Mary Worth continues to be hilarious day after day.
From Don Markstein’s Toonopedia:
To my utter surprise, Hagar has been used to sell products. There’s also a Hagar-themed store at Island of Adventure in Florida, with a huge Hagar out front. There was even an animated TV special (how did I miss that? ) in 1989. See the Wikipedia page for details
To be fair. It must be hard to be “on” day after day, for decades. Not excusing lazy writing and art, understand, but at some point it must, will become hard to come up with fresh new jokes within the strip’s standard (specific) format.
From the National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody:
Which also contains “The Amazing Squirrel-Man” and “Horrid The Hun.”
^awesome, possum!
I think part of the problem is that once you read a few years of any comic strip on a daily basis you have probably seen 99 percent of the material.
I know I USED to enjoy reading comic strips. Now I rarely do and I suspect it is for the above mentioned reason.
Some people don’t mind hearing the same jokes over and over. Others not so much.
I like Luann, Get Fuzzy, Pearls, and Mutts - Mutts has a special place in my heart, often beautiful artwork and touching storylines.
The Dinette Set by Julie Larson had its last panel published end of November. I am devastated. I hate-read this thing for years, but perversely loved it so much. I feel like putting on sweatpants, a Members Only jacket, picking up some imitation Ding Dongs at the Dollar Dump, and later going out to The Trough Buffet , making inane conversation with my husband and sister.
Any new guy trying to break into comic strips is never going to try to get a strip printed on dead trees that are thrown out every day. Anyone with any talent or soul is going to be writing a web comic. The only comics I ever try to see are xkcd, penny arcade, and tom the dancing bug. Does Tom the Dancing bug ever get printed in newspapers? Maybe alternative papers?
I remember seeing TTDB in alternative newspapers in the early 90’s. It might still be there, but I don’t keep up with that crowd as much as I used to.
I knew about the alcoholic part, not the wife beating part. But that’s not why I hate him. This is the guy who found nothing funny in the entire Bush administration except when Bush proposes something reasonable about immigration. And for whom Donald Trump and the entire primary campaign does not exist. So he’s a coward also.
The best Mallard Fillmore cartoon ever was the fake one in Jon Stewart’s book America (The Book).
Tinsley actually got pissy about that.
Dorothy: What’s so funny?
Blanche: Oh, Marmaduke. Look at how he drives that car. Ha ha ha! I love my comics. Every day, Marmaduke and Apartment 3-G.
Dorothy: I haven’t read Apartment 3-G since…1961.
Blanche: Oh, well, let me catch you up. It’s later the same day…
Now that I’ve got you all here, can somebody tell me how “Hagar” is pronounced? Without going all International Phonetic Alphabet on me. Thanks!
Also, do you suppose there’s an opening for an unfunny, badly drawn, third party strip? For those who just want an alternative to Doonesbury and Mallard.
According to various sources (including Wikipedia), Browne pronounced it HAY-gar.
It’s what his sons started calling him after he grew the beard. Thus is a comic strip born
(I’ve seen photos of Browne before the beard. More to the point, I’ve seen a papier-mache sculpture siome other cartoonists made of him pre-beard. They used a light bulb for the nose, and the chin is virtually on-existent. I have to conclude that he grew the beard in self-defense to distract attention from his prominent nose and receding chin. Thus was the image born, thus the name, and, almost inevitably, the comic strip. We have Hagar the Horrible today because of a papier mache caricature.)
Mary Worth and Apartment 3-G are two I NEVER understood.
I assume they are mini-soap operas, brought to the readers in a few panels a day, over the course of years, but I could never dedicate myself to read them for a few months to see if I liked them. Somebody must, but I have never met anyone who admits to it.
I remember one called “Dondi” (I think) that I hung with for a while, but I realized I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow for my cartoon story to continue at 3 or 4 panels at a time.
When Calvin and Hobbes ended, so did my interest in any cartoon. Today’s offerings just don’t appeal to me. I suspect that is a product of age that we all go through at some point. (Except, of course, for the superhero fan boys like Kevin Smith who can follow those characters and enjoy them for life.)
I am kind of glad in a way that Calvin and Hobbes ended. My affection for that cartoon has never changed, whereas many others that continued on became weak, hollow shells of their golden years.
Too bad they can’t print my idea:
I know some Scandinavian-Americans who like Hagar the Horrible, inauthentic hat and all.
Anyway, about Hagar: every so often even the dullest strips like Garfield will get a smirk out of me and occasionally a real belly-laugh. I liked this recent Hagar:
Hagar is going to be SOOO disappointed 
Back in its hayday, much of the humor in Hagar the Horrible revolved around Hagar drinking too much, and the trouble he got into while drunk. Eventually, civic-minded types pushed the artist to drop the booze-related humor. And the strip became much less funny as a result.
It was around the same time that Beetle Bailey cleaned up its act. Sarge stopped swearing and stopped beating up Beetle, and the General stopped being a dirty old man. And, like Hagar, there really was little reason to read the strip after that.
I put a spoiler around this so it fits with the two click rule.