a little sweetheart. Clem not so much.

Shoot, I thought I had 10 but those are the only ones that come to mind. Oh well. those 8 are good enough for me.

[missjennifer]

I do like Calvin and Hobbes, but mainly when it focuses on Calvin's imagination and antics. But I always hated it when it got into what I call the "four legs good, two legs bad" business.

To summarize...Bill Watterson seemed to hate any technology that was created after, say, 1960. (He scorned the mere idea of getting an e-mail address.) No implication that any modern technology (or any part of modern culture, for that matter) could be of any good. No admittance that television can be worthwhile when viewed selectively. Never mind that, for example, I was reading at three partly because of The Electric Company, or that television spurred my interest in opera. (Me at the age of seven: "Cool! They're SINGING everything!") Or, more recently, that running across Anne of the Thousand Days on Bravo spurred a fascination with Henry VIII, his story, and his England. No, television unremittingly BAD. Modern culture BAD. Modern technology BAD.

It's one thing to respect the Earth and nature. I do, very much. But "four legs good, two legs bad" is too far in the other direction. To put it differently, Watterson seems too "you kids today, with your Internet and your cell phones, will you GET OFF MY LAWN!" It's a shame, because when he steered away from that he was hilarious and touching.

Now, on to FoxTrot. Lovelovelovelove! Not just the humor, but the subtlety. Consider this strip: "What are you writing?" "A poem for English class." "Haiku?" "Seemed easy." Count the syllables! There are TONS of in-jokes like that.

What's most interesting about FoxTrot is that the characters actually have quite a bit of depth for a strip that's mainly humorous. Take Roger, for example. Many of his idiocies don't stem so much from being stereotypical "dumb dad" but from the fact that he so desperately wants to be seen as more than just a middle-aged, middle-management cog in the system. Those dumb camping trips, for example, because he wants to see himself as the rugged outdoorsman. Or the time he fell for the transparent flattery of a young intern. He paid so much attention to the boy that he ignored Peter. Then the intern left Roger flat because someone higher up in the company offered him an internship.

Funny, too, how subtly FoxTrot can handle serious moments. Recently, during a family trip to Washington, a Sunday strip depicted Roger visting the Vietnam Memorial to make a rubbing. Andrea explained to Peter, "He was your father's best friend's older brother." Peter muses, "I'm an older brother..." And that was it. You're left to ponder the strip for yourself and make your own comparisons between the Vietnam situation and today's.

[Deleted]

Recently, during a family trip to Washington, a Sunday strip depicted Roger visting the Vietnam Memorial to make a rubbing. Andrea explained to Peter, "He was your father's best friend's older brother." Peter muses, "I'm an older brother..." And that was it. You're left to ponder the strip for yourself and make your own comparisons between the Vietnam situation and today's.

I liked that one; I still have it somewhere.

One strip (that no one has mentioned) that I cannot STAND is Mark Trail. It's just the same stuff over and over again, and I hate that most of the villians have moustaches and long sideburns (one of the current villians in the strip is a bald guy, for once).

And I swear, if they kill off Lisa on Funky Winkerbean without her finding out that Darin is the baby that she gave up for adoption, I will be pissed. That's something that I've wanted them to bring up for the longest time and I have a feeling that they have no intention of ever bringing this up, even with her in her last days.

Speaking of this, it has always bugged me that he he looks just like Lisa and that she has never realized this in all the times that she has crossed paths with him.

[mrpancake]

Okay, I know I complain about how bad FBoFW is, but I saw Cathy today. It was everything it's stereotyped to be. Shopping for bathing suits and she said "AHCK!" What does it take to pull the plug on such a shitty strip? FBoFW should win a Pulitzer compared to that shit.