What are the worst comic strips out there today?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Hey, I remember THE RYATTS, from the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER, back in the '60s! You’re right, ONE BIG HAPPY is pretty damn close. Someone contact the Ryatt estate.

I saved my NY DAILY NEWS this morning to list the really crappy comics it runs…there are so many I couldn’t remember them all yesterday:

LOLA
RALPH
THE FAMILY CIRCUS
MARMADUKE
SHOE
MOTHER GOOSE & GRIMM
MUTTS
THE LOCKHORNS
MOMMA
HAGAR THE HORRIBLE
BC
PEANUTS
ONE BIG HAPPY
AGNES
BEETLE BAILEY
RAW MATERIAL
HERMAN
ZORRO
TARZAN
CATHY

This leaves me with only:

BLONDIE (why I read this, I can’t explain)
JUMP START (ditto…like THE RYATTS with black folks)
FOXTROT
GASOLINE ALLEY (I’d given up on this, but about six months back the artist put Delicia into the strip naked. I keep checking back to see if he’s done it again)
DILBERT
ROSE IS ROSE
CURTIS
ZITS
LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE
THE BOONDOCKS
FOR BETTER OR WORSE
DOONESBURY

That’s 12 strips for my fifty cents. Worth it?

Uke

42

You people think you have it bad. I live in a college town, and the paper is filled with shudder staff cartoonists.

I read, when I can, For Better Or For Worse and Foxtrot. Most of the rest is just filler.

As per Dilbert being a one-joke strip: at least it has one. Family Circus and Peanuts have been driving on fumes for years.

-BrainWeasel

Squeaks from BrainWeasel’s Cage
http://brainweasel.home.att.net

43

Oh, yeah?

Have you heard of the Rugrats comic strip?
possibly the worse thing to hit the funnies EVER!
The Washington Post attempted to replace “Liberty Meadows” (which I also put on the list for bad comics. It tries too hard to be a new Bloom County. It tries too hard to be cool.) for “Rugrats” a few months back unsuccessfully. Now them rats only appear on Sunday. (Still, one day too many for me.)

How’s my posting? 1-800-AM A TROL

44

Whoa whoa…I have to voice my ire agaainst you saying that Liberty Meadows is bad. I think its a fine comic and a nice sucessor to Bloom. Sure it misses some of the nuances of Binkley and Opus and Bill but damn if it is hilarious.
The battle between the professor and the Great Khan the Monster Catfish must be seen to be believed. The classic stance of the Prof in his rapidly sinking rowboat shouting KHAN!!! in classic Kirk mode leaves me in stitches.

Hey, you should go and get University2:The angry years as well is you love LM

45

Checking out my local paper (THE RECORD out of lovely Hackensack, NJ, for those who care), I find the following lovely wastes of space:

DINETTE SET by Julie Larson – Hey, look! It’s a bunch of stupid trailer-trash consumers! And they’re badly drawn, too! I’ve never seen anything I’d recognize as a “joke” in this strip. Does anyone know if Julie is any relation to Gary, since that’s my only theory as to how this thing ever got published?

CLOSE TO HOME by John McPherson – Very badly drawn single panel that’s funny about once a month, on average.

MARY WORTH by John Saunders & Joe Giella – I usually don’t even bother to read this (the only strip I don’t). But check out today’s great installment: (panel one) Mary and some old guy in a bow tie are walking, old guy says “I find myself in a bit of a quandary, Mrs. Worth!..I’m hardly settled and my daughter is coming for a visit!” Then, in the stunning panel two, they’re still walking and old guy points at a building and utters the deathless words “Do you happen to know if someone here has a spare bedroom I might rent?” Oh, the tension!

CATHY by Cathy Guisewise – Every so often (more and more regularly), we get the “evolution” strip, with panels of 1979, 1989, and 1999. They’re not funny, and they only underline that this strip has been running for twenty years on one joke, and Cathy should be nearing retirement age in that hell-hole office of hers.

