Since Lileks is busy talking about the comic strips he reads, I might as well do the same. After all — there are worse things I could do than slavishly imitate James Lileks.
After my company’s e-mail system started filtering out some of the comics I was getting by e-mail (that’s great, guys — I’ve got 23 spams in my in-box since yesterday afternoon, uncaught by your Massive Filters, and even the stuff you say you do focus on — sex and pr0n — is still well-represented), I decided to go and do it all via browser, aided by a clever little program named BatchRun, which lets me open up a dozen browser windows at one click. This gives PopupCop fits, but it’s a damned convenient tool.
The exception to that is MyComicsPage, which sends multiple strips (from the uComics corral) per e-mail, nice and convenient. It covers a number of the ones below, though by no means all of them.
- Adam@Home, the tale of a guy who works on-line from home, taking care of the baby, etc., hits more often than it misses. Tech humor is usually good for a chuckle.
- Baby Blues has been recycling the same humor since its third year or so. But since I didn’t have kid back then, and do now, the application of it seems fresh, even if I know the raw materials are a bit stale.
- Baldo‘s appeal to me I do not entirely understand. Hispanic family humor, I guess. Or Hispanic teen humor. Or just good drawing, maybe.
- Bizarro is almost always funny. And well-drawn. A nice match.
- The Boondocks has, as Lileks points out, grown dramatically narrower in its cast and setting. Now it’s basically mordant commentary on US politicians and black culture. It’s still witty, so I still keep it around, but it’s charm is wearing off like a cheap chrome finish.
- Calvin & Hobbes continues in reruns, and is just as fine the twelfth time around as it was originally. One of, if not the, All Time Greats, and I can’t decide if I lament it having been “only” a ten year run (’85-’95), or applaud its retirement while still at the top of its game.
- I’m a recent convert to Day by Day, an ongoing social/political commentary strip. It’s pretty good, and certainly a refreshing balance to, say, Doonesbury.
- I still get enough chuckles out of Doonesbury to keep it around, too. I already know where the punchline is coming from almost every time, and the ideology is like a big, comfy chair you bought twenty years ago that you know you should either reupholster or get rid of but can’t get yourself to actually get up and do something about. And sometimes — sometimes — I get surprised.
- If Dilbert continues to recycle the same ideas over and over again, it’s because you can never tell too many jokes about dumb bosses, irritating co-workers, or amoral pet dogs.
- Dork Tower is a drop-dead hilarious strip about gaming, sci-fi, and other geeky hobbies. If you aren’t reading it, you probably don’t get about half the things I talk about here. (There’s a separate weekly Dork Tower strip printed here, too. Though, oddly enough, they are the same today.)
- The Fifth Wave is a one-panel cartoon, usually on a technology theme, usually pretty funny.
- For Better or For Worse is my favorite soap opera. So sue me. While the humor is hardly cutting, it continues to push its characters into different places, through personal changes, and that’s more than a little refreshing (as compared to, say, Boondocks and Doonesbury).
- Foxtrot is just damned funny, Jason’s antics in particular. Don’t know why I’m be so amused by a nerdy little kid, though …
- Funky Winkerbean is another soap opera, often humorous. Tom Batiuk recently changed to a much more polished and realistic art style (reminiscent of John Byrne). A good, solid, ongoing read.
- Heart of the City is sometimes cloying, but there’s enough nerd humor and imagination to keep me coming back.
- Frank Cho is no longer drawing original Liberty Meadows strips for the comics pages — he’s moved over to comic books, instead, which means a lot less, ah, censorship. But the strip reruns are still wacky fun, a strange blend of talking animals, soap opera, and fine art.
- 9 Chickweed Lane is usually good for a chuckle. Certainly it stretches artistic boundaries at times, and the characters have an amusing fantasy life.
- Nodwick is really a (fine) fantasy comic book, but there’s a weekly one-page strip that is posted online that’s — well, usually smile-provoking, if not hilarious.
- Non Sequitur is a one-off single-panel (landscape) cartoon, usually very amusing and ironic, as often on current issues as on the human condition. The Sunday strips, which contain ongoing stories, don’t hit the mark as often.
- The Norm rocks. Imagine a cross between Charlie Brown and Calvin, but all grown up with a wife and job. Sort of. Good stuff.
- When PvP first started, it seemed much more focused on console gaming, which, not being a console gamer, was only peripherally interesting. It’s branched out into general technogeek humor these days, which is fine by me.
- Real Life Adventures is another one-panel (portrait) cartoon. The art is crude, but the domestic and business schlub humor is often priceless.
- Even if Rose is Rose sometimes threatens to cause diabetes, the artwork is so damned imaginative that it’s just a joy to read. And, frankly, I’m a sucker for loving couples and imaginative kids.
- Last time I did one of these round-ups, someone recommended Stone Soup. Well, okay. I haven’t gotten bored enough with it to drop it, yet, and I do occasionally clip a copy. It has not really clicked with me, though, and if I had to build my comic list from memory, I would probably not remember it.
- Tom Toles is one of the few editorial cartoonists I read. Though he sometimes goes way in left field, I usually find him amusingly thought-provoking.242 view(s)
I’ve actually switched my comic reading to getting it off my livejournal feeds, actually. Works really well for that.
But I note that Sluggy Freelance is not listed here, Dave. Really, you should give a it a try. I must admit, I’m way behind (haven’t read it since NaNoWriMo started (cringes)), but it his hysterical. Dead tree copies also available for quick catch-up in an offline mode.
So Lileks finally has a subject that isn’t both annoying and boring…even though he does still manage to do it in an annoying and boring way.
