Chronos:
Good Lord, yes. And I should add that the cat’s speech impediment drove me nuts (when I was reading the strip).
I knew I would forget (at least) one:
Non Sequitur
This innocuous little strip gets a lot of vitriol online…but so help me, I like Fred Basset. Fight me.
I know it gets slammed for being unfunny, but I don’t think it’s meant to be laugh-out-loud funny…just gently whimsical, the kind that brings a smile, the kind of gentle whimsy the British are often good at. I’m both an Anglophile and a dog-lover, so it wins points with me. I like the English-country-village-ness of it. I like to imagine that this is how the pets we love would think, if they had inner lives of their own. I like the endearing facial expressions on the dogs. I like the occasional cute meta-humor. I like Fred’s parents, who seem like the kind of people I’d like to know…no kids of their own except Fred, but warm and welcoming to the local children, active in their close-knit village but willing to try out new experiences. And I like Fred’s pals Jock and Yorky since they’re roughly the same size as my furnephews.
The closest comparison I can think of to Fred Basset is the webtoon Simon’s Cat (which, as well as the webtoon, has had some books of wordless panel strips)…pet-based humor from the UK, which features some really lovely, detailed drawing of the surrounding country.
Scary Gary has also been in reruns for a long time now, but I enjoy rereading them.
BTW, everyone here knows about The Comics Curmudgeon, right? Best comic strip commentary on the web, and the funniest.
https://joshreads.com/2019/08/the-lowest-form-of-humor/#comment-2469035
Correction: the saddest. Ten years and counting of demonstrating that Rex Morgan and Pluggers are lame. Over and over and over.
Your mileage varies, my friend. But please do guide us to better witty comics commentary; I would be delighted to find even more amusing stuff.
last time i read a newspaper comic was someone posted a luann link becuase they didnt understand it
i read the following webcomics
questionable content, something positive, dumbing of age, least i could do, how baby (and it’s once a week sister motherlover) most of them were found through jeph jacques and r.k Millholland’s suggestions
i read sluggy freelance until it killed 90 percent of the original characters off … and girls with slingshots that ended once the author illustration career took off
Mutts. I love Mutts - some of the Japanese-esque artwork is beautiful. And it the sad adoption strips make some people adopt a pet, they are well worth it.
Otherwise, every single day I start with my favorites: Pluggers, Pearls Before Swine, Peanuts, Luann, Jump Start, Daddy’s Home, Baby Blues, Cul de Sac, Curtis, Dennis the Menace, GET FUZZY, Momma, Mother Goose and Grimm, and Wallace. Some of these are re-runs. Some I ‘hate read’. Jump Start and Curtis feature black people and are often quite clever and thought provoking. The last couple of years I’ve begun following, if you can call it that, Mary Worth. (the reader comments underneath the strip every day are hilarious!)
Like you say, mileage. But I never found punching down to be sporting.
I don’t know of any regular comics commentary, other than someone saying “did you see today’s Rhymes with Orange?”. I suppose Zippy could be considered a sort of comics commentary, in comic strip form.
I liked Monty, formerly Robotman, but the Globe dropped it.
A couple of people have mentioned Dick Tracy. I’m surprised it’s not more popular. It’s the only newspaper comic I still read.
Online comics: I don’t think anyones mentioned Grrl Power yet.
I know that Dick Tracy was revitalized in 2011, when a new creative team started on the strip, and they re-introduced a lot of the classic characters and themes. That said, that change happened after several decades of decline for the strip (IMO), and I don’t know how successful they’ve been at attracting new (or returning) readers.
I love Bloom County (new and old).
The only one I read every day is Luann. I’ve been reading it for years and it’s kind of embarrassing how invested I am in the lives of those characters, but hey…it keeps me off the streets.
I’ve met Greg Evans several times at SDCC and he’s a nice guy. So is Berkeley Breathed.
Monty is on my GoComics feed. It’s not my favorite — God, that UGLY art — but it manages to be amusing about twice a week. Pretty good record for contemporary syndicated strips.
Re: Today’s “Pooch Cafe.”
The phrase “worshipping the porcelain god” does not mean this.
In 2018 Guy Gilchrist, who had authored this comic strip in whole or in part for over twenty years, retired from producing the comic. It went on hiatus for two months, then was restarted by Olivia Jaimes (a pseudonym), who is the first female author of the strip. She has been producing it daily since then, plus Sunday editions.
It is crazily good. The main character is described by Jaimes as “the Nancy I know and love is a total jerk and also gluttonous and also has big feelings and voraciously consumes her world”. There are fourth-wall breaking jokes, art jokes, jokes that play around with the comic medium, jokes about modern technology that you haven’t heard a dozen times before. It’s really amazing what she’s done with the source material.
Whether or not you ever liked the previous incarnation of the strip, this one is worth reading.
I’ve just discovered Phoebe And Her Unicorn.
One thing I love about it is that it avoids the cliches of “only our heroine can see the magical creature”, “we have to keep the magical creature a secret”, and “grownups think heroine is just imagining the creature”. Those are nice, but they’ve been done to death. Instead, Phoebe’s family and friends can see and interact with Marigold and are totally chill with her existence. (Marigold later reveals she casts a “shield of boringness” that makes people think of her as perfectly normal.) Other magical creatures, like goblins and dragons, exist as well…and again, everyone’s completely cool with them.
Ess: I agree that the new Olivia-generated Nancy blows the Gilchrist effort out of the water. But I found the two-month basketball story downright painful.