the sunday comics

Get Fuzzy, Doonesbury and Dilbert are must reads, as is Peanuts. Everything? Ehh, although sometimes Brewster Rocket (I think that's the name) is pretty funny.

 

Mutts is beautiful stuff.

Like Zits.

Dilbert remains top-shelf.

After coasting for two decades, Trudeau was galvanized by 9/11.

Beetle Bailey remains the oldest, most reliable daily gag strip, left.


I HATE how Get Fuzzy is drawn.

Funky Winkerbean (the Anderson Cooper of comics) is mushy, handwringing bullshit.

Family Circus? Go to hell, Jeffy.  Go chase cars, Barfy.

 

. . . and, besides missing Calvin and Hobbes to death . . .

LOVED Moon Mullins.

Billy DeBeck's Barney Google, before Fred Laswell turned it into a hillbilly strip, was sublime.

. . . and, putting Peanuts aside, when Herriman was on his game, Krazy Kat was the peak of the
art form, especially the color Sunday pages (which is all most of the Hearst papers carried) . . .

 

Read the lifestyle section/comics (on Sunday) first every day, and always have. Read 'em all, although I try hard to pass on the "real life" vignettes at the end of the Sunday Marmaduke.

I hated/didn't get Get Fuzzy for a while, but it has really grown on me.

Dilbert's my one must read; if I'm running late and only have 30 seconds with the paper, that's where I go first.

That used to be the case for Doonesbury, but not so much anymore.

 

Amen. Family Circus sucks. It's like an old dog that's peeing on the floor and needs to be euthanized, only no one has the heart to do so.

 

i forgot about arlo & janis. i used to work at a paper that had three pages of comics and arlo & janis was the first one on the first page, so i read out of habit. i thought it was stupid. then as i kept reading i really started appreciating it. i haven't read it in a couple years since i moved and the paper i get now (i'm not in the biz anymore) doesn't have arlo & janis. i don't  even really remember why i liked it so much but i thought arlo was a great character.

ziggy isn't too bad sometimes. i'm fucking sick of garfield. that strip jumped the shark 20 years ago when i was 13. jesus. for the love of god, we understand that jon arbuckle can't get a date.

 

A cursory glance at the comic section of the daily paper in my town (which will give me away if you're really anal about that sort of thing):

Left page​

​

Marmaduke: For dog lovers and old people, and that's about it. I'm neither, so pass.
Ziggy: A relic of the 1970's and 80's; one in every 20 elicits a smile.
Peanuts: The classics never go out of style, and the sheer size of the collection guarantees few repeats.
Hagar the Horrible: Oh, Hagar, when will you ever learn? Good when you have an itch only a pillaging joke can scratch.
Garfield: *The* 80's strip. Too bad it's 2006.
Mark Trail: Big animals in the foreground! Villians abound! WE CAN'T STOP YELLING!
B.C.: 80 percent boring, 15 percent ultra-conservative prostelyzing, 5 percent giggle in spite of yourself.
Rose is Rose: The escapism (Pasquale's dream machine, Rose morphing into a biker chick) and the writing set this apart from the average family-themed strip.
Non Sequitur: Well, it lives up to its name ...
Funky Winkerbean: Already discussed. Bring back the frozen turkeys!
Pickles: Just wry enough to make me not dismiss it as mere geezer humor.
Blondie: It's nice to have a connection to the Roaring 20's, but this one rarely elicits a smile anymore.
Rhymes with Orange: I get this and Non Sequitur confused a lot.
Fox Trot: A great comic, though sometimes too reliant on the stereotypes Amend sets for his characters. Good writing.
Shoe: Does a better job of Southern humor than the ham-handed Snuffy Smith, which we do not get.

(to be continued ...)

 

Damn you, message length limit ...

