1 - The Norm (I encourage all of you to visit www.thenorm.com, right now.)
2 - Get Fuzzy (funny, funny, funny)
3 - Zits
4 - Bizarro
5 - For Better or For Worse (This will go down as one of the great strips of all time.)
This message has been edited by jstockwell on Apr 14, 2004 1:11 PM
Still, after all these years, the reprinted Peanuts strips, which my paper calls "Classic Peanuts," are the most delightful read in the whole comics section.
I also still love Prince Valiant, but, despite the beautiful work of John Cullen Murphy, the strip lost something for me when it went from full-page size to two-tier size.
"One Big Happy" is great, because that little character Ruthie is sooo cute and adorable. Doonesbury wavers from incisively brilliant to, occasionally, lame and obvious.
And I miss Calvin and Hobbes! Damn! THAT was a comic strip!
Mark, do you own the collected volumes of Calvin and Hobbes?
My gitlfriend has never really read any of them, but when she found out that both her father and I were big fans of the strip, she started to read them, and fell in love with Calvin and Hobbes I have been reading them through from beginning to end as well, and since it's been at least 10 years since I've done so, it been a real joy to walk through Calvin's world again.
I don't have any of the Calvin collections--but my eleven-year-old nephew has all of them, and I was delighted to learn that the kid had such good taste in comics!
His dad (my brother) told me he thought Aaron (that's the kid's name) was ready for Don Martin, in fact, and so I found a collection of Don Martin paperbacks on Ebay, and soon heard that the kid loved THAT, too. I even dipped into my savings to buy him the gorgeous two-volume complete Far Side by Gary Larsen. I'm hoping to corrupt--er, I mean, treat him to more good comics in the years to come. Generations, maybe?
For some reason, Dilbert, for me, is much funnier in the collected trade paperbacks than in the papers. I don't now why. Maybe the rhythm of the jokes. I used to go to my local Barnes & Noble, grab a stack, find a corner to sit in, and giggle my head off.
OPUS!!!!
Now for my dailies:
Doonesbury
Frazz
Dilbert
For Better or For Worse
Herman
Luann
Marmaduke
Shoe
Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet
Housebroken
Boondocks
Blondie
Funky Winkerbean
Spider-Man
Crankshaft
Sally Forth
Zits
Mutts (a really sweet strip for pet-lovers)
Born Loser
Frank and Ernest
the Middletons
and my other favorite weekly:
Tom Tomorrow
I don't read any daily strips anymore because I don't get the local paper. I've always loved PEANUTS & THE PHANTOM, but my other favorites are all gone; THE FAR SIDE, BLOOM COUNTY, CALVIN & HOBBES.
I was an obsessive comic strip reader as a kid. I clipped GARFIELD strips every day and taped them into notebooks so I could re-read them. I also clipped FUNKY WINKERBEAN when it was about STAR WARS (which it often was) and PEANUTS when the strips made up a fun continued story. Those strips were stapled together on the right-hand side to create flip-books. They were popular with my sleepover guests. (I was 9 years old, remember!)
The SPIDER-MAN strip by Stan Lee and John Romita, Sr. was printed as a full-page strip in the weekly tabloid paper, with the Monday-Saturday strips all on one page. The Sunday strip was never published in my hometown, so very often I missed the outcome of a battle. I saved all of those strips too.
These days I am rather disenchanted with the funnies page. Quite simply, it almost never makes me laugh. Maybe that says more about me than it says about the funnies.
My last comic strip discovery was ROBOTMAN a few years back. It morphed to ROBOTMAN & MONTY and finally MONTY. Still funny occasionally, but not like it used to be. http://www.comics.com/comics/monty/index.html
FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE is probably the best-drawn strip out there right now. I usually surf over to http://www.fbofw.com every month or two and catch up on the strips I have missed.
LIBERTY MEADOWS is no longer syndicated as a daily strip to papers. The only place to get it is in the Image comic book form or online. It's a very funny strip and really well drawn. Frank Cho is an amazing illustrator.
