Hey, I’ll even do what you were too modest to do and link to a site with daily strips as well as your homepage.
Because, if we as SDMB members aren’t supporting a really good strip done by one of our own members, that’s just silly.
I guess I have outgrown them. In my childhood I would by the books made from old strips. Loved B.C. And the Wizard of ID (way before he became too preachy). Then in my teen years and beyond Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County Far Side. I don’t know of any that have even come close to those three, with Bloom County being #1 for me. I still look occasionally but none hold my interest.
I don’t really get the paper any more, so I don’t see a full page of funnies unless someone at work leaves one around the lunchroom. And then I read them all, just because they’re all there. Thus, the whole concept of being confronted daily with something I just wish wasn’t there to the point where I can say I HATE it doesn’t really apply to my current lifestyle.*
This is not to say I never read the funnies. I do; but I do it at the gocomics.com website; and the ones I love enough to call up every day are as follows:
9 Chickweed Lane
Brewster Rockitt Space Guy!
Candorville
Doonesbury
Frazz
Get Fuzzy
La Cucaracha
Lio
Non Sequitur
Pearls Before Swine
Any that didn’t make that list, it’s not fair to say I actually hate them; just I’ve only got so much comic-reading time in a day.
I used to read Pibgorn, but I feel the writer is being self-indulgent by rerunning the Mozart in New York story.
*I do hate Funky Winkerbean, or more accurately, I hate the writer for deciding to make it all serious. I want Crazy Eddie (or whatever his name is) to be a perpetual sixteen-year old listening to frozen pizzas on his turntable, dammit!
Thanks! I’m just on The Dope to lurk, chuckle and have my comments ignored. Didn’t think it was my place to get all evangelistic.
Other people, though…
There are no “love” ones left. Of the ones in my local paper, I like:
Speed Bump
Pearls Before Swine
Doonesbury
I really really dislike:
MARMADUKE (I mean, what’s the point of it?)
And as terrible as it is to say, BC and Wizard of Id, although not great anymore by any means, improved a bit after Johnny Hart died.
That might be because many newspaper-comic readers are gettin’ on in age. Like the ladies at the retirement home.
Many convos with my mum start with her: “Oh, do you get ‘Frazz’ in your paper? Wasn’t that just the FUNniest yesterday?”
“Mum, when I have time to read the comics in a newspaper, you’ll know I’ve retired.”
(Maybe I should just ask her if she’s read the latest XKCD or Order of the Stick, and then spend ten minutes explaining them…)
**Tumbleweeds **was one of my favorites–I miss it.
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned “For Better or For Worse” and it’s gawd-awful ending where Elizabeth marries Bland-thony. And now the zombie FBoFW. The snark at binky-betsy.livejournal.com is stellar.
Loved Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side, miss both of them terribly.
Current Likes:
Pearls Before Swine, Best strip running today.
Doonesbury
Lio, Wonderfully absurd
Dilbert, It’s fallen considerably from it’s peak in the 90’s but it’s still funny more often than not
Non Sequitur
Rose is Rose
Get Fuzzy
Classic Peanuts
Sally Forth
Baby Blues
Garfield, Yeah I know… It doesn’t suck out loud though and I think I read Garfield and Peanuts mostly because it reminds me of my childhood. Pleasant and inoffensive.
Hate:
Marmaduke and Family Circus. Actively unfunny. These are parade magazine strips that somehow escaped to the main comics page.
Whoa, what? I’ve been a Dilbert fan for years and I’ve never heard of this. What happened?
You can read about it here. Apparently he deleted the post in the meantime, but I read the whole thing when it was up on his site and this article is accurate.
Favorite currently-running strips: Pearls Before Swine, Classic Peanuts (at least the first 30 years’ worth or so, which seems to be the focus of the Classics), Bizarro.
Favorite defunct strips: Smokey Stover (and Spooky the Cat), Calvin and Hobbes, Smitty, The Far Side, The Boondocks, Upside-Downs, Moon Mullins, Bloom County… a lot of the old humor strips, and I was heavily influenced by a treasury of 1920s-1940s Chicago Tribune strips that my mom had.
Like but don’t love: Foxtrot, Zits, Dilbert (all three of which used to be in my favorites), Classic Peanuts post 1980 or so (I really got tired of the constant Spike one-offs), This Modern World
Love to hate: Marmaduke, Garfield, Family Circus… all three of which I routinely deface in my work’s break room. I really wish my local paper carried Pluggers, as I’d love to screw with that one, too. I do have to admit that the artist for Pluggers is actually a pretty decent cartoonist, even though I am not the target demographic and the reader-submitted “jokes” are insipid.
I still read most of the comics on the comics page, even the ones I don’t really like. Some strips I appreciate for their art or technique, if not the jokes or stories (for instance, Eduardo Barreto provided some very pretty artwork and cheesecake in Judge Parker, and I admire the style in Rose Is Rose and Lio). I’ve also been surprised when I’ve gone back to early strips of now mundane series. Hagar the Horrible, Hi and Lois, even Dennis the Menace and occasionally Family Circus were more edgy and had cleaner, more stylized artwork. The only ones I routinely skip are the soap serials that have boring or ugly artwork. Apartment 3G, Mary Worth, etc., have artwork that just looks slapdash, like something churned out on the cheap back in 1970s Charlton comic books.
My favorite: Zippy
My most hated: Doonsbury
My favorite: 9 Chickweed Lane
Today at 9 Chickweed Lane - Edda and Amos have been roleplaying Tarzan and Jane the last few days, and Edda tells her friend they were “totally unprepared”, taken by surprise. “HOW UNPREPARED???” …Edda seems perfectly fine about it. Her gay roomie is going to explode with excitement if Edda gets knocked up!
My faves:“Peanuts” (it’s not in my local paper anymore) “Garfield”
like- Dilbert ('cos of its relevance to my workplaces,) Garfield (if it involves at least one spider,) Get Fuzzy is occasionally amusing, and that’s about it.
indifferent or dislike: nearly everything else
hate: Zits and whatever that thing is that looks like it was done in MS Paint.
I don’t know why, but I read about 20 online each day - but it is a rare day when one makes me laugh.
I liked that one too. Was it drawn by the same guy who does Garfield?
A quick Google shows I am almost correct - Jim Davis was Ryan’s assistant.
Regards,
Shodan
I came in to say this! I’m bored with the zombie version, but I used to read it specifically so I could laugh it. Also see Apartment 3-G, but not quite so much.
I read and like Dilbert, Piled Higher and Deeper, and (about half the time) xkcd.
My gosh, am I the only one that appreciates Pickles? Or am I just showing my age?
Or maybe it’s personal…Earl & Opal, the way they talk and react to each other, are almost eerily close caricatures of my late paternal grandparents.
Aside from that,
Like
Pearls before Swine
Zits
Tundra
Dilbert
Baby Blues
Doonsbury
Read just because
Blondie
Garfield
Dennis the Menace
Love to hate
*Family Circus *and The stupid right-wing duck
Absolutely despise: Fred Bassett. Unlike most of the unfunny ones, it’s like they’ve decided to just give up even trying for a joke. Or…anything, really. Fred Bassett is more of a non-sequitur than a comic strip.