RIGHT PAGE​

​

For Better or For Worse: For worse. Once a fairly endearing family strip, mushiness and self-righteousness has ruled in the land of the Pattersons, where everyone who doesn't share a bloodline with the core family fails at life. Cornball jokes, cornball morality tales. A long way from the "Lawrence is gay" and "Farley dies saving April's life" storylines, the latter being one of the better things I've ever seen in the funnies.
Speed Bump: Trying to fill the Far Side hole, literally and figuratively. It only succeeds on the first.
Pardon My Planet: It is what it is; above-average one-hit jokes.
Beetle Bailey: Enduring but never terribly good.
Dilbert: Still has its moments, but probably better off in the business section where it's a chance of pace instead of in the middle of general-purpose strips.
Cathy: Zut alors, this sucks. I guess you have to admire Guisewite in that she doesn't fundamentally change the strip because the main character's getting married, but the problem is, the strip is in need of it. But then I don't obsess over buying bathing suits, so I'm not the target demo.
Zits: Best comic out there. Funny, at times charming and thoughtful, rarely misses. Great writing and character development really hits it out of the park. Swiss-watch timing.
Frank and Ernest: The bastard child of Far Side, Broom Hilda and a monochrome computer monitor.
Mother Goose and Grimm: The bastard child of all of Frank and Earnest's bastard parents, plus a retarded Get Fuzzy.
Curtis: Who doesn't want to see someone beat the crap out of that jackoff Barry? I always dig the Sunday strips where they make fun of the church ladies' hats.
Rex Morgan, M.D: No comment because serial strips bore me (though I try to keep an eye on Apartment 3-G online for reasons I can't quite explain).
Get Fuzzy: A close second to Zits. The throwaway observational humor and cutdowns in the first panel usually rate tons better than the money shot for 90 percent of the strips out there. Timing is impeccable and the writing flows like Courvoisier down an icy hill.
Judge Parker: See Rex Morgan.
Hi & Lois: Everything Zits and Fox Trot is, only in Hell. Jokes are telegraphed and rarely worthy of anything but an eyeroll. Characters are caricatures, and the ones you see at the theme park, not the cool arty black-and-white ones at the trendy bistro in town.
Dennis the Menace: Get a copy of the first two bound volumes of Dennis and marvel at how much more of an asshole he was back in the day, what a lecherous would-be womanizer the dad was, and what a rack the mom had. Today's hackeneyed version is a slap in the face to the original.
Jump Start:Escapist panels setting up or responding to everyday occurances are a nice touch, and the writing is fine. I like it.
Sally Forth: Someone, anyone, wipe the smirk off Sally's face. And deliver a Pedigree to Hilary. The author hangs out on the bulletin board of a  pretty decent comic blog (www.joshreads.com [it's not me]) and by reading between the lines, you can tell that this is a sanitized, corporate-approved version of his vision.
The Family Circus: Who keeps reading this shit? Ida Know! Not Me! Probably the best comic to which you can make sarcastic comebacks or create better punchlines, as the late, lamented Dysfunctional Family Circus taught us.

BACK PAGE​

​

Doonesbury: I like the character development. The political humor, not so much (though admittedly as a conservative I have a skewed vision — it's scads better than Mallard Fillmore, though).
Pluggers: You Might Be a Redneck with interactivity.

I'd like them to get Prickly City, which I get on Yahoo every day; it's a conservative-leaning strip, but it's handled with a Bloom County-esque flair that far surpasses the blunt and unironic Mallard Fillmore. I think they used to get the Boondocks, but they may have replaced it once it went on hiatus; it was just as well, it lost a lot of zing off the fastball in recent years and went from being a sharp-tongued, deep polemic from the eyes of a young aware black kid to little more than a paid advertisement for the DNC. We don't get Snuffy Smith, Luann or Marvin, and believe me, I'm not burning the phone lines up for any of 'em.

 

I consider Garfield to be a test of maturity. When you are 9 years old, Garfield is a very funny comic. But eventually you read it and go, "I get it. Garfield is lazy, hates Mondays and loves lasanga, Jon is a dateless loser whose farm family is fucking nuts and Odie is dumber than a U of Miami star linebacker." People over the age of 18 who still enjoy Garfield .... I assume they are stupid and infantile until they prove otherwise.

 

That's a smart goddamn cat.

 

I have noticed they've turned Nancy's Aunt Fritzi into quite a little tart lately.

 

For Mutts' Nancy character to be named Bushy is sheer comedic genius.