(Specifically addressing this comment, not the rest of Salinqmind’s thread)
What kind of critic are you?! Granted Mary Worth, Apartment 3-G, On Stage, and Rex Morgan, M.D., are what we used to call “soap opera strips,” the art work is elaborate and skilled! In a book on cartooning, the late Dave Breger called that style “Illustrative” and “Precise.” What can you seriously consider superior comic-strip art to those strips? :eek:
Mary Worth? Elaborate and skilled? It looks like a ransom note, with odd body parts and facial features clipped and glued together by a blind toddler! That is part of the hilarity–totally awful artwork crashing into totally awful writing!
All my comic reading is on-line, so my comics.com comics page looks like this:
Baldo - Mexican characters and moderately funny
Ballard Street - occasionally warped
Bloom County - reruns are still better than 90% of what’s produced today
Bound and Gagged - occasionally warped
Doonesbury - still relevant after all these years
The Duplex - I used to be these guys
Foxtrot - just funny
Foxtrot Classics - just funny reruns
The Fusco Brothers - odd
Heart of the City - occasionally heartwarming
Non Sequitur - one of my faves
Brewster Rockit - just plain warped
Calvin and Hobbes - the classic
Citizen Dog - dead but nor forgotten
Cleats - soccer kids
In the Bleachers - sports panal
Strange Brew - poor man’s Far Side
Tank McNamara - sports
Animal Crackers - mildly funny
The Argyll Sweater - seriously bent
Stone Soup - one of my faves
9 Chickweed Lane - #1 with a bullet
Arlo and Janis - the 60’s live!
Drabble - I am Ralph
Get Fuzzy - lost it, but still worth reading
Frazz - #1 with two bullets
The Knight Life - Keith is a genius
Luann - I teach
Monty - I own this cat
Over the Hedge - bent
Pearls Before Swine - bent
Rose Is Rose - worth is for Peekaboo
The Flying McCoys - poor man’s Far Side
Ten Cats - new strip
Candorville - sometimes worth the story
Cheap Thrills Cuisine - recipes
The K Chronicles - see The Knight Life
I read Dilbert on Sundays. Its best days are past but it still has its moments. I retain affection for Blondie even though it’s probably been at least 40 years since anything earthshaking took place in the strip (not counting Blondie getting a job).
In the Consistently Loathe department, there’s the Family Circus, starring the blandly repellent breeders, their loathsomely pseudo-cute offspring and brain-dead canine. It didn’t help that in med school, the instructor in the most useless course used to punctuate her lectures by showing Family Circus cartoons.
Is that so? Give me an example–by e-mail. To
montgomerydou55@hotmail.com .
I don’t have to–just look at it any day of the week! The artistic incompetence is sheer gold.
My faves:
Crock
Lio
Peanuts
Ziggy
Blondie
Dilbert
Dude, David Breger’s been dead for over forty years - as, for the most part, are the artists and writers he was talking about when he praised soap strips. I don’t know how Mary Worth and Rex Morgan of 1966 (when Breger’s last book was published) compare to those strips today - but their contemporary incarnations are simply horrible.
:rolleyes: If my local newspaper carried Mary Worth, I wouldn’t have to ask you, now, would I? I haven’t seen Mary Worth in 40 years so I want an explanation.
*Originally posted by Miller:
Dude, David Breger’s been dead for over forty years - as, for the most part, are the artists and writers he was talking about when he praised soap strips. I don’t know how Mary Worth and Rex Morgan of 1966 (when Breger’s last book was published) compare to those strips today - but their contemporary incarnations are simply horrible. *
OK, I know Earnst and Saunders aren’t around any more. That’s why I asked. I want a contemporary example.
I have also noted, in this thread, an apparent hatred of Family Circus, implying that the critics thereof want kids who would put one in mind of the children that H. L. Mencken must have had. Well, that’s too bad. If that’s what you want, start your own comic strip! :mad:
About the only paper I even glance at these days is the Metro, which leaves me with three comics to comment on:
Nemi - Goth humor. Used to be funny and original but the shark was truly jumped when she acquired a boyfriend.
