The idea of a comics page (printed or online) is that you include a mix of the ones you like, with the idea that even the best is going to have an off day, or week, but is worth a glance a day.
I didn’t get the idea that this thread is “if you could only get one strip on your desert island, what would it be”… so while Frazz wouldn’t be mine, I find it amusing often enough to keep it in my daily list of 30 or so. Same for many of them.
Definitely. And the “Simple J. Malarky” storyline was one of the best sequences in 20th century American comics.
For worst, I’s go with the aforementioned “Henry” and “Nancy”.
Of current strips, Zits is consistently good. All Time Favorite is The Far Side.
I don’t know if it is the worst, but every time I read Zippy Pinhead, I could not tell what was supposed to be funny about it. And the art work is downright ugly.
Regards,
Shodan
I’ll tell Bill you said so. But then, I wouldn’t expect someone who chooses yet-another-dopey-family strip to appreciate Griffy’s last-of-the-breed comic art.
OTOH, the art is hardly visible in today’s postage-stamp comics world, where it’s just sketchy or rubber-stamp illumination around the jokes.
I would agree with that - the best thing about the art work in Zippy Pinhead is that you can’t see it very well.
Regards,
Shodan
Wow, I’m kind of surprised that comic even exists, given that “pinhead” is a slur against people with microcephaly, who used to end up in “freak shows.”
You clearly don’t know the history of the strip, its author or his frequent mentions of its inspirations and origins. Griffy is well aware of the sideshow history of pinheads and other freaks.
I wasn’t claiming that he wasn’t aware of it. Just (mildly) surprised that someone was still willing to do it, as I would be for comic strips named Manny the Mongaloid or Ricky the Retard.
Well, he’s been drawing it for over forty years. I’d say the term is better known as the comic character than the old sideshow figures.
Yup. My list of favorites would include L’il Abner, DTWOF, Calvin & Hobbes, and Get Fuzzy.
Henry would be on my list of worst.
For hardest fall, I nominate Garfield. The first couple of years of that strip were side-splittingly funny, and then the well ran dry, but Jim Davis kept cranking out Nancy-level humor for decades. It seems that basically, he drew a real cat, with cat problems, for a while, drawn from observing cats, but then decided to anthropomorphize Garfield, and make lots of nerd jokes about Jon. So this strip ends up on both my best and worst lists. Year one was brilliant, year two, pretty funny, but current Garfield is
so bad it’s embarrassing.
I also agree with everything said about The Lockhorns.
“Best” and “Worst” when judging entertainment work, are always terms that are difficult to universally define. As I read through many choices on this thread I’m guessing I define Best & Worst much differently.
Example, the strip Henry has been brought up quite a few times here as Worst, but is it? The artwork is pretty professionally done (in a simplistic way) and the writing, well, it’s a “silent” strip, so all the writing is pantomime and tells a silly story. But that’s okay, because it’s not for us.
Henry, along with strips like Ferdinand and Lio are all pantomime strips and serves very young readers (or readers who can’t speak English) as an intro comic strip. I can recall as a very young kid looking at the daily and Sunday comics pages and being overwhelmed with all the artwork of the different strips. I’d be frustrated, unless there was someone there to read me the strips, but Henry and Ferdinand were there for me. I could enjoy the goofy punchline because it was all visual and wasn’t deep.
Yes, as an adult, those strips don’t do anything for me, but the basis of the newspaper comics page was, not every strip would be for you. Why’s Family Circus there? For grandma to smile, clip and hang on her refrigerator.
When it comes to Best & Worst I prefer to judge it on the quality of the work. If it’s so poorly draw, poorly written that even a very young or old person wouldn’t like it, then it makes the Worst list for me. If someone calls themselves a professional cartoonist and they can’t draw or write, then their strip makes my Worst List
I recall J. Edgar Hoover in Pogo using spiders to replace the stars on printed paper, to use them as “bugs”. He had to cut off two of their legs.
I’m looking at tpoday’s “Henry” and I have to agree. It’s a perfectly functional comic strip. The joke is very simple, but it does convey a clear little story ending in a joke. The use of four panels to convey the story is very well done, and the artwork is quite competent.
