The other side of the coin. My List:[ul]
[li]Cathy - too @!#?@! wordy. plus, she’s psycho![/li][li]Kudzu - it used to be funny. But it has the same 5 or 6 punchlines every day:[list][]Rev. Dunn reading some modern-corruption Bible translation, then thinking “I hate these modern translations.”[/li][li]Ida Mae inventing some stupid PC terms to replace religious phrases.[/li][li]Airheaded cheerleader (forgot her name) saying or doing something stereotypically rich-bitchy.[/li][li]God zapping Rev. Dunn when he asks for a sign on whether to run for President.[/li][li]Interfaith basketball games, where they put down the other team on some stereotype.[/li][li]Nasal Lardbottom trying to act black.[/ul][/li][li]Spiderman - Not really bad, but the story is carried completely in the Sunday strip. The weekday strip is just a re-hash of Sunday’s or they’re non-sequiturs. The space would be better used for another strip on the weekdays.[/li][]all the soap opera strips - also wastes of space.
Peanuts
B.C.
Is an appreciation of beauty a function of the human soul?
The Fusco Brothers
Fred Basset
Nancy
Well, shut my mouth. It’s also illegal to put squirrels down your pants for the purposes of gambling.
This has been discussed at length before, but I’ll throw in my $.02 again.
Marvin and Garfield are the same strip and it is a poor one. Continuously running gag about how cute it is to be self-centered. Vomitaceous.
Dilbertwas mildly amusing at first, but it is another example of the same 3 or 4 jokes again and again. Also, the artwork stinks. I am well aware of the argument that the stiff, simplistic style reinforces the sense of bleakness in the corporate atmosphere. Maybe. I think the guy can’t draw.
I come to the defense of the soap opera comics. Yeah, I know, they are mostly a waste of space. But some are so bad they are good. My (ex)SO and I followed Rex Morgan, M.D. for years because it was delightfully horrible. We began to wonder if it was meant to be a parody. It isn’t.
Family Circus
Dennis the Menace
Hi and Lois
Marvin
Baby Blues
… and any other strip that depicts little kids, day after day after day, without having the slightest idea what actually makes them tick.
“I’m not sure who’s watching TV these days, but they’re not getting any smarter.”
Any of the soap opera strips qualify but for sheer utterly-lacking-in-socially-redeeming-value-itiveness, it’s hard to choose between “Mary Worth” (will that insufferable old broad never stop sermonizing?) and “Judge Parker” (One can only hope that Sam will become a chronic wife beater).
At least “Rex Morgan” has some goof getting tied up and whopped with a rolling pin this week. Now that’s entertainment.
JB
Lex Non Favet Delicatorum Votis
I’ve always hated Frank and Earnest.
I’m amazed no one’s mentioned Gasoline Alley.
And I know some of y’all posted that Mutts was among your favorites. I’d really like to know why; I just don’t see it.
Cathy and Garfield got old very quickly. And I’m always startled whenever Johnny Hart drops one of his religious messages into BC. It’s like finding a communion wafer in your breakfast cereal.
Peanuts - I hope that Mr. Schultz gets well soon and it will interesting to see the strip in January when the syndicate plans to run strips from 1974 until ol’ Chuck is back in the saddle.
Nancy - just plain sucks. What the hell year is it supposed to be there anyway?
Get Fuzzy - this is yet another attempt to be the new Bloom County - sorry, ain’t workin’
Blondie - same half-dozen storylines, but I can’t make myself stop reading it (like I did with Peanuts and Nancy)
Cathy - DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!
Boy, do I miss Bloom County and The Far Side.
I’m just glad For Better of For Worse is still around.
Mallard Filmore – there’s nothing wrong with the idea of a politically conservative comic strip, but this never bothers to be funny. Bruce Tinsley keeps attacking his steotyped ideas of what a “liberal” is and it gets real tedious. It is the only strip without a single character in it, either; even the title character is merely Tinsdale’s pontificating. Give me Rush Limbaugh, who KNOWS how to be funny and can be devistating when he is.
Any continuity strip – Apartment 3G, Judge Parker, Spiderman – because they are paced so awkwardly that nothing ever happens.
Nest Heads, which keeps repeating the same joke over and over (gee, it’s hard when the kids go to college).
