Some people have mentioned that they like “Non Sequitur”. This surprises me, as I find it to be one of the most appallingly bad strips I have ever seen. I think it’s the fact that it thinks it’s so funny. I can’t stand the smugness of a comic strip that screams “Ooh! I’m funny and I make you think!” when it isn’t and doesn’t. The Captain Obvious ones are just that - obvious, as in they might’ve been funny thirty years ago. They prominently feature these “pregnant pause” panels, where some newfound insight (usually something stupid) is supposed to be sinking into a character’s skull, enlightening them and causing us to (not) laugh at their ignorance at not having realized it before. I hate those! And the precocious little goth chick annoys me the way any sprout with delusions of intellectual superiority would.
And while we’re on the subject, I fail to see any relevance whatsoever in the guy who keeps being reincarnated.
Mallard Fillmore. That duck needs stuffing, roasting, and throwing in the garbage. Not funny, just a tired rehash of all the ultra-right bullhockey. Heck, Doonesbury, left-leaning and all, does a better job of satirizing the liberal loonies.
Zippy has pretty much degraded to the same few tired themes of shtick, over and over. Those points have been made – time to move on!
Garfield is an old and tired rehash too.
When the strip was Robotman, it was good; now that Robotman has been abandoned and it’s become Monty, it’s truly lame.
Alas, for the dear departed Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County! Worth reading are Zits, Non Sequitur, Get Fuzzy, Sylvia, Rhymes With Orange. Erratic but often worth it are Foxtrot and Boondocks.
I don’t get the web comic Day by Day. Most bloggers seem to think it’s brilliant. It’s often topical, political humor but even when I’ve been keeping in touch with the issues, the punch line usually leaves me scratching my head as if the Delphic Oracle was telling jokes.
As far as non-prehistoric comics go–sorry, but Bloom County and Calvin Hobbs went out of business a long time ago–Pearls Before Swine is the funniest strip going.
Unfunny strips
Never intended to be funny, failed to be entertaining:
Mary Worth
Rex Morgan, MD
Prince Valiant
Apartment 3-G
Funny once, boring now:
Beetle Bailey
The Wizard of Id
Hagar the Horrible
Garfield
There used to be a web site called the Dysfunctional Family Circus which allowed readers to do exactly this. They kept all the submissions and they were rated. The top-rated ones really were hilarious. My favorite is pretty offensive, so I’ll put the caption in a spoiler box. The scene has Dolly standing on a bathroom scale, looking down at the display, and Billy is standing off to the side, also looking down at the scale’s display. The caption reads:
“Wow, Daddy’s right, Dolly. Pound for pound, you ARE cheaper than a hooker.”
[slight hijack]
A friend of mine in central PA says the local paper had a poll, which comic strip would get the removed to make room for ‘Opus’, and Prince Valiant got the axe.
Re: The person that mentioned my comic… I don’t think the content is suitable for newspaper syndication. I didn’t want to have to censor or sterilize it for that audience. We’re actually going for comic book/trade paperback publication.
I personally think Peanuts should go. I’ve always hated it and found it mostly pointless. Garfield as well. All the other ones are still at least drawn by real people (in case you didnt know, Jim Davis has a bunch of artists that work on Garfield for him now.)
Cathy isn’t about her struggle to succeed. It’s about a victim of virulent disease trying to remain incognito and ignore her impending death by focusing on shallow and unattainable goals.
Back when Schultz died and they started printing the really old Peanuts (Peanutses. Peanutti. Whatever) I checked it out just for historical interest. But now there’s no reason to read or print them anymore. Just stop.
My personal least favorite is Marvin. This comes in three jokes: “Quip while sitting in the corner,” “Parents waking in the middle of the night,” and “Telepathig housepets.” Once in a while there will be a different joke, and the artist will let you know this different joke is coming by devoting the first third of the strip into an exposition (“New joke! On Marvin! Wait, come back!”).
/turns on microphone, taps it once
**Attention people of this Pitting!
The materials you are currently referring to are fucking COMIC STRIPS or FUNNIES.
Cartoons are the ones that move on your talking picture box. Unfunny cartoons may include such “gems” as “Courage the Cowardly Dog,” or post-Kricfalusi-era “Ren & Stimpy.”
I now hereby Pit each and every one of you for this offense.
Good day to you.**
/turns off microphone, walks away
The above was just a joke, actually the ones I like are:
[list=1]
[li]Andy Capp[/li][li]Pogo[/li][li]Ripley’s Believe it or not[/li][li]Henry[/li][/list=1]
Most of them are probably gone by now, so you see I don’t read comics much.
The continuing comics (bad description) as they’re stories, not comics are:[list=1]
[li]Mary Worth[/li][li]Rex Morgan, MD[/li][li]Mark Trail[/li][li]Mandrake the Magician[/li][li]Dick Tracy (tho I did like the characters names)[/li][/list=1]
The three daily cartoons by Bill Holbrook, Kevin and Kell www.herdthinners.com, Safe Havens and On the Fastrack are all very nice and funny cartoons. Kinda amazing to me that one artist can do three daily cartoons at once without going completely insane
Stone Soup is also a good and usually entertaining strip done by a semi-local artist.
