Since the Peanuts thread looks like it's delving into discussion of other strips, might as well make an all-purpose one for comic strips, be they classic ones or modern ones.
I’m in. Of course Peanuts is my favorite by many miles, but I’ll mention some of the strips I like: B. C. The Far Side Family Circus Beetle Bailey Garfield (sometimes. I prefer Garfield minus Garfield) Dennis the Menace my wife likes Pearls Before Swine. I really should get into that one.
There are a few comic strips I have enjoyed over the years. Bloom County. The Far Side. Opus. Doonsbury. But far and away my favorite was Calvin and Hobbs....for many different reasons.
Calvin + Hobbes was an all time great. My favorite strips now are: Tom The Dancing Bug Bob The Angry Flower
Our Boarding House with Major Hoople was an old strip, even dating back to the 1920s I believe. But it still ran in my local newspaper back in the early '60s. As a kid I thought it was pretty weird because I liked comics that weren't so wordy, but later came to appreciate the humor more. "Egads!...Harumpf!" From Wikipedia: "Our Boarding House is an American single-panel cartoon and comic strip created by Gene Ahern on October 3, 1921 and syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association. Set in a boarding house run by the sensible Mrs. Hoople, it drew humor from the interactions of her grandiose, tall-tale-telling husband, the self-styled Major Hoople, with the rooming-house denizens and his various friends and cronies. After Ahern left NEA in March 1936 to create a similar feature at a rival syndicate, he was succeeded by a number of artists and writers, including Wood Cowan and Bela Zaboly, before Bill Freyse took over as Our Boarding House artist from 1939 to 1969. Others who worked on the strip included Jim Branagan and Tom McCormick. The Sunday color strip ended on March 29, 1981; the weekday panel continued until December 22, 1984."
As a kid, strangely enough, I liked Doonesbury. Now, I didnt get any of the political humor, but around the 80s is when they started getting more surreal with stuff like Ron Headrest (Ronald Reagan as Max Headroom), Mr. Butts, Dukes hallucinations, Roland Hedley literally going into Ronald Reagan's brain (twice!), Hunk-Ra, Elvis being alive but only playing John Denver material, and weird stuff like that. Also loved (and still do) Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, Fox Trot, and Mother Goose and Grimm. Now I'm into Get Fuzzy, Brewster Rockitt, Lio, and Pearls Without Swine.
Favorite current strips: -Sally Forth - started decades ago as a pretty standard "working woman with a family" strip but became warped over the years -Big Nate - "kiddie strip" but it's clever and intelligent -Pearls Before Swine - not quite as smart as it wants to seem, but still good and well above average for the funny papers Favorite all-time: -Peanuts - will never be topped -Calvin & Hobbes - brilliant from start to finish Lost and lamented: -Watch Your Head - very smart strip about a Historically Black College that was just too niche and too weird for the conservative world of daily papers
When my Dad married my stepmother in 1979, she brought a few "Doonesbury" compilation books with her. I read them and loved them. I was 11/12 at the time, and inevitably some of the politics was over my head - especially since these books covered the early 70s, when I was really young. However, I was a pretty politically aware adolescent, so I got more of the humor than I might've anticipated. "Doonesbury" is an all-time great that loses some points just because it's not been especially good for a looong time. I'm also bitter "WaPo" still wastes a daily slot on "Doonesbury" reruns. It also still runs "Classic Peanuts", which bugs me as well.
When I was a kid, I liked a bunch of strips that I have lost access to, lost interest in: Alley Oop. The Wizard of Id. Peanuts. Andy Capp. Nancy & Slugo. Blondie. Beetle Bailey. Steve Roper & Mike Nomad. Family Circus. probably many more. The few that are still special to me: The Far Side. Calvin & Hobbes. B.C. __________________________ The Far Side CalviN and HobbEs B.C. .
Larson's Far Side, B. Kliban's Kliban, with all the cat stuff, and Piraro's Bizarro, all caught my eye in college. My infantile formative years involved Henry, The Little King and Sagendorf's Popeye in my local Sunday paper, before I discovered comic books with Sugar & Spike... ...to which I can only add, "GLXX SPITZL GLAHHHH!"
Oh, I should've included "Fuzzy" in "Lost and Lamented". Very good strip that just... stopped. Darby Conley slowed down the creation of daily strips and then halted. He still did Sunday for a while... and then halted. I can find no explanation for what happened. Looks like he just "retired" without any fanfare!
Another Lost and Lamented: "Cul de Sac". It only ran 2004-12 before artist Richard Thompson's Parkinson's meant he couldn't do it any longer. Sadly, he passed away 2016. Really good strip!
"Mutts" is more cute than funny, but I like the kinetic style of art. And I love the writer's commitment to animal welfare causes!
Growing up, my small-town newspaper carried "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith." I was surprised to find out in the past weeks reading a different market's newspaper that the strip is still being produced. Looking online, I see the strip has now run for 102 years and is the second-longest running newspaper comic after Gasoline Alley. (I personally didn't miss reading it after it was dropped locally.)
Probably not a popular opinion, but I wish my paper would stop printing Peanuts and Doonsbury Flashback. There are so many great strips that can't find a place because there's no room. I swear, the comics page is the most conservative page in any paper!
