I cannot STAND the Family Circus I HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT! The jokes are so stupid. “Mommy, the garage door clicker only has two channels, open and close.” SO STUPID! So anyway, what comics do you hate?
One way to make Family Circus tolerable is to reimagine the scenario. All of the kids have godlike powers, and their parents live in abject terror of what they will do, but if they show that fear, the children will destroy them.
Or maybe it’s just me.
Pretty much all of the comics mentioned here.
But They’ll Do it Every Time is far and away the worst.
Thats…that’s pretty cool, Cervaise.
I was locked into remembering Patis having them harbor Osam bin Ladin…“Your mother is a whore! I can see her ankles!” “Osama, we do not offer grace by asking God to kill the infidels,” and their winding up at Guantanemo, howerver you spell it, put that’s pretty cool.
What’s the hideous one-panel one with the crotchety mysogynist guy and his wife? Something --horns? I’ve blotted out the name it’s such an annoying string.
At least Apartment 3G produced a funny exchange on the Golden Girls
Dorothy: Apartment 3G?! I haven’t read that in 30 years.
Blanche: Well, let me catch you up! It’s later that same day…
You’re thinking about the Lockhorns. It’s funny because they hate each other and are trapped in a loveless marriage.
One strip I can’t stand is Cathy. It supposedly was funny once, but now, I see it and just want to say AAAKKK!
I began to intensely dislike B.C. after the transmuting menora, but I just quit reading it and The Wizard of Id.
This one is pretty unbearable.
That’s just horridly unfunny.
There was a site that showed the ‘Family Circle’ cartoon, but with the cutsey dialogue replaced with random quotes from H.P. Lovecraft stories, resulting in hysterical nonsequiturs. Couldn’t find it myself, does anybody have a link to it?
Personally, I think “Dilbert” is the single most loathesomely stupid, unfunny waste of space in a newspaper ever.
Dennis the Menace always ranges from the tolerable to the intolerably stupid.
I’ve never read a funny Mallard Fillmore.
Seconded. Is it ever about anything but her weight?
Also, any of the comic strips that tell an agonizingly long, involved story, three panels at a time. Prince Valiant, Rex Morgan MD, Spider-Man, etc. I don’t know if any of those are even still in print.
Aha! Found it. Unspeakable, unnameable evil meets adorable tykes. Hilarity ensues.
Mutts annoys the heck out of me. Maybe pet-owners find it amusing because it echoes how their pets act; I can’t imagine why that cat repeating “Little Pink Sock” over and over is acceptable content for an entire day’s strip. In addition, the cat’s “shpeech” impediment is grating to read (what, like the animal can really speak English? If you’re anthropomorphizing, just write the words normally!), and the sappy “shelter stories” they occasionally run completely fail to touch a single heartstring of mine…no, I will not adopt you!!!
I guess it has its audience, though. Mutts has numerous book collections out, while my personal favorite, Monty, doesn’t.
Another way is to imagine the circle containing the cartoon is a telescopic sight on a high-power rifle. You just add the crosshairs, and see who gets taken out with a head shot and who just gets wounded.
Reminds me of the anecdote in The Pre-history of the Far Side, in which Larson tells us how, more than once, his comics’ text was replaced with others in the real live print runs of newspapers.
In the funnier of the examples, the Far Side cartoon was a Stone Age fortuneteller telling a fortune to a caveman.
It was interspersed with the text of a Dennis the Menace, mouthing off to his mom over dinner.
The fortuneteller’s line: “Oh no, not lima beans AGAIN???” Not too funny, but surrelistically passable.
Dennis’ line: “I see your shrivelled, decaying head on a museum shelf somewhere.”
Reminds me of something that Qomics for Queers does every so often. Same deal, except they replace the text with dense passages from tomes about sexual politics and gender identity. Viz.
(Scroll up just a tad to see the comic itself.)
I’m going to have to go with Family Circus as well. I understand that it’s based on this guy’s life. The thing is, that to me (and apparently many others), this guy’s life just isn’t funny. That said, I don’t see why it gets a prominent spot in nearly every funnies section I’ve ever seen.
As far as parodies, I recall a Perry Bible Fellowship that was done in FC style. It involved the father putting $20 under the kid’s pillow as the Tooth Fairy (rather than the traditional $1). The kids, getting an idea, decide to knock each other’s teeth out with a baseball bat, in an attempt to rake in the dough. It was cute in a black comedy kinda way.