BLONDIE by Dean Young and Denis Lebrun: gorgeously drawn (as this strip always has been), but the jokes are older than Grandma Moses. If this strip were a horse, it would have be taken out back and shot a few decades ago.

And, the winner and still champeen…
BC by Johnny Hart: I can’t remember when this was actually funny, but the four month + “what’s-his-name sails around the world” odyssey earlier this year was the last straw. It’s a bad gag strip masquerading as an even worse continuity strip, and it needs to die.

…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!

46

What? Maybe I’m just stupid, but I see no humor in this strip, ever. The only reason I have a small place in my heart for Andy Capp is because he pitches “Hot Fries.”

47

“Marmaduke”-Ha! It’s a big dog! It’s funny! 'Cause he’s big! Somebody euthanize this bowser, and fast.
“Mallard Fillmore”- Tries to be a conservative “Doonsebury” I suppose. However, unlike Doonsebury (Which comes down hard on liberal politicians when they deserve it) the only purpose Mallard Fillmore seems to have in life is to say "Haha! boy, them liberals sure are stupid.
“Blondie” Why doesn’t Dagwood go to a @#!@ sleep disorder clinic? Why doesn’t Dagwood sue Mr. Dithers for beating him up? Why does this strip exist?
“Dennis the Menace”- I dislike this stip too much to make up a witty explaination.
“BC”- Hey, nobody’s mentioned this before- why does a strip called BC focus so much on CHRISTIAN themes? does Johnny H. even know what B “C” stands for?

48

“Rex Morgan” - ever notice they’re always talking with their lips pressed tightly together?

“Orphan Annie” - in the million years this thing has been in print, why hasn’t Daddy Warbucks just sent Annie to school?

“Gil Thorpe” and “Gasoline Alley” - when these two were dropped some years ago, there was such a massive outcry from the heretofore silent readers that you’d think the atom bomb was headed this way. (They were reinstated, pronto.)

49

MORE!

9 Chickweed La. - anyone notice a creepy sexual undercurrent between Edda and the mother? Not between the two of them, but there’s something - unwholesome - the way they dwell on underwear. And Amos is so ugly I wish he would just walk off a cliff.

“Marmaduke” - should be sold to the Koreans by the pound to feed the indigent.

“Cathy” - all these years later and she hasn’t changed or grown one iota. I would like to see the very last strip go like this: Cathy is 80 and found with the skeleton of her dead dog Electra in an apartment so crammed with unreturned clothing, stacked to the ceiling with self-help books, and old makeup containers that the fire department has to extract her and take her to a nursing home. Last panel: "my socks don’t match my flannel housecoat! I’m still fat! Ackk! "

50

The “I’m Sorry to Disappoint You” post.

Heath: I read an issue of University[sup]2[/sup]. I really wasn’t impressed. I guess I’m just weird that way.(Though I did promise a friend I’d give Frank’s strip a read through again. . .someday) It seems I’ve read all the set-ups a few weeks back.

Zorakman: Not to try to defend the merits of “B.C.” (which I really don’t like with a passion), but yes, Jonny did know what B.C. meant. The irony of the title is intended.

How’s my posting? 1-800-AM A TROL

51

I miss Calvin and Hobbes, don’t you?

I despise Peanuts. I just don’t get it.

I wish Pigeon Man was in my newpaper, I think its great! Reminds me of The Tick, another comic I love.

“People must think it must be fun to be a super genuis,
But they don’t realize how hard it is
to put up with all the idiots in the world.”
– Calvin and Hobbes
(__)
/

52

Re: Calvin & Hobbes

Watterson quit while he was ahead. Good for him.

I’d hate to read C&H in 2020 and think, “Man, this is a stale strip.”

My favorite Calvinism ( :)) was his mutant snowmen. I almost always busted a gut!

53

Padeye:

which one? The Star or the Citizen? I haven’t read the paper there in ages, but I remember the Citizen having MUCH worse comics than the Star…

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