Is this the only good newspaper comic?

It's the BEST newspaper comic. But not the only good one. The Far Side and certain eras of Garfield were actually pretty good. Specifically the 90s before Paws, Inc sucked the soul out of it, and shortly after Liz and Jon started dating. Even now Liz is still the breath of fresh air the comic desperately needed.

Bloom County was fucking great, even for all the 80s topical/political humor.

Outland not so much, but it still had its moments.

Oh and I forgot basic instructions was a newspaper comic.

Family circus is and always has been shit.

Pearls Before swine is decent, Get Fuzzy used to be good for its first 5 or 6 years but went to shit rapidly after that, same with Garfield. Far Side was pretty good too, and Non-Sequiter was good for a while, but has been bad since around 2010. I never got into it, but my Grandma and grandpa says they loved Pogo back in the day and what little I've seen of it looks all right. Newspaper Spider-Man is usually bad but it has a crappy charm about it and it doesn't take itself very seriously and uses older designs and characterizations for the characters (Peter's still married to MJ, for instance) It's like it's frozen in the 80's or something. For a while I liked it better than comic-book Spider-Man. I sorta wish Newspaper Spider-Man had a better writer and full size books.

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>Newspaper Spider-Man had a better writer and full size books.
I'm surprised he made it out of the Spider-massacre.

Name one bad strip in Calvin & Hobbes.

Then do the same for any other strip.

I loved FoxTrot as a kid

Depends on how you construct the panel. You can have a comic without speech bubbles.

Garfield is pretty good too

Moomin also had a newspaper comic.

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The Far Side

>Name one bad strip in Calvin & Hobbes.
The Xeroxed Talking Heads one, ironically because it's made to resemble other newspaper comics like Foxtrot.

Peanuts was good, though it noticeably dropped in quality as Schultz's health deteriorated.

The Far Side was good, as was Non-Sequitur.

Garfield was entertaining for a while back in the day, but has gotten increasingly stale and soulless, and apparently has actually been ghost-written for a while now with Jim Davis having minimal input in the daily strips.

Have any of you seen pic related? I haven't read the funnies in years, but saw this strip in my local paper. What the fuck even.

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but that's the joke

80's era Garfield was golden. It all started going to hell once the comic started being all about how Jon sucks and Garfield started walking on two legs exclusively and stopped being treated like a cat.

Yes but it's a cheap shot, Watterson didn't usually toot his own horn at the expense of other people like that.

Man, comics Popeye is a lot meaner than cartoon Popeye.

but it's making fun of people who complain about talking heads

Heh, that's a good un

>I don't understand sarcasm

Maybe Family Circus is more your style, bro.

but he actually redrew every panel, its not xeroxed

Comics Olive Oyl is a lot stronger too.

She tries to be a regular girl but everyone sees her as huge and she keeps accidentally destroying people.

I wish I saved some of those comics...

Calvin and Hobbes, Farside, Peanuts and Foxtrot are pretty much the ones I've always enjoyed at any age.

Peanuts is my favorite. Closely followed by Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy.

I also enjoy Krazy Kat.

I'm talking about those few golden moments, not the strip as a whole.

Foxtrot's art is clearly subservient to the writing though. Not every newspaper strip can have great art and writing like Calvin and Hobbes.

That comic hits too close to home.

Zits isn't profound or anything, but it's consistently comfy and the jokes aren't Garfield tier lazy

Dilbert, Doonesbury, Bloom County

Zits has been lazy for years, check the earlier strips and they come off as a lot more creative.

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That's an edit, bro.

familycircus.com/comics/october-31-2012/

Implying Calvin was any good, let alone the best

>familycircus.com/comics/october-31-2012/
Holy fuck really? It's real? Or did you hack the site or something? I'm having a hard time believing this, the strip is too lame to do an obscure joke like that.

For Better or For Worse and Sally Forth

For Better or worse is shit, but Sally forth is all right. Mary Worth has its moments but plots going at 3 panels a day makes it hard to stay interested, even though they have bizarre plots like Mary getting into competitive cake decorating and helping a teenage girl who got suicidal and depressed from binge watching Game of Thrones. It's surprisingly surreal.

>this far into the thread and nobody's mentioned Bizarro by Dan Piraro

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>Get Fuzzy used to be good for its first 5 or 6 years but went to shit rapidly after that

Get Fuzzy is still good. It's the only newspaper strip in years that's made me laugh out loud.

>For Better or worse is shit

Fuck you.

This is drawn and written by a talentless woman who used to write a column for the Washington Post or something like that. It literally may be the worst "comic strip" ever to be printed.
All the characters are physically repulsive airheads. It's a fucking abomination.

