They read the comics so you don’t have to…
Yeah, well, there’s a reason comics are in Parade - those are the ones that weren’t even good enough for the regular paper. They’re like New Yorker cartoons without the burden of humor.
Rose is Rose. I don’t care about her turning into a Harley chick slowly in 10 different ways. Its not funny and is just an excuse to do the same joke over and over. I don’t care about the kid’s dreamship and guardian angel. Family Circus for the 2000’s. ANd just to prove I am not against all family strips, I do like Baby Blues.
Marmaduke. Big dog gets into trouble. My God, how many different ways can you do that joke!! Same with Dennis the Menace. I love the Simpsons where Jay North is on there and talks about his "two part episode" where he steps on Mr. Wilson's flowers or something. Bart is listening and says "Uh Huh." This may have been funny or even realistic in the 50's (I doubt it, really), but now it just seems archaic and stupid.
Family Circus. Just sucks. America's Funniest Home Videos condensed down to a single panel cartoon.
The Boondocks and Doonesbury can stay, but I agree they don't seem as funny to me as people claim they are. I always get this feeling of a huge build up in Boondocks, then I read the punchline and think, "EEhh...kind of funny, could be better."Taking this subject from the opposite tack: I will make the imperious, but absolutely factual, assertion that in the history of comics (all right, I haven’t read all of the comics of the 1920s, '30s '40s and '50s, but I have seen a fair number of them) there have been exactly four that rose to the level of genius (in chronological order):
Krazy Kat
Pogo
Peanuts (pre-1970)
Calvin and Hobbes
I will further say that of these, Calvin and Hobbes was without doubt the greatest, in part because alone among them, it almost never repeated itself. (Okay, so Watterson only did one third the number of strips that Kelly did, and half that of the other two. But perhaps that was part of the genius: knowing when to stop.) There are, of course, a myriad of other reasons why C&H was the greatest strip ever, but they are so self-evident that there’s no need to cite them.
At a second level of excellence we find (in no particular order) the various strips of Rube Goldberg, Smokey Stover, Doonesbury, Bloom County (but not, I think, Outland, which didn’t quite click), and The Far Side.
Of the current crop, only Doonesbury, Non Sequitur, Dibert, Zippy the Pinhead, and Boondocks are anything other than bland mindless dreck. As far as I’m concerned, you could get rid of all the rest without any loss. (Of course, I’m willing to admit at my age that I may have forgotten one or two that deserve to survive.) Oh, yeah. Sherman’s Lagoon isn’t too bad.
But basically, since Calvin and Hobbes ended, there’s no real reason to read the comics.
Whew! Glad that’s settled. Now, who wants some pie?
They could stop For Better or for Worse today and I would be happy. I am always amazed to find out there are actual fans of this trite, predictable, unfunny maudlin pap. If Sally Forth is the master of the wry look, FBOFW is the master of the look of goggle-eyed amazement over the simplest of ideas. The final panel of at least half the strips goes something like this:
(Elizabeth’s friend): “Well, Liz, not everyone is as well off as your family”.
(Elizabeth): (Expression of goggle-eyed amazement!)
or
(Dr. Patterson’s assistant): “Well, Dr. Patterson, women have a different perception of the world than men do”
(Dr. Patterson): (Expression of goggle-eyed amazement!)
Oh, and when Farley died, you could see that coming six months out.
I have a prediction for some future plots: the grandfather has Alzheimer’s. Also, Liz is going to get involved with the helicopter pilot, but it won’t last.
Jumpstart and Curtis both blow dead rats.
Count me as another one who doesn’t like Rose is Rose (although I’m not sure why–something about it just bugs me.) And as for Cathy–I think the reason’s for wanting to drop that one have pretty much been covered several times on this board, so I’ll just say I agree.
Another one I can’t stand is This Modern World, which is in the local alternative paper rather than the dailies. It has all the sublety of a runaway locomotive, and I do like to see some wit and sublety in political humor. Bloom County had a political message but at least it was funny and didn’t just preach to its readers.
(Pointless aside: the local alternative paper used to have some really cool comics, but it dropped most of them. That’s the main reason I rarely bother reading it anymore. There were other reasons, but that was the last straw.)
Hey, guess what! Dysfunctional Family Circus (at least, the archives of it) is still available online after all! Just click on http://www.wildsea.net/dfc/textindex.html!
Thank you, commasense for mentioning the genius of Krazy Kat. I only really discovered the charms of the strip last year with a book I found at my local library. Despite being in a months long bad mood funk, the strips snapped me out of it and had me laughing like I hadn’t in a while when I really needed to.
One of the few times I was tempted to “lose” a library book, to keep it for myself. I didn’t, but I thought about it for a while.
Come on, no one leafed through the FAMILY CIRCUS paperbacks in the grocery store as an 8-year-old because it was the only thing you could relate to? You liked it when you were young. It at least score points for nostalgia value. The NOT ME demons got old and creepy, though.
But since I never had access to MARMADUKE at an early age, I just gotta say, this is pure incompetence.
And let’s not forget our weekend PARADE flier. HOWARD HUGE is pretty damn sucky, as well.
The tech guy is Chip Gizmo. And the brother is Lt. Flap, not Fuzz. Lt. Fuzz is the blond hick, so called because his thought processes are somewhat fuzzy.
Thanks, I’ve always gotten the two Lt.'s names mixed up for some reason.
I remember posting some intentionally lame and stupid names in a thread about the naming promotion the strip did for the character, but couldn’t remember what his full name was once it was chosen.
I always assumed the name “Lt. Fuzz” implied that he had peach-fuzz whiskers. The name complements his wimpy, childish character.