Learn To Speak Cat which I won’t link to because frankly just the act of reading it causes brain damage. Written by a five-year-old as far as I can tell, and not in a good “Axe Cop” kind of way.
There’s a third one about a dog and his owners but it’s so banal and unfunny it makes Fred Bassett look like Bloom County. I can’t even remember the name, that’s how dull it is.
I’ll chop your head off!
This is great!
You might want to buy yourself a computer and get yourself an internet connection–if you were online, you would be able to look up the strip. But since you do not have a computer I will link you to today’s strip: http://www.chron.com/entertainment/comics-games/comic/Mary-Worth/
Not quite as hilarious as it can get, but the artistic incompetence is pretty evident, Not that I am complaining–Mary Worth gives me hours of fun.
Here’s a good Mary Worth from a week ago. Has anyone EVER held their coffee like Mary’s doing in that first panel? Is that even physically possible?
ETA: Or even the 2nd panel, for that matter.
I went back a few days to find one that was REALLY egregious. Enjoy.
I actually have that one up at my desk–every so often, I lean back, totally rearrange my facial features, and say “heh, heh.”
“We’re here at Generic Corporation of Santa Royale, where we’ve secretly replaced the boring employee Nora with Lon Chaney. Let’s see if anyone can tell the difference…”
[QUOTE=dougie_monty]
I have also noted, in this thread, an apparent hatred of Family Circus, implying that the critics thereof want kids who would put one in mind of the children that H. L. Mencken must have had. Well, that’s too bad. If that’s what you want, start your own comic strip! :mad:
[/QUOTE]
Not necessary, someone’s already done it for me. 
And even Family Circus is bearable, with slight caption alterations.
Another “love to hate” vote here for better or for worse. I say for worse. All it is is a guilt trip for anyone who’s not a mom or a wife. And I’ll bet that any (well, most) moms or wives out there don’t storm around and scream their head off in real life as much as that woman does in the strip. What really gets me about this one though is the love my local Sunday paper seems to have for it. It’s been a zombie strip for 3-4 yrs now, and my Sunday paper still leads off the comics section with it. I stopped buying the Sunday paper in large part because of that- some time back there was a rerun where the kid slammed her finger in something and it was three straight panels of her crying and turning purple and screaming bloody murder; I read the comics for a laugh, not for… *that.
*Matter of fact, just for fun, I had a look at yesterday’s paper at the store to see if it was still there. Yep, mom screaming angrily at her son for some reason, front and center in all its migraine-causing glory.
Now that my rant is over, strips I love or used to love…
Far Side (the king)
Calvin and Hobbes (not quite as funny as Far Side, but maybe a better strip overall)
Peanuts (especially 60s and 70s glory days. If my Sunday paper had to lead the funnies with a zombie strip, why couldn’t it lead with this one?)
Pearls Before Swine (hullooo, zeeba neighbuh… at its most hilarious when it breaks the fourth wall)
Pickles (a lot funnier than people give it credit for)
Bizarro (wish my daily would run this one)
Fox Trot (always wished my daily would have run it)
Shoe (from the time I was about 10 or so until the author died, I just remember loving the writing for some reason)
Zits (I’m half convinced someone spied on me in my teens for inspiration. Joking.)
…and, god help me, the 60s-70s run of Archie (whenever I’m going through microfilms of the local daily, it just catches my eye; I’m sorry but I can’t resist a good sight gag)
Most of the bad ones people hate I can ignore. Hell, even my local Sunday paper at least had the decency to bury Marmaduke on the back page. But on the front page, there’s no ignoring that steaming pile of ink that’s the worst thing to come out of Canada until Beiber.
“Perversion” is right. Whoever melded Bil Keane’s art with this disgusting writing belongs in a straitjacket. And quoting Nietzsche yet! He died in an insane asylum and, like Hitler and Mencken, is one of many historical figures I would have loved to punch in the mouth.
As for Charles Addams, I know his work from the *New Yorker *well. But he didn’t plagiarize. He wasn’t too high and mighty to use his own art. Too bad about your (ecch) H. P. Lovecraft.