Thanks EnderW for the inspiration for this thread. I agree with your choices for your favorites 100% But what I’d like to hear is which ones you can’t stand! Personally, I get bilious looking at:
Beetle Bailey-same jokes repeated 1000 times
Wizard of ID-ditto
BC-ditto
Family Circus-too precious
Marmaduke-I’d euthanize that puppy
Mallard Fillmore-a sanctimonious duck?
Any other opinions?
That stupid one about the basset hound…Fred? I have looked at it for YEARS, just to find one strip that is remotely amusing with no luck. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
And Cathy. :rolleyes: So irritating. She’s either whining about her weight or how much she shops. What an inane little cartoon that is. (What is scarier is that so many women identify with that cartoon; definitely a chick comic strip.)
Agree … Beetle Bailey is getting tired, especially ‘sarge-beats-up-Beetle’
Agree again … never got Cathy, course I’m not a girl
Lockhorns … all that constant bickering … get a divorce … or a homicide (either one) … already!
The daily, one-panel Marmaduke is OK, but the Sunday strip is over doing it.
Besides some already mentioned;
Blondie - Everybody in that strip is a stereotype, and none of them are particularly flattering.
Dennis the Menace - Tormenting other people ain’t funny.
I’ll probably think of more later.
I would like to know who the heck reads Mary Worth? (or Prince Valiant for that matter)
Don’t forget Mark Trail! That and those you mentioned I tend to classify in the “uninteresting” rather than “stupid” category myself.
Otherwise I also find Fred Bassett pretty lame, along with the Lockhorns, and Dennis TM. But for some reason I find Blondie strangely benign. I don’t know why.
The Dysfunctional Family Circus will certainly fix this little problem for you…
Curtis - Barry gets on my nerves.
Baldo - Baldo’s nothing but a whining candy thief.
Baby Blues - I’m tired of their making fun of Zoey.
One Big Happy - I’m tired of their making fun of Ruthie.
Why can’t Joe ever be the stupid one?
Pluggers - Here’s one for them: “Pluggers never get their
names in the paper except by writing to Pluggers.”
Drabble - Why does Norman put up with Wendy?
The Norm - What a goofus that man is. I don’t like his friends, either.
** !!!**
I’m a girl. I hope you don’t think I get it.
When I saw the OP, I thought “Cathy”.
Lots of strips are not funny, but the pretense that this one is speaking for the everywoman is just…so irritating.
Boondocks - I tried. I really tried. I just don’t like this one.
Non Sequitur - It has it’s moments, but it’s really just a rehash of the same general concept. Make fun of the politicians, then the lawyers, then the government agencies, then the american voter. Repeat.
Gasoline Alley - My great great grandfather came back from the grave and said you hit your peak three centuries ago. Someone get that horse to its plot already.
I actually like Mary Worth, but Prince Valiant was too insipid for me by the time I was 12. My personal picks are Cathy, Garfield (in the last 5 years), Family Circus, Dennis the Menace, Funky Winkerbean (never really good, now justs sucks and blows weekly) and Shoe.
The really good strips I think are Zits, For Better or For Worse, Mary Worth, Blondie (because she’s still hot after 50 years and two kids :D) and One Big Happy. Foxtrot, 9 Chickweed Lane and Dilbert are somewhere in the middle.
I agree with Medievalist2 about Pluggers too. It’s really a boring celebration of the insignificant esoterica of blue-collar life.
Garfield—I’m surprised that no one has mentioned this abysmal, dull, formulaïc piece of pure crap yet! It was tolerable for maybe its first year or two, but now… jeez, I don’t think Jim Davis even draws new strips anymore. He probably just reruns old ones with altered words in the balloons.
Marvin—More formulaïc crap. I smelled a festering formula when this one first came out. I hate it.
Baby Blues—Oo, another comic strip about those funny little things that happen when you’re raising babies! We need that like we need another black plague.
B.C.—The last thing we need is a comic strip about Christian, conservative cavemen. Why do papers run Doonesbury on the op-ed page and not this drek?
Mallard Fillmore—I’m not saying that conservatives can’t make good political satire; I’m just saying that the author of this strip can’t pull it off. By the way: good political satire knows no political affiliation, unlike this strip, which is squarely in the conservatives’ camp. Sure, Garry Trudeau is clearly a liberal, but he’s been merciless to Democratic politiicans: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Tip O’Neill, Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, Dick Gephardt, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis… no one is safe. The Mallard Fillmore creator could learn a lesson or two from Doonesbury.
Dennis the Menace—Hank Ketcham has retired. Retire the strip too, please. It once was good, but I have a real problem with dragging out the life of strips started by someone else, even if the creator gives his or her blessing.
Cathy—Please get some new jokes, Ms. Guisewite. Thank you.
There are many more, but I think this takes on the prime offenders well enough. As soon as I click submit I’m going to smack myself on the forehead when I realize that I forgot a particularly odious strip. I leave you with a quote from the late Charles Schulz: “Isn’t Garfield just awful?”
The Family Circus - I think a character from the movie “Go” said it best, something along the lines of: “So there you are, reading the comics page, and there in the corner is The Family Circus, waiting to suck!” If I go on a date with a woman and see that she has Family Circus cartoons on her fridge, that date will be over.
Beetle Bailey and Marmaduke - I put them together because one of my favorite things to do is pick up the Sunday comics page and shout, dripping with irony: “Oh that Beetle Bailey!” or “What sort of trouble did Marmaduke get into this time??” Always gets a laugh.
I still like Garfield, for some reason.
There’s been some recent threads on the topic. They’re all a fun read:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=48292
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=36705
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=35013
That reminds me of Montgomery Burns reading the funnies:
“Heh heh. Ah, Ziggy. Will you ever win?”
Since these types of threads are cyclical in nature, I will henceforth just name one comic strip per thread as to avoid repeating my list ad nausium. I will have to echo Medievalist2 choice of Pluggers. It seems to only to run in the midwest and south. Think of it as a strip version of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a Redneck if…” routine.
Of course, thinking about it now, a lot of one panel strips need to go. In particular, those whose single panel is a circle.
Cathy, Marmaduke, Garfield (lately), and any other “real” comic strip (you know, the ones that are supposed to relate to us “adults”. Such soap operas like Steve Roper, Gil Thorp, and Mary Worth.)
Sally Forth, now there’s a good one.
Recent Favorite: Pickles
D’oh! I just realized that I confused Sally Forth and Mary Worth. Which is the one about a middle-aged married woman with a single, young, blonde-headed daughter? That’s the one I was referring to.
And scratch1300, I checked out those other threads you posted and one thing is abundantly clear: everybody hates Family Circus! The amount of vitriol and angy invective heaped upon this poor stip is amazing, if not exactly undeserved.
You wound me! Mark Trail is my favorite newspaper strip!
I have an autographed Mark Trail in my cube at work! I
post at the Mark Trail Message Board! I (sometimes)
listen to the Mark Trail radio show from Minneapolis
(on the net; I live near Chicago myself)! I helped save
Mark Trail when the Washington Post tried to drop it (I
lived in DC at the time)!
Oh it hurts it hurts ow ow ow ow ow…