Posted on 11/28/2023 4:21:46 PM PST by DallasBiff
(Excerpt) Read more at cbr.com ...
I liked the early DOONESBURY, which made fun of everyone -- liberals & conservatives alike. Then it shifted heavily toward the left, and the characters, let alone the writing, lost their charm.
... but I think that joke was left over from his college newspaper days. He's been a Republican-hater for something like fifty years.
Nancy was deep.
I still remember one where she goes home and it seems that no one is there as she goes from room to room. Last room: There’s a skunk.
Garry Trudeau (Garretson Beekman Trudeau) not only went to the same college a few years after John Kerry, but also went to the same exclusive prep school as Kerry, so he must have picked up on what people there thought of Kerry.
Whatever happened to Our Boardinghouse? I was a big Major Hoople fan.
What happened to Li’l Abner and Dagwood?
Larson was a genius. I disliked Garfield, Doonsbury, and a lot of that era's comics. I liked Beetle Bailey, Calvin & Hobbs, Dilbert, Snuffy Smith, Mutts, and a few others I can't remember. Haven't taken a physical newspaper in years.
Yep, the author is a douche.
Calvin and Hobbes was the best comic, IMO.
I know there are people who completely don't get The Far Side, and I admit, I understand that, but for me, Gary Larson's Far Side had a direct connection to my funny bone.
There are people out there who have a Seinfeld scene for nearly every occasion. I a not one of those, I found it kind of funny, but I wasn't crazy about it.
That is how I am with Gary Larson's work with The Far Side. I have some that pop into my brain in certain situations. (I know Gary Larson put out a very heartfelt and polite letter some years ago asking people not to post his cartoons, but I hope he will understand that in this case, I am discussing his style and what makes it so special to me)
Every so often I find myself addressing some computer related problem, and am ready to click some button and making an irrevocable change, when this cartoon pops into my head:
To me, this cartoon is legendary. It perfectly encapsulates the mindset of someone who absolutely doesn't get it and is going to be very surprised, even though reality is right in front of his face.
It makes me grin sometimes, and always makes me stop and ponder if I am the pilot wondering what a mountain goat could possibly be doing in a cloud bank.
Because I have been there, and just making me think of that is enough to make me take that extra look.
But.
His cartoons don't hit everyone, and occasionally, I miss the point too. This is one that I completely never got, for decades I never figured it out.
I do believe I was nearly embarrassed to admit I couldn't get it. Could my sense of humor be so dense that an obviously funny thing to everyone else went right over my head?
It was eventually revealed to me that the thing that was funny about it was the boy Holstein holding his hoof behind his sister Holstein's head making the horns that kids love to do.
All those years, I though his hoof was a bow on the head of the girl in the Holstein family!
This one is another cartoon I reference often, in the same light as the Mountain Goat in the cloud cartoon, and for similar reasons:
This one has a special place in my heart of humor. It manages to approach the scatalogical, getting hit in the gonads by a baseball, and the goofy male aspect of being totally oblivious.
This final example relates more to what we see in this editorial piece referenced in this thread. This one is interesting, because Gary Larson himself didn't see the backlash on this one coming, if I recall correctly: 
So, when this cartoon hit the newspapers some years back, there was some woman who wrote a letter to her local paper in an effort to get his cartoon permanently pulled, because how disgusting, terrible, and coarse it was to have a dog having sex with a car that it had finally caught! He was caught completely off guard, as he didn't even imagine someone would interpret it that way!
So, to return to the subject, humor obviously isn't the same for everyone, but there is quality humor and lousy attempts at humor, and these cartoons mentioned, Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, etc. are quality cartoons.
And the fact that the author of the opinion piece thinks these cartoons are anything but quality, make you think he is one of the Puritans who had the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
I still miss Lil Abner and Dick Tracy
50 years ago Doonsbury was pretty funny and satirical. The longer it went on though the worse and more leftist it became. Trudeau should have quit at least 25 years ago. No longer any semblance of satire or fun.
The Addams Family was great when it started out. My mother had a collection of the best of the series from the 1950’s and early 1960’s when it was in the magazine.
I kind of liked Lil Abner, even as a kid I appreciated the way he drew his females!
I was more of a “Terry and The Pirates” than a “Dick Tracy” kind of kid myself!
AndI did like “Peanuts”. We had six kids in my family, and I think my parents saw it as a good investment to buy a lot of the big books with them, which we all enjoyed and took turns with.
Peanuts was interesting too. It wasn’t until years later I appreciated fully the adult themes addressed, and I do believe reading those cartoons was just another brick in the foundation to setting us up to be adults, though we didn’t know it.
Anyone who has ever worked in a corporate culture completely and fully understands and appreciates Dilbert, unless they are completely lacking the ability to embrace self-deprecation and have no sense of humor.
One word sums up that genius:
Catbert.
Maggie and Jiggs.
It’s hard to believe that three of their sons became senators, and one even became president.
I grew in a large family as well, with 6 kids.
I think I preferred Dennis the Menace. Haha
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