Baby Blues – can be funny, especially since all of my Nieces/Nephews are all in the 2 year/to 5 year old range. The strip covers subjects/stories I’ve heard my Brothers and Sisters talk about.
I like Baldo, and I think it is just the Growing up aspect that is entertaining. The hispanic sub-culture stories are at times very funny.
Bizarro – gets a chuckle when I get a chance to see it.
Boondocks Rocks!
Day by Day…Mallard Fillmore for the net…Bleech
Doonsbury – agreed. Some of the Characters I like better then others.
Dilbert – Was funnier when the place that I formally worked at was tracking the comic one week to a month off. “Hey….That was in yesterdays staff meeting…”
Dork Towers – Rocks! The new one should be out this week or next.
FBofW – The best damn strip in the paper!
Foxtrot – Only read when Jason, Iguana, or Golf are involved.
Funky Winkerbean – I have read this one since the 70’s…Also liked his TV host strip (can’t remember the name). I found it interesting the when he ended the it he had the main character shot to death. Also, Crankshaft is good times.
Heart of the City goes in cycles of funny/boring.
I miss having Liberty Meadows in the paper.
9 Chickweed lane – I do not know this one.
Nodwick rocks!
Rose is Rose – I only read it when the Rose/biker chick is in it….or Clem.
Non Sequitur – Is always good. I love the Sunday ones with Honor or the guy who keeps getting sent back to earth and ending being killed for doing the right thing…repeatedly.
And Finally Calvin and Hobbs – Simply the best damn comic ever. Bloom County running third behind fBofW.
I can’t stand most of those! Do you have any idea how much you’d have to pay me to read For Better or for Worse or 9 Chickweed Lane?
Out of that list, Dilbert, Calvin & Hobbes, and Dork Tower are the only ones worth even the few seconds it takes to read a daily strip.
Amazing how subjective humor is, huh? I understand there are people who will pay money to sacrifice a couple of non-recoverable hours of their life to a Jim Carrey movie!
Julia: Sorry. About every four months or so, I try reading a week or so of Sluggy, and Just Don’t Get It.
Stan: DbD can get occasionally tiresome, but it beats Mallard Filmore (bleah) flippers down.
On FW, some of the characters in John Darling (the TV host strip you mentioned) ended up in FW, and they eventually solved the mystery of his murder.
Scott: Well, there are Jim Carrey movies, and there are Jim Carrey movies. But, yeah, utterly subjective. Most of the comics out there I wouldn’t even spit on, let alone conjecture how in Sam Hill they remain syndicated.
Stan, from an interview with Tom Batiuk:
Isabella: You killed off John Darling, which was an interesting way to end the strip. Did you know who killed him?
Batiuk: No, I didn’t. I didn’t like what I did there, but at that time I was in a lawsuit with Funky’s syndicate, trying to gain ownership of the character. I was also doing John Darling and Crankshaft at the same time. John Darling was getting to be a struggle because it wasn’t in a whole lot of papers. It got to the point where the money was going to the artist, and I wasn’t making a nickel on it. So I wanted to get rid of it, and I didn’t want the syndicate to be able to continue it. [laughter] They weren’t going to get their mitts on it. That’s why I killed John Darling. I kind of regretted it later, because there were things I wished I’d been able to do. But I had no clue as to who murdered him.
Isabella: What gave you the idea for following up on Darling’s murder in Funky Winkerbean?
Batiuk: When I decided to graduate my characters and move them into the adult world. One of the first ideas I had was to have Les write a book about the John Darling murder, and he would uncover who murdered John Darling. I thought it would be a lot of fun, and it was something I was hoping to attack. I was lucky enough to be able to do it.
And, yeah, I read Crankshaft, too, thanks for reminding me. It had stopped coming in my daily e-mail, and I forgot.
Except that Crankshaft is now here. (It moved from Universal to King syndicates.)
Ok…Now I remember the that Les wrote the book about John Darling and came up with who the Murderer was and the crossover reference story line…with most of the JD characters being interviewed by Les.
Thanks for the reboot Dave.
Plus…
I forgot to mention Get Fuzzy on my list of comics I read. I find it amusing that when Candy and James’ cat starts to act badly they call it Bucky.
Darn, I forgot Get Fuzzy, too.
The reason For Better or For Worse goes in odd directions is that the artist, a Canadian, is actually just sharing bits of her life with us. Life tends to do that, eh, take us in odd directions.
Yep, she’s married to a dentist, has three kids exactly the age and gender of the kids in the strip, her kids are in the same basic life situations as the kids in the strip. I’ve seen her a number of times on the tee vee and she seems to be a wonderfully sane, grounded woman. You’re basically getting the illustrated equivalent of a blog or on-line journal.
I know exactly what your other loyal readers mean about humour being extremely subjective. I have become the slavish devotee of Jon Stewart’s show on Comedy Central–he’s a rarity, someone who skewers BOTH the left and the right.
Yeah, I knew that about Lynn Johnston — I’ve read some interviews with her, and there’s some material on the strip background online. Amazing how real life can inspire humorous anecdotes, isn’t it?
And Jon Stewart rocks. I don’t watch him nearly enough.
Also in fBofW news…about three monthes ago Lynn Johnston said that she was going to end thge series in four years. That by that time all of the characters should be at good “ending” Points.
One of the things that I found funny about the intervew was that at the time before she introduced April she had been really wanting to have another child, so that now April is sort of her surrogate Daughter.
AGH!
Well, three years is a long time …
I think maybe you should start Sluggy at the beginning, because it makes ever so much more sense that way.
Or not. Hey, not everyone can love the switchblade wielding rabbit. There has to be someone for him to go after on a rampage. 🙂