COMIC STRIP COMPLAINT, Etc.

[Drtooth]

Originally posted by Skeeter Muppet
Yes! FoxTrot and Zits rule! My family loves Zits especially since my brother is around the same age as the main character of the strip

^&%$!!! Why did I forget Fox Trot and Zits!?!? I LOVE those two stips. I'm so glad the local paper carries both.

Incidentally, I think strips like Brenda Starr and Mary Worth SHOULD be stripped. Why call them Comic strips when they don't attempt to be comical.

originally posted by Sweetums74
I miss "Bloom County". There is so much going on in the world today and I'm sure Binkley, Milo, Opus, and Bill the Cat would have a field day now.

no argument there! It was the best in Political humor of it's day, and I have a whole bunch of old comic books with them in it!

 

[Chilly Down]

I agree with you, Kev. Comics are in a sad, sad state. Most of the classics are living off their fame from the past. I wish I could say it's been worth it when the original artist passed on or retired, and someone new has taken it over, but I've never seen that to be the case. Blondie is awful; Family Circus and Dennis the Menace are cute, but the feeling is that there's nothing new left to say about these characters or situations. Beetle Bailey, Hagar and Hi and Lois ran out of steam years ago, and I hope they have the sense to retire these comics when their creators pass on.

You noted that Peanuts still makes you laugh, but it's ironic that the cartoons are reprinted strips from the 70's. To be honest, I felt Schulz had run out of inspiration for the last decade or so before his death.

Garfield ceased being interesting for me around the same time that it did for Jamie. Why are they doing a movie now? Does anyone still care at this point?

Serial strips should work in theory, but they never do. Our action stories are told much faster these days in movies. Once I read a Dick Tracy comic, then didn't read it again for 3 weeks. When I picked it up again, the plot had NOT significantly advanced from where it had been!

Respectable examples of comic strips today include Zits (by far the best out there), Fox Trot, The Buckets, Dilbert, Non Sequitor, and a handful of others. But with all due respect to the artists behind those fine strips, we have yet to see something truly revolutionary in a while.

Of course, it's not fair to compare the current strips to Peanuts or Beetle Bailey, which have a long history behind them. Nostalgia has a huge pull. (See the Saturday morning thread in this same forum.) But where's the next Calvin and Hobbes? (To be fair, maybe in 10 years, "Zits" will have the same nostalgiac pull and be acknowledged as a classic. But that's exactly ONE strip.) Probably the most talented people have gotten out of the medium because the frustrations of the limitations of the art form, thanks to the callousness of publishers. (For a more detailed explanation of what I'm talking about, see Bill Watterston's "Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary" book for his commentaries on the state of the industry. I think he's dead-on.)

So I'm with ya, Foz. Anything we can do to convince publishers to start treating comic strips right again, and get them back to their glory days (Segar's Popeye, Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse, Walt Kelly's Pogo, etc.)?

 

[sugarbritchez]

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[Emerald]

On the topic of For Better or For Worse, I have to say I like it too. Seroiusly, I cried when Mr. B died a month or two ago because I really love bunnies and grew up with lots of them as pets from age 6 to age19 (my last three died second semester of my first year in college). It brought back all of those memories of losing pets...... And especially the guilt of not being there for my last three rabbits because of college. I know, it might seem silly. But I was really attatched to them.

Here are the comics that I take time to read: For Better or For Worse, Luann, and Fox Trot. Online comics that are pretty good include Homestar Runner (its really popular in my dorm) and Pokey the Penguin.

I read other comics, too, but only if I happened to get a newspaper that day. There's just so many comics that are frequently (or mabey just sometimes) entertaining, but not worth going out of my way to read. Peanuts is great but is not a "current" cartoon (as a teacher in training, I love the school jokes!), as is Calvin and Hobbs and Far Side.

It's true. It will get better in time. There are ups and there are downs in everything (how long did we wait for Muppet figures?), so hopefully an up is on the way.

One more thing (sorry about the length): When is Cathy going to get married? If she's not, why spend every other comic strip dealing with it? Either dump Irving, marry him, or find something else to talk about!

 

[GWGumby]

I've never understood serial strips either. I have tried several times to get into them, but it has never worked. You're right in saying they move too slowly. In a three panel strip you've got 1 frame to review where you were in the story, 1 frame to establish where you are now, and 1 frame to add something new. That means usually the story really only advances by one frame every day. At least that was the feeling I got from attempting to read them.

Then there was Prince Valiant that appeared every Sunday in my paper growing up. I couldn't ever figure out if it was the same story or not, let alone ever really understand what was going on. Having to wait a week in between every "episode" hardly kept me excited about it.

 

[sugarbritchez]

For Better or Worse is one of my favorite to read.........and also Baby Blues.

Price Valiant is pure crap! No sugar coating that one.

