Best and Worst Comic Strips?

[MNDude]

In your opinion, what is the best comic strip to ever appear in newspapers (like Peanuts or whatever) and what is your most hated comic strip?

[relictele]

Best: Calvin & Hobbes

Worst: Boondocks. Shameless, unfunny ripoff of Bloom County with tiresome ‘black anger’ pouring out of every panel. The papers, the author and the PR firm tried to make it a hit but humor and the entitlement mentality don’t make a good mix.

Strangest: Henry. Mute bald kid. How many sleepless nights did the cartoonist have trying to come up with a strip idea considering his main character couldn’t talk?

[InvisibleChurch]

Thanks for the laff. !

[InvisibleChurch]

The grandfather in Boondocks was ok. The best was when he was talking back to Mike Ditka in his Viagra commercials. “Get back in the game? What game? What are you talking about? Football?”

[InvisibleChurch]

The lemmings are the best. (PBS)

[BTCM]

and then there was the truly non-pc, Tumbleweeds by T.K. Ryan, the characters alone would bring a belly laugh even without the story line.

[namvolunteer]

Good: Sherman’s Lagoon, Alley Oop, Mark Trail

Really bad: Crankshaft, Brenda Starr

[raccoonradio]

Boondocks (spoofed once as Boombox) was a TV series for awhile

http://joshreads.com is the Comics Curmudgeon, a blog whose author cites what he considers lazy or hackneyed or stupid comic panels. Originally known as I Read The Comics So You Don’t Have To, which sounds like what YouTube’s Nostalgia Critic says about movies.

[InvisibleChurch]

Tumbleweeds was great. Thx for bringing that up. Also liked Geech.

[niteowl77]

When I was a little kid, I liked some comics that in retrospect were not all that great, so I can't say they were the best. Let's see… "best"…

Probably Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes," which I thought came closest to the "perfect" comic strip ever. There has been nothing like it since. My dad loved C&H, and my son was delighted to have dad read it to him.

Right up there would be Gary Larson's "The Far Side," another rarity in that three generations of my family enjoyed it. Currently, Scott Hilburn's "The Argyle Sweater" comes most closely to recreating the experience (at least for me).

Michael Ramirez is the KING of the editorial cartoon. I stand in awe of his ability. Having said that, I also dig Glenn McCoy's and Mike Lester's artwork. I used to enjoy Wayne Stayskal's stuff back when I was reading the Chicago newspapers.

(Honorable mention alert! When I was little, my uncle would give me his copies of the Army's PS magazine. The early '60s Will Eisner stuff was awesome. I picked up a PS two years ago and it was like running into an old friend who has changed beyond recognition.)

The "worst?" Hmm...

Any number of things out there today are crappy on one level or another, but I'll agree that "This Modern World" is bad "cartooning" at a level not seen by me since the days when weirdos shoved local anti-whatever "newspapers" in my hand as I walked past some event.

"Doonesbury" was never a favorite of mine, but I did read it many, many years ago and then stopped. Nowadays, I will glance at it if I see a paper opened to the comics laying on a table, just to mentally mock Garry Trudeau in absentia. Like so many blatantly prog or lefty comics, it was only infrequently funny at best, and less so with age. It's not the absolute worst, but it's bad enough.

Mr. niteowl77

[mad_as_he$$]

Best Dilbert. Everything else is pale in comparison.

[TangoLimaSierra]

Honorable mention Prickly City

Love that one.

[KosmicKitty]

Calvin & Hobbes - The best

Doonesbury - the worst

[Second Amendment First]

Thanks for the reminder. I have this t-shirt from the early 90's:

• 

◅

▻

[Sine_Pari]

Agreed, I would add B.C., The Far Side, and Shoe to my fabs.

As far as worst, Doonesbury was the indisputable worst until Boondocks appeared in the scene. I was living in the DC area when this black kid student from the University of Maryland started the strip in the school’s paper. Of course, it was immensely popular with the liberal/marxist crowd in MD opening doors for the kid. First in cartoon syndication and later as a TV cartoon show in Cartoon Network. At least Doonsbury stuck mostly to attacking conservatism and propping up liberalism/socialism/communism/progressives/marxists causes for the middle aged likeminded; Boondocks is mostly angry/violent racial anti-anything not black in a present setting targeted at the young.

Regards.

[freebird5850]

I visit gocomics.com and get my fill daily. Overboard is quite good among others at that site. Doonsbury worst.

[alfa6]

IRRC the SEALs showed up in Buzz Sawyer not Steve Canyon about 1963 or so.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Verginius Rufus]

Actually, “For Better of For Worse” is still being published. Lynn Johnston started over so the kids are little again. The older version had gotten too complicated with so many additional characters. Always very politically correct (the artist is Canadian) but often funny.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

There are so many good old ones no longer printed.

Anyone remember THE LITTLE KING?
Jimmy Hatlo’s THEY’LL DO IT EVERY TIME
THERE AUGHT TO BE A LAW
TARZAN
FLASH GORDON
BUCK ROGERS
Rick O’Shay (Remember the gunman who looked like he stepped out of the movie SHANE?)

The best drawn comic strip was PRINCE VALIANT. You could tell when Hal Foster died as another good artist took over, when he died another good artist also took over, but then the story line became too surreal.

When my mom was a kid some old neighbor hated the si-fi comics. He said that no one would ever get into space! That was all just made up tales and a waste of time!

Some that come on strong and died the death like DAN FLAGG (1966 political cartoon about the US in Veitnam)).
Basil (forgettable)
And way too many others that simply stunk.(DOONESBURY)

I quit reading the comics when Calvin and Hobbes ceased publication.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I just realized no one has mentioned DICK TRACY! I followed him for years, till he got silly and found people on the moon.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

One “country” cartoon I liked was THAT’S JAKE, till the artist died. The one I really remember was when a Government Contractor that Jake was working for gave them some new guidelines on digging holes.

They would no longer dig the hole on site, they would dig in the shop, load the hole onto a truck and haul it to the site, then dig a hole and lower the new hole into the hole they just dug.