What comic strip would you like to see brought back from the grave?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Good news, guys…Dan O’Neill’s “Odd Bodkins” is still being produced…online, anyway.

http://www.oddbodkins.com

I’d have to second “Lil’ Abner.” Not only did Capp do bodacious cheesecake and beefcake, but he was brilliant at sustaining a complex storyline, and he was really damn funny, too. At least before he got old and crotchety and conservative sometime in the early 1960s.

“Fearless Fosdick,” BTW, was Lil’ Abner’s favorite “comical strip character.” Abner finally married Daisy Mae Scragg in 1952 after Fosdick married his long-suffering fiancee Prudence Pimpleton in order not to be thrown off the force (police cutbacks made it necessary to fire all unmarried cops). Abner, as the only over-nine member of the Fosdick Fan Club, was pushed into marriage due to the Club Oath to do anything Fosdick did in real life. When it turned out that Fosdick’s marriage was only a dream, Abner abandoned his luscious new bride at their honeymoon hotel in New York and haaded back to Dogpatch, where Mammy smacked him on the skull with a frying pan and pointed out that Fosdick was only a character in a stoopid comical strip and that Abner was completely and irrevocably married.

22

Besides the classics mentioned, I miss Where the Buffalo Roam.

23

Moon Mullins
Tumbleweeds (no longer run in the South Bay Daily Breeze in Los Angeles County)
Alley Oop
Li’l Abner
Out Our Way
Our Boarding House
Encyclopedia Brown
You Can
Brenda Starr

24

Oops! Add Dotty Dripple (a rare sexy-and-smart mother of half grown kids!) :slight_smile:

25

I always thought you were a weird, unusual sort. Now I know for sure. Many, many thanks for the website note for Odd Bodkins.

26

The Far Side, my favorite of all time.

27

I think I sent you that link, Uke - but it isn’t the same as seeing it in print. Did I tell you my SO studied cartooning with O’Neill?

28

Far Side, Bloom County, and Calvin and Hobbes…
If you ever want to find out about a person give them these three strips.

Maybe we have an heir…Anybody read Boondocks?

I say that we sacrifice some of the still running cartoons that are not worthy of existing so we can bring 'em back from the graveyard. First victim…

Cathy.

“ooooohhh I gained 2 pounds!!! I can’t go out on the date tonight. Might as well gorge myself on this fudge…”

It’s the same stereotypical cartoon every damn day. If the feminists ever decide to go after the strip, I’ll have no poblem with that.

29

Well, my pick should be even more obvious than Opus’.

Fat Angel, do you know that the complete run of Little Nemo has been collected in book form? It’s a six volume series from Fantagraphic Books and contains every Little Nemo strip, including the In the Land of Wonderful Dreams series, along with the color run of the Dream of the Rarebit Fiend series, all in their full original size and colors.

Dougie Monty, both Alley Oop and Brenda Starr are still being written.

30

Still running in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, as of last Tuesday or so. I subscribe to the Dallas Morning news, and only occasionally read the Startlegram.

The DMN runs the Boondocks, except on Sundays. For some odd reason, they run some comics only on Sundays, and others only on Monday through Saturday.

31

Gotta be the big three: Calvin and Hobbes, Far Side, Bloom County.

I’d also love to see Mafalda - this very twisted Argentinian comic strip - again.

32

As much as I agree with the consensus that seeing Bloom County, Far Side, and Calvin and Hobbes again would be wonderful, I’m actually GLAD that the authors stopped drawing them. Berke Breathed, Gary Larson, and Bill Watterson all stopped drawing for essentially the same reason: they were tired of the grind of being funny on a deadline. I’d much rather go back through my collection of books and revisit the classics that still break me up than see these strips get old and boring.

The paper is already full of strips that have dragged on a LOOOOOONG time, simply because the authors want to keep collecting a paycheck. Beetle Bailey comes to mind. I don’t think I’ve EVER seen a funny one, and it’s about six gags repeated over and over. Beetle is lazy. The Sarge is violent. General Halftrack whistles at his sexy secretary. Killer likes girls. Who gives a shit anymore?

We ALL still care about these classic strips, simply because the authors quit while they were ahead.

33

That’s my list, right there.