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction.
www.sff.net/people/rothman
Hmmph. Is the Daily News the only paper in the country that runs One Big Happy*? I can’t escape it. I know it’s gonna be another lame joke about Ruthie mispronouncing something, but I’m drawn to it like dung beetles to an elephant’s burrito stand.
If there is justice, tomorrow’s installment will have Ruthie getting hit by a bus.
Livin’ on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine
manhattan: Hmmph. Is the Daily News the only paper in the country that runs One Big Happy? I can’t escape it. I know it’s gonna be another lame joke about Ruthie mispronouncing something, but I’m drawn to it like dung beetles to an elephant’s burrito stand.
If there is justice, tomorrow’s installment will have Ruthie getting hit by a bus.*
No, the Washington Post also carries OBH.
I agree, Ruthie’s mispronounciations are getting old.
Sally Forth SUCKS!!!
At least Cathy, Peanuts and Garfield were funny at one time.
Family Circus. No question. Let me summarize two of the episodes I remember reading:
-
Sunday comic, first 7 or so panels are voiceless pictures of the dad telling a kid something, and the kid brings back a soda can. The punchline panel? The dad opens the pop and it sprays in his face. it’s badly drawn too. My 7-year-old stepsister could do a better comic. I don’t know how the hell this guy ever got syndicated.
-
Another Sunday comic. It’s one picture, the family is standing in an airport, and one of the kids is running around with a thought bubble above his head with an airplane in it. That’s it. Yep. This guy has the creativity of a jar of mayonaisse.
There are some comics you read and laugh out loud afterward. Then there are some comics you read and then think “Awwwwww, how sweet.” This one does neither. It’s boring, and I hope it gets taken out of my newspaper.
Other sucky comics are Marmaduke, any soap opera comic, and this crappy Simpsons comic that’s in my newspaper Sundays that takes up half the freaking page, and is nothing but an advertisement for the show (which, I might add, has better artwork than the comics. And it’s animated! jeez.)
There sure are a lot of crappy comics. I hope to one day be able to draw a comic that is syndicable (Syndicatable?), so I can show these people how to do it right.
One thing I’ve always wondered about Garfield is, why the hell is he a cat? I mean, there’s plenty to laugh it in most species, but Garfield doesn’t have any of those characteristics. Sure cats sleep a lot, but they don’t get angry and violent when you wake them up. Also, most cats don’t have regular jobs, so it doesn’t really make sense for them to hate Mondays. And, while cats are sometimes greedy for food, they try to get it by meowing and being cute beggars. I never see them using violence or deceit to get food. Basically, Garfield is just a scumbag, no more feline than a bottle of Teriyaki sauce.
I really hate The Family Circus. The kids are too fat. Yes, kids are funny sometimes, but you can’t just draw some lame pictures of fat kids being stupid and expect it to be funny.
We get One Big Happy, and yes, Ruthie is awfully contrived.
*Boris B: One thing I’ve always wondered about Garfield is, why the hell is he a cat? I mean, there’s plenty to laugh it in most species, but Garfield doesn’t have any of those characteristics. *
Well, back when he was “born” (1978), he acted much more cat-like. Jon couldn’t understand his thoughts, he walked on all fours, and went out caterwauling.
He’s really gone downhill, I agree.
AWB:
You are so right about Kudzu.
This past week, he just uncorked the first good one I’ve heard out of him in years. The preacher is standing in front of a coffin and says, “She’s lost that livin’ feeling…now she’s gone, gone, gone…”
That one wasn’t worth all the years of mediocrity and repetition, but it sure made me laugh.
Chaim Mattis Keller
cmkeller@compuserve.com
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
Cathy; no contest.
The artwork is terrible and she’s been mining, remining and goddamned strip mining (no pun intended) the same sterile ground for ages.
It’s wordy, too precious for life and flat: she shops (lotsa yucks there), her mother is controlling bitch (make it cutesy) and she has no boyfriends…d’oh, sure can’t understand that one.
Words can’t describe how much I hate this strip. And I’m a female who is supposedly in her demographic target audience.
Veb
Andy Capp has to be among the worst comic strips ever. The man is a drunk who constantly argues with his wife and spends all his time at the pub. Understandably, he’s often kicked out of the house, and in almost every single strip, he’s shown begging her to take him back. Once she does, he scampers off to the bar again where he tries to pick up other women.
Maybe I’m just missing the humor, but I can’t understand why the local paper feels it deserves one of the 15 spots on the comic page. It’s just not funny, people.
-Lanna