Kudzu & Mutts top the list for me.
I like having my opinions validated. This is why I love this message board. Cathy is not funny and offensive.
I like disagreeing peacefully. This is why I love this message board. Boondocks is funny and sometimes offensive.
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BET is terrible. Why is the only “black” channel so full of blue-eyed, long haired, light-skinned, black people?
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Kudzu is still around? I always liked Kudzu, but I haven’t seen it in, like, 15 years.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned The Born Loser. Or maybe it’s just so bad that everyone’s blocked it out. It’s like a cross between The Lockhorns and Andy Capp, only with worse art (I’d swear that all the characters are just photocopied pieces of clip art), staler “jokes” and a meaner spirit.
Geenius:
And you haven’t missed a thing. You’ve seen Rev. Will B Dunn “modernize the services” once, that’s as many times as you’ll ever need to see it.
But try telling that to Doug Marlette.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Doonsebury. Or however you spell it.
Dilbert. It was funny exactly once. I think I missed that one.
Boondocks. Har Har.
Garfield is getting long in tooth.
Cathy needs a good swift kick.
Zits. Pop `em.
For Better or For Worse. It’s past Worst.
I totally agree with these. Now, Family Circus is just obviously to be avoided but cherished for those surreal moments with the dead grandparents and its appropriation into things like Dysfunctional Family Circus, etc. It’s almost one of those so-bad-it’s-good things.
But the crypto-fundie-fascist B.C. is far more insidious. You know the feeling-- it’s a holiday Sunday morning, Easter, say, and you turn the page and, like watching a car-wreck, you can’t resist it. . . “ARgh arghargh!” you cry. . .
Rose is Rose used to be fairly level, but it seems that cartoonist was reborn in the last couple of years, too, perhaps.
And I think I may be one of the few people in the world who never enjoyed Peanuts, even as a child.
It has to be Heathcliff.
Heathcliff just transcends not funny and reaches into the depths of… my god, I can’t even describe it. It is… truly, truly awful.
Of course, Marmaduke is biting at Heathcliff’s heels. The only reason I don’t hate Marmaduke as much is because he never got his own television show, as he is equally unfunny.
Ohhh, and Garfield. We cannot forget about Garfield.
No matter how much we try. His suction cup-clad claws have sheared deeply into my soul and left me a pale, fragile husk of the person I once was.
Fred Basset is pretty awful too, but I don’t know if it’s national.
Not to mention anything by Mort Walker.
Ahh, I forgot about Family Circus. Now that’s good comedy. You just have to… change it around a little. Heh heh. God rest the DFC.
M.K., you aren’t the only one who doesn’t like Peanuts. Not now, not then, not ever. I hate that damn delusional dancing dog. I hate sociopathic Lucy, co-dependant Linus, clinically depressed Charlie Brown, mute Franklin, butch Peppermint Patty, sexually confused Marcy, obsessive compulsive Schroeder, and… uh… unnaturally lustful Sally. Now that I think about it, the strip was probably full of deep Freudian metaphors. I guess that explains the whole football thing.
“poop holds the tent wher it is”
Sally Forth sucks SO much
the writing is bad … so bad, smirkey, snarkey and self satified…
but the ART, the ART is beyond the back side of atrocious
the figures look as though they are sketches of
an Egyptian bas relief, flat, expressionless, hard
to view, w/o any soul at all behind those tiny ink-spot
eyes…a strip truly with out any value, IMHO.
Of the long-standing comics from my youth, it’s time to flush ‘Wizard of ID’ once and for all.
And since the end of ‘Far Side’, we (in the New York Metro area) have gotten a slew of crappy one-panelers of no appreciable worth, (e.g ‘Flight Deck’ or ‘Speed Bump’). Only Bizarro (around since the 80s) is worth keeping. The rest, Buh-Bye.
Yeah, how did we get all those lame one-panel strips. They suck!