34

Was this supposed to convince us the strip was funny? I never liked Nancy and the above just reaffirms that it isn’t even vaguely funny.

35

I like Henry (yes, he still reruns in the Chicago Reader, but that’s same as dead)

36

OpalCat,
I may not be able to convince you of the merits of Nancy, but I will try. Some quotes from others :

“Any strip that can be around for as long as ‘Nancy’, and not be funny once, has really got something going for it.”
Michael Frith, Art Director of Henson Associates as quoted in “Confessions of a Nancy Fan” by Brian Walker

" ‘Nancy’ is the definition of a comic strip. Look it up in ‘Webster’s Illustrated Dictionary’, and you’ll find a postage stamp-sized reproduction of a ‘Nancy’ strip right next to the definition of ‘comic strip’."
Art Spiegelman, quoted from the same source.

“‘Nancy’ only appears to be simple at a casual glance. Like architect Miles Van Der Rohe, the simplicity is a carefully designed function of a complex amalgam of formal rules laid out by a designer. To look at Bushmiller as an architect is entirely appropriate, for ‘Nancy’ is, in a sense, a blueprint for a comic strip. Walls, floors, rocks, trees, ice-cream cones, motion lines, midgets, and principals are carefully positioned with no need for further embellishment. And laid out with one purpose in mind–to get the gag across. Minimalist? Formalist? Structuralist? Cartoonist!”
Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik from “How to Read ‘Nancy’” an essay in "The Best of Ernie Bushmiller’s ‘Nancy’ edited by Brian Walker

"Never has a comic strip been more simply or subtly created, or more underrated than ‘Nancy’.
Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy
Quoted from “Nancy Eats Food” Kitchen Sink Press 1989

“Ernie Bushmiller is my comics Kafka. He liberated me from ‘the big laugh’ as the sole purpose of a humor strip…”
Jerry Moriarty from “The long long trip to Nancy’s house” from “How Sluggo Survives” Kitchen Sink Press 1989

“Bushmiller created a kind of humor that didn’t have to be funny…”
Jerry Moriarty, as quoted in “Confessions of a Nancy Fan” by Brian Walker

“Nancy” was a truly amazing strip. I, too, used to reject it before a good friend did me a favor by showing me the light. Now when life seems bleakest I often turn to these old comics stored carefully in my basement. I recommend them highly.

When you liberate “Nancy” from the burden of being funny, you can allow the true genius of Bushmiller to come streaming in to your open mind. And you will realize that “Nancy” was funnier than most any of the comics so deservedly loved today. Not funny at all yet very funny. “Nancy” was not only a comic, it was a daily koan!

37

If you bring a comic strip back from the dead, it’d only be a pale imitation of the original (unless you can get the original cartoonist, of course).

The ones I’d like to see rerun are

Krazy Kat
Pogo
Barnaby

But no new artists on them (though the last incarnation of Pogo was credible – as long as you don’t compare it to the original).

38

I, too, would like to see C&H, the Far Side and Bloom County again, but I also miss Matt Groening’s “Life in Hell”.

I wasn’t moved by the Nancy quotes. I still hate that strip. I understand how a comic strip doesn’t necessarily have to be funny (ie, Prince Valiant, etc.), but Nancy clearly has “jokes”, they just aren’t funny. Jokes are meant to be funny.

I agree that the Boondocks is a great strip–offensive or not. It’s edgy, which is what the “big three” were.

39

That was one of the best-drawn comics of all time. The only one where people seemed to be moving.

Gordo was a Mexican living in Mexico, drawn by a Mexican national, and and it was the only Latino strip I’ve seen in large-circulation US dailies.

His cab would bounce and squeeze through narrow hilly streets. He had a cat he talked to, but I forget if we “heard” what the cat thought.

Is it still printed anywhere, does anyone know?

40

Gordo was great, all right. The cat was P.G., or “Poosy Gato”.

Gordo was drawn by Gus Arriola. I saw it in the early 70’s, and there’s a book in my library published in 1989, “Gordo’s Critters / Gus Arriola ; foreword by Herb Caen”

If it had a 20 year run, there must be more fans. But it would be hard to draw, like you say. Most new comic artists I’ve seen couldn’t draw Dilbert.