What comic strip would you like to see go to the grave?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Oh, please get rid of the Family Circus! I have grown very weary of their ‘cuteness’. Then the ‘LockHorns’, followed by Frank and Earnest. DOONSBERRY must go! That comic strip turned from being cool to snob city only for yuppies years ago and just gripes my rear end each time I spot it.

Peanuts has to go. I have disliked that strip for years, ever since I realized that the eternal good guy, Charlie Brown, was never going to win, was forever going to be insulted and harassed by his so-called friends and even his own dog was going to make fun of him! Someone needed to punch Lucy in the mouth and his sister, Sally, could have used a good whipping.

I miss Calvin and Hobbes! Unfortunately, their creator ran out of material.

(INFOSPOT HERE: Snuffy Smith has been around since the 50’s, once linked with the now defunct comic strip Lil’ Abner, from which came the phrase ‘Kickapoo joy juice’ (indicating home made booze) and the current soft drink ‘Mountain Dew’ (originally brewed in a still by some of the characters). They were also all linked by ‘Barney Google and Spark Plug,’ a seedy hillbilly with a broken down race horse. Lil’ Abner was a great strip and was once turned into a Broadway play and then a movie.)

42

Sally Forth <shudder> is the worst. I read it every week just to see if it’s ever funny and it never is…I’m not even sure if it’s supposed to be.

43

Just out of curiosity:

Why is it that the really funny cartoonists (Watterson, Larson, Breathed) get burned out and retire, but the mediocre ones (Mort Walker, Schultz, etc.) can go on forever?

Now don’t get me wrong… I like Beetle Bailey and Peanuts (haven’t read too much of Hi & Lois to form a judgement). I think they are institutions and shouldn’t be retired. But their humor is just not on the same level as Calvin & Hobbes, the Far Side, Bloom County and Dilbert (yes, I know you don’t like it ** Saint Zero **, but if you’ve had a work experience like Dilbert, it will keep you amused for 100 years).

I know I can read Dilbert on any given day (or a rerun of the other strips I’ve mentioned) and actually burst out laughing. When reading BB, Peanuts, Blondie, Family Circus or any of the other “Oldies but Goodies,” I might get a chuckle, or I might think “Oh, how cute,” but I’m not going to actually get a laugh from them.

Zev Steinhardt

44

Goodness me, what a LOT of incorrect inormation all together in one short space!

“Snuffy Smith” had no connection to “Lil’ Abner” aside from the fact that they both featured hillbilly humor. Many strips from the Olden Days featured hillbilly humor, as well as jokes about other ethnic types.

“Snuffy” DID grow out of “Barney Google.” Barney, who was NOT a seedy hillbilly but a seedy urban racetrack tout and gambler, made several trips out to the hill country (to indulge in hillbilly humor) in the late '20s and early '30s, usually staying with his cousin Snuffy, who spun off a strip like “Maude” spun out of “All in the Family.”

“Kickapoo Joy Juice” WAS a creation of Al Capp in the “Lil’ Abner” strip. “Mountain Dew” was not.

45

Barney Google?

I LOAF heem!

—Madame LaZonga

46

Eve, you know I worship you, but that was Madame La Mousse (the inamorata of Senator Schnopps, whom she dropped like a hot spud when she saw a photo of Barney G and his bubble-eyes, so he had to hire Opal Showers to try to vamp Barney away from La Mousse) who said that thing there.

47

I knew that!

You think I didn’t KNOW that?

I was being, umm . . . ironic.

48

Boy there sure are lots of people without much sense of humor. By the way, that’s “Sylvia” and if you don’t get that one, I give up. Maybe everyone who’s written in this thread needs to get over being so SERIOUS and full of Righteous Indignation, and just be silly in the comics. (I’m sorry, but if you don’t see the humor in Mutts, there is truly no hope.)
Family Circus is for people who think little kids are cute. If you don’t then don’t read it. I don’t think little kids are cute so I skip that one (freedom of choice) but I think people like my cousin with five kids have the right to have a funny (get it, funny) that they enjoy. Did you ever think maybe the comic strips are trying to have something for everyone???

49

Well I seem to remember the OP asking for cartoons that need to be laid to rest. What the hell are you doing here? And no one is trying to understand the deep philisophical meaning of Cathy, so I do not understand where you get the notion of everyone here being so serious or full of “Righteous Indignation.” Do you even know what “Righteous Indignation” means? And the whole point of these people responding to this thread is that they do not think these cartoons are funny, or they would not be aksing for them to be axed. If these comics were silly/funny then they would probably like them.

Thats your opinion, and you will probably notice that no one here will call you serious or full of righteous indignation for saying it, so will you kindly not do so to other people who are voicing their opinions?

And did you ever think that maybe everyone here is just having fun bitching about comics that they do not like and do not need to get lectured by someone too ignorant to see that???

Geez…

-N

50

zev_steinhardt said,

Probably because the good cartoonists expend a lot more effort than mediocre ones.

I say we throw out all comic strips older than ten years and bring in some new talent. The rate of turnover in the comics is depressingly low, especially with dinosaurs like “Blondie” or “Beetle Bailey” still clinging to life.

  • JB
51

I can’t believe nobody has mentioned “Wee Pals”. It’s worse than any of the others by an order of magnitude.