Why is there no Cul de Sac here? Bill Watterson himself loves it.
The creator Richard Thompson died only a few weeks ago from Parkinson's... he was a really nice guy. I had the opportunity to meet him in 2009 and his hand visibly shook due to his condition... that didn't stop him for drawing 365 strips a year until 2013 or so. Very amazing man with great talent.

>the strip creator actually hated April's character as she was the only one wasn't based on one of her own family members and by the time April got old enough to be her own character instead of a prop the author's family was falling apart so the strip became this 'idyllic' version of what the author wanted in her own family. This also meant April was turned into the 'rebel' type who was constantly in trouble for not thinking like the rest of the family.

Sad thing is, April never deserved all the abuse she got from the parents and was the only one in the final strip's epilogue to escape the hellhole that is that family and town (and of course that's painted as a bad thing by the strip itself).
She was cute in the later years too.

Watching FBoFW go off the deep end as the years went on was fascinating.

I think the joke comes off as "I want to go as some weird complicated thing" to normies, but instead of just make something up they decided to go with the Warhammer reference

Never heard of it.

Who the hell built that house?

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reminder that this is what's becoming of newspaper comics

As the dinosaur perishes, so too the things living in its gut.

I don't get it.

Holy shit I remember those threads

We need more lewds of that mom and her aunt

T H I C C

No Hal Foster, guys?

You know all those old grandpa comics in newspapers that are never good or funny but they're in there because your senile old grandpa likes them? I'm talking shit like Blondie or Gasoline Alley or Beetle Bailey?

A lot of that shit was really good when it came out and the creator was young and alive and working hard. The earliest strips of Gasoline Alley in particular remind me of Calvin and Hobbes.

That's why Bill Watterson quit when he did. He knew what happened when comic artists grew tired of their work and only did it for the paycheck. He didn't want the same thing happening to his work.

My local Sunday newspaper carried Prince Valiant for as long as I can remember. I wish I followed it as a kid because I only appreciated the art style when I was older.

My Grandpa bitched about Beetle Bailey because it wasn't anything like his Army experience during WWII.

They actually banned it from military newspapers back in the 50s because it made fun of officers and the enlisted men thought it was too funny.

>posting capeshit while talking about CnH

I heard Garfield at this point is ghost written by five different people, none of whom are Jim Davis.

yes

Calvin is the best.

But no mentions yet of based Bloom County.

Mafalda can be pretty based at times. But mostly is leftist crap.

> leftist crap

Please point out any comics that would actually qualify as Leftist, and not "mildly Liberal", otherwise you're just a butthurt Cred Forumskiddie. Sorry the right wing's greatest contribution to comedy is an unfunny alcoholic duck.

It's funnier when you remember this was drawn by a black guy.

>tfw your dad introduced you to Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes

>tfw your younger cousins have no idea of what those are along with Peanuts

I'm getting old.

>massive tits
>newspaper comic

didn't think that was possible

I was shocked to find this was written by a man.

That is quite a narrow conclusion

Little Nemo in Slumberland.

To think this is actually popular with people

that's the first and only time i've ever laughed at anything related to the Broons

Peanuts and this?

Calvin and Hobbes is genuinely art, though. It's a masterpiece.

No, there's also:
The Boondocks
Pearls Before Swine
Foxtrot
Dilbert
Bloom County/Opus
The Far Side
Peanuts
And probably some more I forgot.

If it gets young people reading newspapers, go for it. I know there's one that's just Nerd Family Guy.

No, it's just the best.

>town newspaper has been raising prices while lowering page count for ages, probably going to die out soon (which makes no sense as it's a fairly large town).
>comic section has steadily shrunk down over the years, losing well known ones and picking up literally who strips which are among the most unfunny shit I've seen.

I think the only strips I actually know that's survived the slow purge so far is Blondie, Born Loser, and Marmaduke. Marm has to share the entire upper left portion of the comic page with about 4 horrible Far Side wannabes. They aren't even on the 'mediocre enough to be average' level as Close to Home was.

The current writer for Family Circus is actually a cool guy and a huge 40k fan

He's mentioned before that he's pretty much stuck in how he writes the comic because it has to kowtow to its demographic of old housewives and the like

>Nerd Family Guy

Isn't it called Intelligent Life?

I always thought it was just Big Bang Theory: The Comic Strip

i always liked the serilized ones, Dick Tracy, Steve Canyon, Lil Abner.
I like the revivel of Bloom County thats running now. Not sure if its online only or not though.
I wish the newspaper in my hometown carriered Ally-Oop and Mandrake The Mage.when I was growing up.

hey a suggestion, not that the user got done running the big peanuts volume thing, think ya can do the Dick Tracy ones? They made by the same guys that did the peanuts books.

Old dudes unite, I guess. C&H and Bloom County were my bread and butter growing up.