Beetle Bailey.............come on the same strip has ran for at least 15 years hasn't it?

Zits is our newest one and it is pretty good.

Overall....I don't think the comic strips are for kids anymore.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Originally posted by Chilly Down
You noted that Peanuts still makes you laugh, but it's ironic that the cartoons are reprinted strips from the 70's. To be honest, I felt Schulz had run out of inspiration for the last decade or so before his death.

That's what I mean, the reprints still make me laugh--even until the final strip there were many that made me laugh, and a few that I thought were just cute. My daily calender gets at least a smirk out of me (because it's all about sports strips, and I'm not that sports oriented). I've always been okay with Schulz's work to the end--just wish it didn't have to end. Truely, a lost legacy.

Hagar the Horrible, I know some history about. Dik Browne kicked the bucket and his son, Chris, took it over. A friend of mine in the Mid-South Cartoonists Association, Sam Ray, wrote some of their strips and drew a few of them also. You would have been able to notice the Sam Ray strips--they were FUNNY!! I read the ones that Chris puts his name on, and they stink like yesterday's sweaty socks, or last month's pizza. They weren't paying Sam right and were jerking him around about the strips he was doing, so he quit them. There was also works and ideas about a tv series, but Chris dragged things out and was a jerk, so that got canned.

Garfield: Jim Davis isn't doing it anymore. If he does anything, it's the pencil work. He hires writers, inkers, color-ers...everyone else does it all but him now. Garfield's feet are too big, turn them sideways and they reach from the floor to almost his neck or more! It looks clumpy and dumb.

Dennis the Menace, in it's day, was funny. The best thing they could have done was reprint the early work and not the new guy---heck, I'm for reprinting the early works of Popeye and others as well...to an extent. The only problem with reprints in papers is it knocks out room for the newer guys. Perhaps reprints are best done in books (forgive me Sparky).

Serial strips are at best done via book prints rather than newspapers. I have an old book with Dick Tracy strips in it and it is really fun to read a whole story then, but as far as dragging stuff out, yep! They do it because there are some papers that run the Sundays only, so they have to write the story such that the Sundays make sense without the dailies, and the dailies have to fit in somewhere for the papers that will run them.

Chilly, did you remember seeing the Buckets when the dad had his nose operated on? That was taken from Greg Cravens' real life, and he wrote that story. He had some kind of cyst in his nose! It was funny strips.

I hate to say it, but perhaps our "classics" need to go to books for reprints and begin running the new stuff in the papers, retire the ones where the original authors aren't doing the strips anymore unless there is a fresh move in the right direction by whoever takes them over (Shoe).

WE WANT MULEY!
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Thus, I give you: Muley:
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Want me for what? What'd I do now?
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[Drtooth]

Originally posted by Fozzie Bear

Garfield: Jim Davis isn't doing it anymore. If he does anything, it's the pencil work. He hires writers, inkers, color-ers...everyone else does it all but him now. Garfield's feet are too big, turn them sideways and they reach from the floor to almost his neck or more! It looks clumpy and dumb.

Dennis the Menace, in it's day, was funny. The best thing they could have done was reprint the early work and not the new guy---heck, I'm for reprinting the early works of Popeye and others as well...to an extent. The only problem with reprints in papers is it knocks out room for the newer guys. Perhaps reprints are best done in books (forgive me Sparky).

To tell you the truth, though I practically WORSHIP Garfield, I agree with Frogboy, Fozzie, and Chilly on this one. I barely read it, unless I see Jon Arbuckle's mouth flipped all thew way back. For some reason, when Jon Screams at Garfield, it cracks me up. I keep watching the Christmas Special just to see Jon And Doc Boy yell "PRESENTS!!!!" at the top of thier lungs. I am, such a goon.

it seems Jim Davis is doing better stuff on the Mr. Potatohead strip. It's too bad they axed U.S. Acres years ago.

But with Dennis the Menace, Popeye and Garfield, I always thought that they were better as specials and ccartoons than strips. They are better suited for animation that this sort of stuff.

My Fave Garfield Strip is where Jon Goes to the Beach and everything gets him...."RIIIIPTIDE!! TIDAL WAVE!! WATER SPOUT!!!!!!

I just read the old books, now.

But the comics today, the newer ones are always the same, and the art is just awful, Helen Sweetheart of the Internet, Sylvia, and the like are just awful, and there's no way to sugar coat it. They suck rotten eggs!!!!

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Regarding sucky art in comic strips, it's all in who you know.

Wish I knew more people!!

Kev

 

[sugarbritchez]

Kev,
You would like my peanut collection (not the boiled or roasted kind).....(if you don't have some of these yourself) I have all the limited edition jointed figures that are hand numbered and a few musical ones and snowgloves......I love the Peanuts too!