Also:
Wizard of Id, as mentioned
BC
Beetle Bailey
Mother Goose and Grimm
The Lockhorns
Marmaduke
Cathy (even tho we share a first name, I’d like to think I’m not nearly as lame as she is)
Curtis
Lola
However, The Boondocks, For Better or For Worse, Doonesbury, Mutts, Zits, and sometimes Dilbert, rule!
M.K. wrote:
Speaking of the Dysfunctional Family Circus:
In this Sunday’s The Family Circus, Dolly was shown mis-quoting the Pledge of Allegiance in one of those oh-so-cute-you-want-to-puke-all-over-Bil-Keane moments. Thing was, though, she started the pledge with, “I pleasure legions to the flag…”
It was almost like old Spinnwebe was back in business again! And I’ll bet Bil Keane didn’t even know what he was saying!
The Detroit Free Press had a comics poll several months back.
Guess who won?
.
.
.
It’s one of the comics mentioned above.
.
.
.
.
Go on, guess.
.
.
.
.
Nope.
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.
.
Not that one either.
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.
.
.
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The lockhorns.
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.
.
And it was a repeat winner. I kid you not.
Chalk another vote for the insufferable “Cathy”. My local paper ditched the marvelous “Foxtrot” after less than 6 months, but keeps beating that dead nag day in day out.
So many gag-worthy comics…
the only one I can think of that really, truly sucks ass and has not been mentioned yet is Gasoline Alley. UGH. I hate it with all that is me.
Doonesbury is completely incomprehensible. Hard to believe it actually has followers.
I must say I like Dilbert, and on a totally off-topic note, my favorite comic is Foxtrot, but back to the original point:
KILL FAMILY CIRCUS!!!
Marmaduke gets the runner-up award.
You see, in my mind there are 3 types of comics:
- Comics that try to be funny (these should be the only ones, IMO.)
- Comics that try to have some emotional message (bleh).
- Comics that attempt to be type #2, but end up screwing up horribly. This is what Family Circus is.
Also, it’s not just that Marmaduke and Family Circus are bad comics…it’s that from what I hear, it’s hard as hell to get a job as a syndicated cartoonist, and competition is fierce. There are a lot of great cartoonists that can never get real jobs, then there are these people like Bil Keane with thei lame-ass comics that don’t make any sense, and they become millionares for doing something that even I could do better.
sigh
I could go on and on, but I think I’ll just end here.
BTW, I can’t say I’m too fond of Cathy either, I usually skip over it.
So many offenders, so little effect…
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Cathy: I loathe, hate and tear my hair over that abomination. It’s horrendously drawn, insulting and boring. Dieting, shopping, feral mothers, neuroses, etc.
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Marvin: the bloated insect is Garfield without fur.
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BC: portentous, pompous poop.
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Family Circus: it isn’t even unintentionally funny any more. The dead grandparents, the kid wandering around, the “Billy draws the strip” schtick…oh, ick.
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Lockhorns: stale, very stale 1950’s “war of the sexes” humor.
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Baby Blues: badly drawn, and cutesy-insulting. Calvin was a hellion, but he portrayed the magic of childhood too.
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Gasoline Alley: huh?
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Garfield: Jon as geek-victim to his wideload cat–blech.
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Mary Worth: the prissy old snoop and her dysfunctional neighbors should be put out of their collective misery.
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Rex Morgan, MD: 40-yr. old sterotypes without the charm or conviction of real people. The artwork is stunningly bad; are these geriatric stereotypes supposed to look deformed?
And that’s just the start. I’ll shut up now.
Veb
You have to keep in mind that newspapers want young children to be able to read some of the comics. That might explain the continued exsistance of Garfield, Family Circus, etc.
The only ones I can think of that haven’t been mentioned yet are Momma, Shoe, Mutts, In The Bleachers, 9 Chickweed Lane, and this other stupid one whose name I can’t remember, but it has this woman in a bathtub and she has two cats that hold up signs with dialog on them. It’s even stupider than it sounds.
That little piece of atrocious artwork is called Silvia.