Agreed.
I actually read the new version for a week. Too damned bland to be the best thing ever; 21[sup]st[/sup] Century pop culture does not mesh with the quasi-Bushmiller style. Would be much better by completely doing her own thing or completely going retro.
Doonesbury–It had some great moments from the early '70s to say, the early to mid Carter years, but has been a zombie strip ever since. He’s also a scumbag for making fun of Bob Dole’s war-injured arm. (March 19, 1995). It had some great moments back in the early days (“Bravo for life’s little ironies”) but Trudeau has been a bitter, boring jackass since early Reagan. Frankly I’d rather read Mary Worth AND Mallard Fillmore*
*I find that while Doonesbury is shrill and bitter, Mallard Fillmore is the kind of crazy grand uncle you have to go around apologizing for.
I actually kind of like Phoebe.
But for a badly drawn, three joke comic, it’s hard to beat ‘The Duplex’. Talking dog, sad sack loser owner. Kind of ‘Family Guy’ if Peter never married and there was no humor whatsoever. There may only be two jokes - can’t get a date, drinks a lot of beer.
Man, people who actually read the strip know that there’s also the third joke where “this place is dirty”! 
It did go completely retro, and that’s why the trolls are whining. She brought back Bushmiller’s style of humour, rather than aping his visual style, like the Gilchrists did.
The current strips are exactly the sort of thing Bushmiller would have done, today.
The jokes about TV, movies, and so on, that Bushmiller did are the equivalent of the phone and social media jokes that Jaimes does.
‘Bland’ is the last several years of the Gilchrist strips, after they gave up on anything resembling humour or plot and decided the strip should be tributes to dead musicians interspersed with Fritzi’s tits.
Hardly. See the link in post 25.
The Lockhorns.
Threadwinner since 1968.
Zippy the Pinhead is both ugly, and incomprehensibly un-funny. It’s not offensive, but I generally don’t see even what the joke is supposed to be.
Regards,
Shodan
You’ve reminded me of how boring parts of my childhood were. Like the fortnight-long car rides that counted as vacation (“Sorry, kids, no time to stop for ice cream, but we’ll spend an hour at another field that I think was a Civil War encampment once…”)
And the Sunday “Funnies”…
Back in the 60s, it was those “sitcom” strips repeating the same stupid cliches and stereotypes, and the boring Rex Morgan-style soap operas of ongoing banality. Oh, and if those were too exciting, there was Prince Valiant! If it weren’t for Peanuts, I never would’ve opened the daily paper as a kid.
That’s why, when Calvin & Hobbes and Bloom County arrived, they were such a big deal.
I did. Why you think that is somehow a contradiction of the fact that Jaimes is doing the same style of joke that Bushmiller did - ie, she has gone retro in a real, non-superficial sense - I don’t know.
The Gilchrists were never retro!Nancy. They mimicked Bushmiller’s visual style, but the only times they followed his style of humour, they were reusing one of his gags.
And as to that ‘tall grass’ strip?
Meh.
‘Sluggo is lazy’ was played out years before I stopped reading the Gilchrists’ strips, and that’s not even a particularly clever variation of it. It’s proof of my assertion that they’d given up on humour, not a counter to it.
Okay, when did Bushmiller ever use a random talking head as a narrator?
And Jaimes isn’t even bothering, which is part of the problem.
It’s another example of the zombie strip; its creator, Bill Hoest, died 30 years ago, but his widow, along with his former assistant, have kept it going.
And, it’s pretty much the same six jokes over and over again:
- The husband drinks too much
- The husband flirts with attractive women
- The husband is lazy
- The wife shops too much
- The wife is a bad cook
- The wife is a bad driver
Those weren’t terribly funny in 1970, but they’re even more tired and stereotypical now.
About 15 years ago, the Chicago Tribune invited readers to vote for their favorite (and least favorite) comics, as they considered replacing some. They printed my email, in which I stated the above about The Lockhorns (and lamented the demise of strips like Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, and The Far Side). A few days later, I got a letter in the mail, from an older woman, who informed me that (a) The Lockhorns is a wonderful comic strip, and (b) my sense of humor sucks. 
I only remember one Fusco Brothers strip, but it was kind of funny. I never followed it day-to-day; of the random times I saw it, I’m sure I’ve just forgotten all the ones that sucked.
Now I get it. When I call the new Nancy “bland”, I’m referring to the style, not the humor. Bushmiller had busy backgrounds whereas Jaimes has virtually nothing other than what the characters interact with.
The worst comic strip ever is on Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis site. It’s a bland little fundamentalist Young Earth Creationist comic called “After Eden”. Imagine Pluggers, but relentlessly religious and without the sense of humor. It’s like he’s heard of humor, but doesn’t quite grasp what it means to be funny. It’s not as offensive as a Jack Chick comic, but more like “Love is…” if it were drawn by a street corner preacher.
+1