A professional cartoonist reflects on trying and failing to fill Bushmiller’s shoes.
Well I sure know who Beto is, but I think Bushmiller’s influence is better seen in brother Xaime, especially those “Li’l Ray” and “Roy Cowboy” strips.
Got a link for those strips?
I think you meant “one of the most surreal”. It wasn’t always good but it usually good. Frankly speaking, after reading most comics today any comic that’s funny more than 10% of the time should be considered a classic.
Well, your name is Horatio Hellpop, so, not to be rude, but you kind of should know.
+1 but I’m 51.
I don’t know. When I look at old comics from the 70s and earlier, they don’t seem to have a higher “success” rate, in my book. But humor is so individualized–there’s no accounting for it. As I hinted at above, I don’t even think the loyal readership of the comics page is necessarily looking for wit and wisdom, but more a kind of assurance that at least something is constant in the world. It’s the intellectual equivalent of comfort food.
GORDO! If this is the first you’ve heard of that, you’ve been missing something.
Wiki article on Gordo and on cartoonist Gus Arriola.
Some other discussion and samples (scroll down half way) and also here.
Now, who here still remembers Stan Lynde’s Rick O’Shay?
I recognized her as an old comics character I could never name. As in, even when I actually still looked at newspaper comics, she was never actually in them. But I’d seen some documentary about her being important or something.
I’d expect anyone under 25 at this point probably to not be too familiar with newspaper comics in general. The ones they’d know would be the ones that are popular online or had TV shows.
You just have to watch how the Letters to the Editor page gets swamped by outraged, older readers when they announce that they’re discontinuing some old, beloved strip in favor of something new.
Fear of lost subscriptions keeps a lot of old comic strips going (and cockblocks a lot of potentially good, new strips).
Tell me about it. A few years ago, the Bangkok Post dropped Andy Capp. Scathing letters poured in, so many that the Post relented after only a couple of weeks and reinstated it. The strip is still running here today. However, the suspicion among many is that only a handful of retirees in Pattaya were responsible for the vast majority of the letters. One writer signed his name Bud Weiser, the humor of which may have escaped the non-American letters editor at the newspaper.
Speaking of beloved old comic strips, I see Fred_Basset is still running. That gives me a warm feeling. Always liked Fred.
The wife, I note, has an Aunt Flo. Andy Capp’s wife is named Flo.
Coincidence? You decide. :dubious:
Hmm. From what I recall of the strip, the wife seems to have had a little too good upbringing to have Andy and Flo as relations. But you never know. Maybe she just done well.
Flo may have associated with the wrong people. I don’t know how to say that in Australian. 
But it is probably a generational thing. I wouldn’t expect anyone under 30 to know that.