SydLexia.com - The Forums :: View topic - The worst newspaper comic ever...and Bill Watterson LOVES it

Gallery 2 · Posted: Dec 17 2009 08:14 pm

asbestos_pie wrote:

Quote:

Family Circus is the worst comic ever. I don't understand how anyone can find that corny garbage amusing. Wait, I take that back. The Hyper Death Babies (maybe kind of NSFW-ish, but I'm an idiot) versions are works of art.

Epic win, right there.

That has to be one of the greatest things ever since Silent Garfield.

Wizard Joined: Jun 12 2009 Posts: 4209

Drew Linky wrote:

asbestos_pie wrote:

Quote:

Family Circus is the worst comic ever. I don't understand how anyone can find that corny garbage amusing. Wait, I take that back. The Hyper Death Babies (maybe kind of NSFW-ish, but I'm an idiot) versions are works of art.

Epic win, right there.

That has to be one of the greatest things ever since Silent Garfield.

Excuse me? 'Silent Garfield'? What in the world is that?

Gallery 2 · Posted: Dec 19 2009 03:33 pm

AtmanRyu wrote:

Drew Linky wrote:

asbestos_pie wrote:

Quote:

Family Circus is the worst comic ever. I don't understand how anyone can find that corny garbage amusing. Wait, I take that back. The Hyper Death Babies (maybe kind of NSFW-ish, but I'm an idiot) versions are works of art.

Epic win, right there.

That has to be one of the greatest things ever since Silent Garfield.

Excuse me? 'Silent Garfield'? What in the world is that?

Long story short:

Garfield comics - Garfield's dialog = Infinite times funnier than the real thing.

It led to variants such as Realfield (replace Garfield with a realistic looking cat) and Garfield minus Garfield (remove Garfield altogether), all of which make the comics much better than the originals.

Even Jim Davis approves of Garfield minus Garfield and even made comics specifically for that project.

More on that here:

http://roundholesquarepeg.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/garfield-minus-garfield-vs-silent-garfield-which-one-brings-more-of-the-awesome/

Joined: Nov 25 2009 Posts: 21

eh Newspaper comics are a dying medium thanks to the oh so fancy of web-comics now and days.
There used to be favorites I had including Fox trot, Opus and Get fuzzy.
thats until they all were removed from their respective papers and replaced with more horrible things like Ziggy, Archie and Marmaduke.

but theres also sweet gems like Mother goose and grim I see every so often

Posted: Dec 19 2009 11:47 pm

aeonic wrote:

For Better or For Worse was actually pretty interesting considering it progressed throughout the years of the characters' lives and handled some weighty issues (I think there was a rape plotline, even) but then Lynn Johnston was like "Eh, fuck it, I think I'll just re-use the same crap again." Boo.

Eh, she killed off the family dog. That was a pretty interesting storyline. When Johnston told fellow cartoonist Charles M. Schulz that Farley was going to die, Schulz "threatened to have Snoopy hit by a truck if Johnston went though with the plan".[15] He thought Snoopy, being more famous, would take the spotlight off Farley. As a result, Johnston kept the timing of Farley's death a secret from Schulz.

And she ended the strip before she had to kill off any of the human characters, even Grandpa Jim. And I think her fans probably appreciated that.

You know what's terrible? Arlo & Janis. I don't think I've ever seen anything happen once in that strip.

Joined: Jul 06 2008 Posts: 142

i always thought bill watterson kind of look like groucho marx and what is arlo & janis

Wizard Joined: Jun 12 2009 Posts: 4209

Never heard of it, actually...

Posted: Dec 22 2009 11:38 pm

I have. I've been reading it in my neighboring city's Sunday comics for years just because it's there. I've never had any strong feelings towards it.

Posted: Dec 24 2009 09:14 pm

Syd Lexia wrote:

You know what's terrible? Arlo & Janis. I don't think I've ever seen anything happen once in that strip.

Sometime's there's nothing-happening A+J strips, but there are some (like Arlo's smart-ass remarks to Ludwig, the family cat) that are good for a laugh.

Title: Comic Author Joined: Dec 12 2008 Posts: 1179

I received this Cul de Sac collection as a gift today, along with the last Fox Trot collection and a Pearls Before Swine collection, and I started flipping through it, thinking I had never heard of it before... Then some memory cells started kicking in, and I noticed the foreward by Bill Watterson... that's when I remembered this thread. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing, since at the time my aunt was telling how she found this in the bookstore and thought I would enjoy it (even though she and the clerk that rang her up flipped through it for a minute, and neither of them found it funny).