It’s not really very funny or insightful, but it’s perfectly competent. It isn’t aggressively irritating, like “Cathy,” or poorly drawn, like that “Reply To All” monstrosity. It’s not politically in your face, and it’s too simple to be genuinely saccharine. It’s a comic strip for young children. What’s wrong with that?
It would be like saying “The Wiggles” sucks because it’s not “Breaking Bad.” Well, of course it isn’t; it’s for four-year-olds. If you’re four, “The Wiggles” was awesome.
I agree with your point about Family Circus, too. I hate Family Circus and the sites that lampoon it are great, but I cannot say it’s a terrible comic strip because it’s perfect for its target audience: really, really old people. Old people LIKE simplicity, repetition, and non-threatening humor, and struggle with irony and depth of message. For a fogey, “Family Circus” is ideal.
I loved “Overboard.” It could have been 10% better drawn, but the humor was often outstanding. It’s still around.
I agree with Pogo and Doonesbury being great and important strips.
I agree that Calvin and Hobbes was great, on the condition that we all agree that Bloom County was not (and that it’s successors have been increasingly suck-sessors).
I agree that The Far Side has a lot of great comics, even if in my heart I still resent Larson for ripping off B. Kliban’s style.
I agree that Get Fuzzy is one of the greatest strips ever and that it’s a shame Conley has stalled on the daily strips.
And I’m saddened that no one has yet mentioned the greatest comic strip of the last 40 years: Cul de Sac by the late, great Richard Thompson. I will never stop singing this strip’s praises nor showering Mr. Thompson with accolades. The man was a fantastic artist and a genius writer. Here’s a strip picked at random; this came up the first time I hit the button.
ETA: Oh yeah, Mallard Fillmore is the worst. It’s like an anti-comic: it destroys fun and funny.
That’s my reaction to Zippy the Pinhead. Several friends of mine think it’s the greatest strip ever made. I don’t get it. I believe I understand what he’s trying to say. I just don’t think it’s funny.
I am rather fond of old adventure strips. Steve Canyon, Buck Rogers, Prince Valiant, Don Winslow of the Navy. My parents taught me to read partly with Flash Gordon in the Sunday papers, so Flash has always been my favorite.
Someone upthread opined that single-panel cartoons don’t count. Pity, because Burr Shafer’s J. Wesley Smith is one of the funniest series ever.
A couple that haven’t been mentioned yet: University [sup]2[/sup] and Liberty Meadows, by Frank Cho. He wrote University [sup]2[/sup] for his college newspaper, then wrote Liberty Meadows after he graduated. The college strips were funnier. He had to water it down for syndication. But both were good.
http://comicskingdom.com/henry-1/2017-05-11
I think it’s charming. A window into a world that exists no more.
Buzz Sawyer.
I’ve been reading funnies in the papers for longer than I can remember (literally; I cannot recall what I was reading in the mid-60s, but I know I was reading them, because it was quite habitual in my family). I’ve seen a lot of good strips, a few great strips, and wayyyyyy too many poor strips to count. Some were just awful.
I’ve collected a fair number of strips in book form over the years, starting with books of Peanuts strips bought back in the 70s. But there is only one comic strip I have ever wanted to have the complete collected works of (and I do have that). For me, that strip was the all-time best-ever, for the multiple different ways it entertained me in the ten years it ran.
Calvin and Hobbes
Even today, just thinking about one of the Sunday snowman strips is enough to get me giggling uncontrollably. 
Honorable mentions: For Better or For Worse (before she rebooted the strip)
The Wizard of Id (back before Brant Parker stopped working on it) (I actually always preferred it to B.C.
Doonesbury (back before he got way too full of himself; I stopped collecting his books about the time Duke was managing the Redskins)
Prince Valiant I always looked for this on Sunday!
xkcd Sometimes he’s a bit too abstruse, but often I love how he hits the spot
As for Pogo and Li’l Abner, I cannot judge. I’ve gone back and read the works (Gasoline Alley, too. But it’s not fair to compare something you’ve only read in collected works form to something you had to wait each and every day for the next installment of. It’s like going back now and binge-watching MASH* - it’s just not the same as having to wait a week to see the next installment of craziness. Clearly, they were excellent comics.
I wouldn’t know what the worst comic is. I don’t bother to read bad comics. They are literally blank spots on the page for me.