52

And throw out Dilbert??? :eek:

53

That fucking “Close To Home” has got to go! John McPherson can’t draw worth shit. Everything he draws has way too much empty space in it, and he can barely keep his lines straight. Whenever he tries to show motion he just draws a bunch of jerky lines around people. The worst part is that McPherson’s awkward scribbles take up the spot once occupied by “The Far Side”. Now THAT was a comic strip!

54

Okay, the certified shitlist:

Peanuts, Close to Home, Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Apartment 3-G, Sally Forth, Marmaduke, Family Circus, Cathy, Silvia, Baby Blues, Rugrats, Garfield, Snuffy Smith, Andy Capp, The Duplex, The Lockhorns, The Born Loser, Frank and Ernest, 9 Chickweed Lane, Marvin, BC, Wizard of Id, Gasoline Alley, Nancy, Heathcliff, Dennis the Menace, Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose and Grimm.

I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones which I have had the misfortune of seeing. Before anyone screams bloody murder, yes, rarely, VERY RARELY any one of these strips may have a good moment, but for the most part, they SUCK! There’s also another really lame “soap opera” one besides Apartment 3-G, but I can’t seem to think of its name right now.

It seems like the only good ones currently in the paper are Robotman, Non Sequiter, and occasionally (much more occasionally): Boondocks, Sherman’s Lagoon, and Bobo’s Progress (just because I’m a sucker for well-drawn Furries). One that’s NOT in any paper yet but should be is Ozy and Millie (cf http://www.ozyandmillie.com). Good ones from the past are Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, and the Far Side. My current fave has to be Robotman, though.

55

Hey, take “9 Chickweed Lane” off the shitlist!

It’s the only strip where the characters actually have a sex life! Worth keeping around for THAT, at least.

Also, as someone pointed out months ago, it’s of great interest to leg fetishists.

56

How about Gil Thorpe (I usually run across in the Sports section) and Mark Trail?

Tinker

57

FYI, Jeff MacNelly, the guy who drew Shoe, died last week of cancer. :frowning:

I have to disagree with those who dislike Cathy. The best strips involve her relationship with her mother, which is something most women can relate to. I’ve used strips to broach touchy issues with my own mother, in fact. Close to Home is good for those of us in the medical profession, because it’s a good source of cartoons for locker walls.

The one I loathe to the point of spitting bile is Tiger, by Bud Blake. That is so unfunny, I actually get depressed. I usually buy the Minneapolis Star-Tribune because the Pioneer Press cartoons are so bad. The two redeeming cartoons in the whole damn paper are Non Sequitur by Wiley, and Bizarro.

Robin

58

I can’t believe no one has said Apartment 3G! Probably because no one reads it! If they did, they would notice that they end every freaking sentence with exclamation points! Or question marks?!?

59

Fine with me, but why can’t they give enough new strips a chance so that they could have something good for everyone?

Having your strip on the comics pages is a lot like being on the Supreme Court: once you’re there, the only way you’re leaving involuntarily is through death. And even that’s not enough, all too often: as everyone knows, Peanuts has gone ‘Classic’ now that Sparky’s kicked. And a number of the mediocre strips are now being written by the children of the original cartoonists, who are long in their graves.

I’m hoping that MacNelly’s death will open up a spot for a new strip in the papers that have carried Shoe, but it’s too soon to tell. That strip has been unfunny for about fifteen years; it’s a shame it should take his death to get rid of the strip.

Yes, the papers should have strips for a variety of people and tastes. But there has to be somebody out there who can write a better strip about the travails of the single woman than Cathy. There have to be people who can write more lively comics for kids than the people who write Dennis the Menace, Tiger, and so forth. There have to be better strips for old fogeys who like to see essentially the same thing in the comics each day than…no, you really can’t do sameness any better than the strips everyone’s already mentioned.

But with the exception of that last (TIC) category, we never get a chance to see if anyone can do it, because there’s nowhere for their work to be displayed, since the comics-for-fogeys can’t be killed off. That’s why this discussion’s so necessary. Until a few strips are killed, or until cartooonists have a home (and can make a living) online, there’s nowhere for us to see what a new generation of cartoonists might be doing.

And that’s the real shame. If there were plenty of room for new strips to get into the paper, it wouldn’t matter if the newspapers carried every last comatose strip in existence. But every Lockhorns, every Mark Trail, every Garfield is keeping somebody off the comics page.

The cartoonists who are being kept off the comics pages by the geezer strips might or might not be any good. But they could hardly be any worse than most of the comic strips that have been mentioned on this thread, and they might be a damned sight better. It would be nice to find out.

60

'Round these here parts we read the Washington Post, and there’s plenty that should go:

Cathy
B.C.
Wizard of Id (the King really is a fink!)
Mary Worth
Apartment 3-G (Does anyone ever notice the artwork and the artists responsible for this atrocity change every few months?)
Spider Man (Keep him in the comic books. Less deadline pressure that way, and maybe Stan Lee can retire. The man’s a genius, but a daily strip just isn’t working for Spidey.)
Peanuts (Sometimes I thought it was good, and he obviously had a lot of influence on the world of comic strips. But damn, readers! Let it go; let’s get some new talent in here.)

There are probably others but since I don’t have the comics page in front of me I’ll stop here. I will add, however, that we have a comic called Six Chix - drawn by six women artists - they recently introduced, and they pulled Mr. Boffo to do it. Who in the hell made that decision! Mr. Boffo rocked! Any one of the above-named strips coulda been pulled and I wouldn’t have missed them.