the sunday comics

do you still read the sunday comics? i used to read them religiously until my mid 20s, but as i've gotten older, i read them a little less often. lately i started making a point of reading them.

what are your must reads? i always need to know what beetle bailey is up to. it's by far my favorite strip and i can name all the characters and give you their backstory (i know, i'm a dork...but gimme a break. when i was a kid i had all the beetle bailey books, too). i like blondie, zits, curtis, doonesbury and the comic-formerly-known-as-bloom-county (the name escapes me). boondocks is up and down and i glance at peanuts even though it's been in 'reruns' for years now. i hate mark trail, mary worth and dilbert. dilbert used to be terrific but now it hits the jackpot about once every six months.

i'm not really sure why i still read the comics. i almost never laugh out loud. i guess it's something about making sure i get little dose of light-heartedness and not take life too seriously, even if the comics aren't exactly uproariously funny.

 

Fox Trot has its moments. I miss Calvin and Hobbes.

 

I went to www.myucomics.com and now I have Calvin and Hobbes e-mailed to me every morning. It's the cartoon from this date 11 years ago. Best part of my day.

 

Thank you thank you thank you!!!

 

I was big into Calvin and Hobbes (a guy I work with got the complete, three-volume Calvin and Hobbes set for Christmas - absolutely essential readsing and fucking funny as hell) and Bloom County.

I like Zits and Fox Trot but the only must-read for me these days is Sherman's Lagoon.

 

     Since I was old enough to read, going on for a half-century now, my approach to the daily paper had never varied.
    1. Sports
    2. Comics
    3. Page 1

     Still like Doonesbury and Dilbert. Boondocks is very good on the occasions it hits The  serial strips are of course dying like flies, but it'll be a sad day for journalism when Brenda Starr and Gil Thorp give up the ghost.

 

Zits and Fox Trot are the strongest of the lot. I don't like it when comics turn serial (Funky Winkerbean) or self-righteous and preachy (For Better of For Worse -- okay, okay, everyone in the family is worthy to die for our sins, we get the point). The old strips keep doing what they're doing; in 50 years I wouldn't be surprised if most of them are still being produced with a third or fourth-generation cartoonist, and chances are the jokes won't be fundamentally different, just updated for modern times (Family Circus, Beetle Bailey, Hi and Anus Lois).

 

I quit reading about the time Calvin and Hobbes ended. That had been my go-to comic and kind of led me to the rest of them. I think that and a combination of age (and a better developed sense of humor) have kept me from the comics any more than once every couple months. My wife still reads them and she'll pick out a few "funny" ones for me to read. That's about it.


And I couldn't post in a thread about comics without this line from one of my favorite movies, "Go"


"[Family Circus] it's always there, in the lower right hand corner, just waiting to suck."

 

We're in the middle of a comics survey in my section -- we published the ballot on Tuesday morning. By Wednesday, hundreds of them had made their way back to the office.

I grew up on "The Far Side" and "Calvin and Hobbes," but I've gotta be honest: Not many of them even make me chuckle anymore. Dilbert occasionally hits, as does Zits and Non Sequitir.

The "ass chew" pile is getting bigger by the day, though: Family Circus, Frank & Ernest, Snuffy Smith, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Gil Thorp, Family Circus, Dennis the Menace, BC, Family Circus, Mother Goose & Grimm and Family Circus.

 

I have begun following several excellent web comics and have pretty much given up on the funny pages. Especially since they're not that damned funny anymore.

 

Get Fuzzy and Over the Hedge are the only two in our section I read. We don't carry Boondocks or Doonesbury, which I would read if we did. The rest is just crap.

Some of these strips are on their second, third and fourth artists from the original and I think in a lot of cases they're terrible compared to what they once were. I can't even stomach Shoe now and used to think that was a great strip when MacNelly was still alive.