Comic strips that are funny

Cafe Society
21

It’s easier for me to think in terms of “Comic Strips I Enjoy” than “Comic Strips That Are Funny”, really. Mutts, for example, is often not funny, but its warm, gentle tone is still a joy to read.

Arlo and Janis, though I suspect relating to this one is on the unwritten “You know you’ve been married too long when” list.
Barkeater Lake, for anyone who’s ever lived in a small town, or a city that still thinks it’s a small town, or…
Doonesbury - again, often not funny, but with a great cast of characters and a story line that almost always amuses, and often surprises.
For Better or for Worse - again, good characters, interesting story line, though the gags often fall flat
FoxTrot - Jason Fox grew up, I married him.
Frazz - intelligent humor on the comics page!
Get Fuzzy - reveals what Garfield could have been
Heart of the City - not always funny, but an intelligent strip about real kids. Also makes me miss SE Pennsy.
Lucky Cow - the Mon-Fri story line isn’t always strong, but the Saturday strips and the Sunday splash panels are worth the wait.
Non Sequitur - Obviousman can make my day
Pearls Before Swine - really good social commentary hiding behind poorly drawn animals
Zits - generally good at finding the humor both from the teenager’s point of view and the parents’, without being condescending to either, and that’s vanishingly rare.

22

Unshelved - www.overduemedia.com
It’s a funny take on a wacky library and its crazy patrons and a walking, giant beaver as its mascot.

23

The funniest stuff by far (at least lately) are the editorial cartoons. Check out Ted Rall .

24

From the Washington Post offerings:

USUALLY GOOD:
Pearls Before Swine
Foxtrot
Frazz
Get Fuzzy
Mutts

SOMETIMES GOOD:
Zits
Non Sequitur
Candorville
Rhymes With Orange
Baldo
Red And Rover
Big Nate
Frank And Earnest
On The Fastrack
Dilbert

25

My favorite specialized-appeal webcomic is Order Of The Stick (fantasy RPG).

26

further agreement with Sherman’s Lagoon and, especially, Big Nate. Big Nate is great!

There are some other ones I enjoy, but these rise to the top.

27

Frazz is my favorite–smart and funny, a rare combination.

My other favorite is Order of the Stick–you kinda have to be a gaming geek to get the full effect, but it just keeps getting better.

28

Pearls Before Swine
Foxtrot
Ozy & Millie
9 Chickweed Lane
Dilbert (at times)

29

Man I love this, possibly more than Knights of the Dinner Table.

Get Fuzzy has some WTF days, but mostly it is gold.

If you don’t get the “Dead Duck” strip – you don’t get it – it is funny.

Remember when Woody Allen was a comic strip character? – Hah, Charlie Brown beat him to it.

Most days, Dilbert’s not bad, but it doesn’t soar like it did in the days before it had it’s own failed TV show (which was great).

Can you imagine trying to make a daily strip out of “Family Guy” or “The Simpsons” – how fast would they tank?

30

Sticking just to dead-tree comics, and only ones which are currently running:

Frazz is probably my favorite right now. Consistently funny, and smart, as I stated in the other thread, and many have said here.

Non Sequitur is often quirky, but usually funny. And when it’s not funny, it’s generally insightful. The strip with the Holocaust survivor a year or two back was perhaps one of the funny pages’ greatest moments.

I would say that Get Fuzzy’s WTF days are its gold. Cats really are that scatterbrained (Bucky is responsible for most of the WTFness). One of the few talking-animal strips that succeeds in depicting animals, rather than furry people.

Preteena and her friends are exactly the sort of folks I used to hang out with, except female. So I can relate very strongly. Were she real and about a dozen years older…

Foxtrot isn’t quite as good as it once was, perhaps, but every so often, there’ll be some incredibly nerdy obscure in-joke that makes the whole thing worthwhile. And even the off days are usually better than most comics.

Some other comics which aren’t necessarily so funny, but can be good:

For Better or For Worse usually isn’t all that funny, but the characters are very well-developed, and I can relate to many of the situations. It’s more about stories than jokes, really.

Funky Winkerbean is also rather on the dramatic side, and isn’t quite as good at the drama as FBoFW, but seems to be better at humor and the occasional random silliness (Montoni’s business ideas, e.g.).

Dilbert still has the occasional gems that make it worth reading, but mostly any more, it’s just the same handful of jokes repeated endlessly, and half of those I can’t relate to.

Opus is better than Outland, but not nearly Bloom County. I think it suffers from the Sunday-only format, since it doesn’t really leave enough room for story development.

31

Absolutely break-a-rib hilarious:
Calvin and Hobbes
Peanuts
Footrot Flats

Almost always get a snicker or two:
Dilbert
Wizard of Id
Non Sequitur
Ctrl+Alt+Del
Animal Crackers
Doonesbury

Occassionally funny, very occassionally very funny:
Garfield
Beetle Bailey
Hagar the Horrible

32

I had no idea there were so many other Order of the Stick fans on the boards! Yay.

I don’t get the newspaper anymore, so I usually don’t read the comics. However, I have to say that I appreciate The Far Side more and more each passing year. My personal Best Comic Ever.

33

That’s what the Internet is for.

34

I was going to bring up OOTS too but it’s great to see a few other people mention it before me!

The Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes are my two personal all time favorites though.

35

Another Frazz and Far Side fan here.

And I’ve grown very attached to Chris Baldwin’s kid-friendly but grown-up-funny (most days) Little Dee.

36

No love for Bizarro? It’s usually just okay, but has exhibited jaw-dropping brilliance at times.

37

No mention yet of Liberty Meadows?!
Frank Cho is cool.

38

Thanks a lot, guys…I had all kinds of thing that I had planned to get done this morning. Instead, thanks to you two, I spent the past four hours laughing my ass off in a very unproductive manner.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

39

http://www.vgcats.com/

40

I like Blondie. The gags work for me, half of the time, but past that I love the surreality that timeless cartoon characters provide. Dagwood married a “flapper”, witnessed both World Wars (the first before the strip even started), the emergence of radio, talking pictures, television, rotary and touch-tone dialing, color film, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, gay rights, Prohibition, the end of Prohibition, and the national drinking age - he now checks his e-mails on his flat-panel LCD monitor at home, discusses the Iraq conflict with Blondie, and uses a cell phone - and he’s still probably never had to get a prostate examination!