The Wizard of Id, which Hart writes, was regularly guffaw-worthy in the mid and late '80’s, when I was reading it regularly. I don’t read the comics pages frequently enough anymore to know if it’s any good these days.
–Cliffy
How could you forget Bloom County, one of the greatest comics of all time, which just happened to be conservative? I credit it for helping cause the conservative cultural change* of the eighties and nineties…
[sub]*A change which was most obvious where I live when the autoworkers at GM started reading the Toronto Sun, stopped voting NDP, and started voting Progressive Conservative and Reform.[/sub]
It’s important to differentiate between two different sentiments here:
(1) “How irritating that this comic strip is so not funny” is a perfectly reasonable opionion
(2) “How irritating that this comic strip is so Christian” is (imho) not. While comic strips aren’t traditionally religious, there’s really no reason for them not to be. If there’s an audience for them, and an author who wants to write them, well hey, that’s capitalism.
All of that said, that strip is pretty darn stupid.
A link from off that same site, second strip down.
Bloom County? Conservative?
Am I being whooshed here?
Perhaps it was only conservative in Canadian terms… but I definitely remember parts of it where they went hunting left-wingers, and when one was hit, its call changed to ‘ow! socialised medicine! socialised medicine!’. Admittedly, it also went after incompetent nuclear plants and rapacious oil drillers, so perhaps it wouldn’t fit today’s political climate. Are you saying that Bloom County was not considered conservative in the States?
The free daily paper I read prints Prickly City below Doonesbury, I suppose for balance. Now, I’m liberal, and perhaps biased, but I rarely find Prickly City funny and it’s poorly drawn.
As for the Christianity in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, I’m not Christian, but I’m always moved by Linus’s reading of scripture. I have no problem with it.
Whooshed, wooshed & shot out a (NRA endorsed) cannon, dude.
I’ve read it, enjoyed it, and it hasn’t occurred to me that it would be considered conservative. Then again, I guess I’m just blind to these things, 'cause a “left-winger” calling “ow! socialised medicine!” would just seem screamingly funny to me, not political.
I’d say that, after Doonsbury, Bloom County was the definitive liberal-political comic strip of the eighties. I do remember the strip you mention, which does not seem to be promoting a conservative agenda so much as commenting on the political atmosphere of the country at the time, and the attitude of the dominate political philosophy towards the subordinate philosophy. I also remember other storylines in the strip, such as Opus receiving millions of SDI research dollars (“Giant space laser frisbees!”), or the War on Drugs targetting Bill the Cat’s Hair Tonic for Men, both of which involved far more incisive criticism of conservative policies than the comic you remember, which doesn’t say anything more about liberals than “Gee, there sure don’t seem to be a lot of them around anymore.”
Why on earth do you people who hate B.C. continue to read it? There are lots of comics out there. Read them. I haven’t found B.C. funny in years and can’t remember the last time I read it.
Sunspace I would not have said that Bloomcounty was conservative. I thought that he did a great job of making fun of politics in general.
Dewey Finn I share the same sentimate regarding the Charlie Brown Christmas special.
And the crawl here - “B.C. characters left behind during Rapture.”
(I like the “Peanuts” strip in Week 1 - how poetic.)
Thanks for two new strips, by the way (“Joe and Monkey” and “mediumlarge”). I don’t have enough ways to waste my hours on the net yet - I reeeeeally needed more.
Because it’s on the comics page right next to the strips we actually enjoy, and thus it’s inevitable that we’ll glance at it now and then.
Isn’t the strip that set off this thread an old one? I could swear I’ve seen it before.
At any rate B.C. sucks.
Bloom County was a pretty liberal strip. Breathed was always making points about animal rights in there.
I agree; it’s sad to see it slide into such decrepitude. I thoght it was funny when he just stuck to caveman humor…the woman always after the snake, the clams for money, etc.
Ya know, I used to respect a lot of you–most, maybe even ALL of you–but now that I see so many claims that there was a time when BC and, dare I say, Wizard of Id were funny I’m going to have to rethink that respect thing. Here’s a free clue for you: they were NEVER funny, much less “guffaw-worthy.”
What a pack of losers. 
If I remember my Dante correctly, they’ll inhabit the First Circle.
Bill Watterson needs to start writing comics again.