Well, you’re a sample size of one. I didn’t say that every older reader would get mad, but it’s not 25 year olds getting ruffled if their Beetle Bailey or Andy Capp is threatened.
That’s pretty much the real answer to the thread right there.
I imagine that comic strip writers are looking for either a mild smile, or just not a WTF? response most days, and periodically come up with jokes or concepts that are actually funny. But every day for decades? Nobody can keep up that kind of humor for that long.
I always felt like Berke Breathed would have been better as a graphic novelist than a daily comic strip artist- lots of good stuff there, but maybe better off in a more condensed format with some polishing/revision.
I think this is the key point. It’s really difficult to write good original jokes day after day for decades. Especially when you have to fit those jokes within the confines of an established comic strip.
So a comic strip might start out with good original jokes to get itself established. (I swear; there was a time when Garfield was funny.) But at some point, the joke well runs dry. Many comic strips then survive by familiarity rather than humor. People read them because they’ve been reading them for decades and reading today’s comic strip evokes a sense of connection with all of the past days in which you’ve read that same comic strip.
I believe this is the critical observation.
I mentioned WuMo to my wife just this morning. The print is so damned small that I find I don’t care to make the effort to even try to read it - especially since I so rarely find it funny. And the drawing is so ugly.
(Similarly, I pass over Doonesbury when the strip has tons of tiny type - like Roland’s tweets or something. Not worth the effort.)
We have a Far Side book, with an introduction in which GL describes the standards review. IIRC, he submitted a panel of 2 spiders. 1 was wearing a scary mask, and the 2d had silk that had squirted out of it’s rear end. I thought it reasonably funny, but it was not accepted for publication.
Nowadays, I’m regularly impressed at the number of comics that reference scatology and other grossness. WaMu is one of the most likely to rely on such. I don’t generally consider myself a prude, but I have a hard time seeing this as an improvement.
That was a very sad day for comics. I really miss his work.
Even worse than WuMo was Close To Home and I could not have been happier when my paper dropped it.
EVERYONE needs to click on that link. Cynics and comic lovers who want to laugh at horrible drawings, and masochists who enjoy the pain of horrible drawings.
Wow, that’s horrible The art style resembles the work of John Callahan, who was literally quadriplegic. And Callahan’s jokes were a lot funnier (in an extremely warped way).