Posted: Mar 31 2010 12:12 am

SoldierHawk wrote:

God what an awful comic.

However, Fred Basset easily holds the crown of worst newspaper comic ever, imho. You wanna talk unfunny, Fred Basset's writer doesn't even understand the concept of a punchline. The strips just...stop. Its so weird and annoying.

So I'm going to revive a months-old topic to snipe at this point.

Fred Basset is not intended to be "funny" in the way that American newspaper comics are supposed to be "funny". It is generally a very wry sort of observational humour, with a touch of surrealism -- note the fact that Fred's owners read Fred Basset in the newspaper. The lack of a punchline you note is a British cartooning convention -- not all comics NEED such things. Thus when taken individually, and from an American perspective, Fred Basset seems a bit off, out of place with the rest of the comics on the page. And maybe it is, surrounded by comics like Pearls Before Swine, Zits, and Baldo. But that doesn't make it any less valuable, or worthwhile of a comic. Andy Capp was similar in many ways in that it was not instantly amusing, and lacked a punchline.

tl;dr: British comics do things differently, and that doesn't make them wrong. There's simply a different intent behind the work.

Joined: May 22 2008 Location: Goshen, VA Posts: 6544

They simply shouldn't be on a page with funny comics then. Nothing ruins my coffee and comic time like "The Phantom" or "Mark Trail", even though those are not intended to be "funny". They just don't fit on a page that, from it's inception, was meant to make people laugh.

Posted: Mar 31 2010 01:39 pm

they are called the funnies, the funny papers, and comics for a reason. i agree w/josh on this situation.

Posted: Mar 31 2010 01:55 pm

Who the fuck is still reading The Phantom and Prince Valiant anyway?

Posted: Mar 31 2010 04:50 pm

I love Phantom and Prince Valiant, the nature guy can go to hell though.

Posted: Apr 01 2010 08:30 am

What about things like "Dick Tracy," "Rex Morgan M.D." or even "Spiderman"? These are not comics meant to be outright laugh-enduing (generally) but they all find their home on the comics page. There's room for all sorts of artistic expression.

Also, Prince Valiant is great, for the one day a week it runs.

Posted: Apr 01 2010 10:25 am

I've seen worse styles but I have to agree on the dull part. I read through about five pages of it and it was as if it was stopping before the punchline or something.

Title: The Southern Dandy Joined: Jul 09 2010 Posts: 2

No comic is worse than Mallard Filmore

Posted: Jul 09 2010 05:23 pm

not even Zits, with its countless observations of teenage 'slacker' behavior? that shit rankles me. I really hate stone soup and luann too. rose is rose could go and thatd be fine. it wont matter in about five more years anyway. funny thing is i come from a long line of papermen. glad my father died before the philadelphia inquirer went bankrupt

Posted: Jul 28 2010 01:01 am

Sadly, I do not have Calvin & Hobbes, Get Fuzzy, The Far Side, etc. in my local newspapes. Even Dilbert is nearly gone from the Sunday pages; they replaced the large, full-color Sunday strip with the black-and-white Sunday strip, and moved it to a tiny corner of the Business section.

That hasn't stopped them from running Cathy and Bound & Gagged, however.

Posted: Jul 31 2010 02:31 pm

Skinr wrote:

That hasn't stopped them from running Cathy and Bound & Gagged, however.

i know Cathy is just a comic about a fat chick, but that bound and gagged one sounds kind of sexy just by the name.

Joined: Aug 04 2010 Location: Milwaukee, WI Posts: 52

Nothing will ever touch Calvin & Hobbes. I own the fully bound collection of comics, in that nice, shwanky box and everything.

The innocence of youth mixed with Calvin's constant shenanigans and aged wordplay...man. There are some seriously funny strips that still make me laugh even today. Classic stuff.

Other comics may have been more groundbreaking, but Calvin & Hobbes is just plain funny. And that's more than can be said for some comics these days...

Also, Pearls Before Swine is probably my favorite modern comic.

Joined: Nov 03 2006 Posts: 763

On that particular comic, it's obvious she's just wants attention, but clearly there must be a series of comics as that review, mentions names, and other things that aren't even present in the comic linked. So it must be a series, and he's talking about the series as a whole,

Joined: Sep 05 2010 Location: shelton, wa Posts: 9

The thing that makes me sad is that they replaced Doonesbury with this toddler crap.