I didn’t bother with an All Time Best answer because of course it’s Calvin & Hobbes (with The Far Side a close second).
The All Time Worst is probably one of those Drama Strips no one reads. A person who stays up at night wondering what will happen next in Apartment 3-G probably needs to buy three more cats.
Oh man, I love Maakies. Read it all through the '90s in the New York Press.. It would suck 90% of the time, but the other 10 could be pure gold.
There was one about 15-20 years ago with the shamrock-hatted ape riding on top of a stagecoach with God (anyway, a long-haired bearded dude in a robe)…first panel: “My entire family was wiped out in the Holocaust.” God: “I did not know that your family was Jewish.” Second panel: “Oh, we are not Jewish. We are mentally retarded.” A Jewish friend gave me hell for loving this., saying it was anti-Semitic.
Even better was a one-off at the same time period, about eating fried clams in coastal Massachusetts. (Tony Millionaire is a native Masshole.). Gorgeous art and very funny text. I would buy the damn original art from him. If someone with better google skills than I could conjure it up, I would just print it out and frame it. “Oh, that clam…”
It’s available on the web www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit
January 19th, 2011, when artist Joe Staton and writer Mike Curtis took over the strip. The brought back old villains, reformed The Mole, and started the crossovers with other adventure comics Like Brenda Starr, Little Orphan Annie, Terry And The Pirates, The Spirit(The three-way encounter between Tracy, The Spirit and The Dragon Lady was magnificent!), and even a Popeye cameo.
It ran a little over 5 years; that’s a very good run for a comic strip. The fact that it didn’t continue into perpetuity had nothing to do with the quality of the strip or the number of readers. The fact that it had a limited run does not, IMO, lessen the quality of the run. Calvin and Hobbes, for instance, isn’t highly regarded because it ran for 10 years; it’s because it was a damned good comic.
Thanks
I thank Calvin and Hobbes for expanding my vocabulary as a kid.
Also, as someone with ADHD, I found Calvin to be relatable.
You gotta be reading Sherman’s Lagoon.
No one mentioned R. Crumb’s works … [giggle] … or should I be ashamed of myself for being the first …
Gahan Wilson used to have a panel in Playboy every month … funny stuff if you like the macabre … SFW example
Read through it. Was good enough for me to, well, read 900-odd strips of it. Liked the art and general humor with a nerd slant. Not a big fan of parody arcs (that’s partially what got me off Sluggy Freelance) but most of these were thankfully short. Looks like the updates are a bit sporadic but I have it linked in my Comic Rocket account now.
Probably because Crumb isn’t a comic strip artist.
I’ve got most of his books, but don’t recall that one. If I find it, I’ll let you know.
I’ve got 2 strip originals. “Skunk Cheese” and “Queer Eye”. They look great framed on the wall. Tony sends them with extra art on the envelopes. Kinda pricy, though. But, hey, everybody’s gotta eat.
I stopped reading it a couple of years back.
From the Wikipedia page;
In 2011, Get Fuzzy began to incorporate more and more reprinted strips into its daily rotation. Initially, these would alternate from week to week with a new strip. **Eventually, the reruns became more frequent and by November 2013, the daily Get Fuzzy strips consisted entirely of strips from previous years.
**
The lack of new content has caused a significant decline in the popularity of Get Fuzzy, and in some cases reader feedback polls have been conducted as to whether or not to keep the strip. One of these was conducted by The Washington Post in October 2013; the paper cited the reruns as the reason for the strip’s lack of support and announced that they would be dropping it from the paper.[10] The Seattle Times, which stopped carrying Get Fuzzy on March 3, 2014, said their reasoning was “because the creator is no longer producing new installments.”[11]
The Sunday editions of Get Fuzzy have been largely unaffected by this and new installments have continued to appear on a regular basis, much in the same vein of how Bill Amend’s FoxTrot does. The difference is that Amend made a conscious decision and an announcement that he would be making the move, while neither Universal Uclick or Darby Conley have ever made an official statement on the status of Get Fuzzy. In addition, Conley has never explained his reasoning for no longer drawing daily strips.
So many comics that I’d forgotten about.
Best: Pogo above all, but i also like Far Side, Fabulous Furry Freak Bros. and Fat Freddy’s Cat (the original ornery cat comic). As a child, I was fascinated by the soap opera comics, like Mary Worth, Rex Morgan MD and Apt 3-G. Are they still running? I can’t believe anyone would read such trash now. I have a vague recollection of Miss Peach and Momma, both by Mel Lazarus.
British strips from Viz Comics: I like Mrs Brady, Old Lady and Finbarr Saunders and his Double Entendres.
Worst…so many to choose from. I always disliked Peanuts. By the time I “got” .
Doonesbury, I didn’t like it. I don’t like Garfied, Family Circus, Cathy, Dennis the Menace, but the prize for absolute worst must be shared between the Lockhorns (the worst outdated stereotypes and actually depressing) and Mallard Fillmore (for the reasons given by other Dopers above.
Mel Lazarus arranged for Momma to die when he did. The actual final strip was handled by his wife, but it’s pretty fitting.
If I had to pick a ‘greatest comic strip of all time’, it would be Krazy Kat.
My ‘favorite comic strip’, though, is Bloom County. (When Breathed brought Bloom County back in 2015, he retconned Outland and Opus out of it. The new strip is really damned good, too.)
I also love Thimble Theater and the old, early Mickey Mouse strips, when it was an adventure comic and he had shootouts with Peg-Leg Pete. My fave webcomic is probably Freefall - it’s very scifi, but the slow pace is maddening at times.
My most hated comic strip, just because of the way it went from ‘silly’ to ‘what the hell is this’ is Sluggy Freelance.
I like Pearls Before Swine, Peanuts, Daddy’s Home, Get Fuzzy, and For Better or For Worse. (Mary Worth is still chugging along, somewhat updated, with a new artist. I read it just to read the comments from readers, hilarious!)
I really like Jump Start and Curtis, two strips featuring black families. Jump Start features a cop married to a nurse, and there is a huge, successful family, and it really is fun to read, rather clever… Curtis is a smart-mouthed 11 year old with a pesky little brother. He has a strong caring small family, and this too is lots of fun. I find myself really caring about Curtis, his unrequited love for a rich girl, his conversations with the barber.
Luann is in college now and she and her friends certainly garner a LOT of attention judging by the hundreds of comments on the sites the strip is featured on. Everyone has an opinion about Luann and what she and her friends should be doing with themselves. Some of the ‘fans’ sound like they’re rooting for certain of the characters to mate, like particular favorite animals in a zoo.
Oh, and I have a real love/hate relationship with The Dinette Set. They are the most maddening, in a very mundane way, characters I have every come across. But so real to life, all you can do is laugh.
It can sometimes be hit or miss, but I do enjoy The New Adventures of Queen Victoria.
I suppose it’s not surprising that none of her own children came to her funeral.
Thank you, Jophiel, for taking the time to look it up and giving your review. I agree with you his posts are sporadic. He has many projects and commissions.
Now that I’m on my PC, I can post a link.
http://www.collectedcurios.com/sequentialart.php
Give the strip at try my fellow dopers. As to the OP: favorites are Calvin & Hobbes and Bloom County. Worst…well, It’s been a while since I’ve read the comics but Zippy the Pinhead never was funny for me.
My two cents.