Fuck me, Calvin and Hobbes actually ended when I was five. And Bloom County the year before I was born. I'm going to take some pablum and go to bed.

C&H isn't even the best strip.

>The earliest strips of Gasoline Alley in particular remind me of Calvin and Hobbes.

Yeah, a lot of the 1930's Sundays of Gasoline Alley is really fucking good. In fact once you know Chris Ware is a Gasoline Alley fan it's no surprise his work was influenced by it.

Honestly though Gasoline Alley is still interesting in that it's a comic that's been around for like 98 years and they've been kinda/sorta aging the characters in realtime so it's really still an ongoing story.

This actually happens with a lot of comic strips. One example's like when the creator of Mutt and Jeff got so successful he hired a studio of ghost artists and writers to do the comic while he traveled to Europe or wherever.

Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, probably Bloom County, and a few others didn't use assistants.

Farside is the undisputed King of Newspaper comics OP. Calvin and Hobbes is second

>Doesn't follow recipe
>Starts fire
How does that even work?

Foxtrot isn't actually that funny, but it was just chuckle worthy enough to keep me reading and the relatable characters helped. It always felt like Amend was still trying, and it didn't really feel like talk down or tut-tut from a baby boomer perspective like Zits did.

Seriously, it was probably the only really good, consistent newspaper strip. I'm older than most of guys so I remember reading the newspaper in the morning at breakfast, with dad getting the sports or news, and the kids would fight over or read the 'funnies' - Calvin and Hobbes came out when I was starting high school and I'd stopped reading the newspapers by then, except for the front section. C&H got me back into reading and as others have said, there were other things that were readable but none as consistently good.

Some are perfect examples of outliving their purposes, of the TV show that goes into 9, 10th and 11th seasons for no real purpose than to milk a cash cow, or the unintended, unwanted sequel to a book or movie.

Well there was a guy my city who produced a thermite like substance from cooking chile which burned through his stove and kitchen

Yes, but having a book open at the same time wouldn't have saved him.

Get off Cred Forums and await puberty; then you'll get it.

It's still not funny

There is a Farside thread up you know?
But C&H are still pretty good.

This is atrocious. The only people who could conceivably enjoy this is a particular female demographic, and even they probably wouldn't find it worthwhile.

Also, comics are a visual medium--all the good comics mentioned in the thread have the ability to use their art to help set up and deliver a joke. This art, on top of being an eyesore, feels like it's inconsequential.

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This.

How can not having a joke be a joke EVERY TIME?

You and I are enemies now.

Not the best, but I have a soft spot for Baby Blues. It can get pretty comfy and cute

and lewd as fuck as well

This.

I think you mean heart warming

Dumping some Broom-Hilda.

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>unfunny alcoholic duck
Arne Anka?

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It's the only comic strip I thought worth paying cash money for.

That's fair.

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Although thinking about it, he's not right-wing.

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>talking through thought bubbles
This shit never made any sense.

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The 40s had some good newspaper comics. Like pic related if you enjoy detective and adventure stories.

End of dump.

>getting triggerd by Mafalda bor being ""leftist""
Are you american or something?

Hm hm

Not the user you responded too, but I happened to read a Get Fuzzy the other day and... it made no sense. Like, it was legitimately Big Bang Theory tier devoid of actual jokes, and the characters were referring to internet acronyms with unnecessary perioding (idk the actual term), like L.O.L., or O.M.G. I get that it's for all the old people reading the newspaper, but MAN did it rub me the wrong way. The art has always looked weirdly ugly to me as well, tho I'll admit as a massive Calvinfag and animation fan in general I'm pretty picky. Sometimes bad art can be saved by good writing, but GF offers me neither.

I just... is it some kind of deeply ironic? Am I missing a big inside joke here? Because I've had people say for years that it's "the funniest comic in the paper" and I've always just been repulsed by it. I dunno, help me understand, man

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That mom is CUTE

>Farside is the undisputed King of Newspaper comics OP. Calvin and Hobbes is second

Calvin and Hobbes >= The Far Side > Bloom County/Outland

Thought I respect your opinion.

Also, I've just been triggered by and Amazon "Frequently Bought Together" suggestion that I sincerely hope is complete bullshit.

bump

ctrl-f , no Lio

You barbarians.

Calvin and hobs > Far side > Lio

Smartest sunday comics around.

anyone got more of these or the title to it?

So is BC the most mediocre newspaper comic?

Pogo's fucking awesome, man.

The McCarthy comics of his were a gutsy move.

A phenomenal comic strip that never got the popularity it deserved.

is this 19th century shitposting?

Dang that's super cute

I'm taking your picture, there's nothing you can do about it

>two-more cookies, bitch!

I laughed way louder than I should have.

I'll find you

You guys remember the cartoon on Adult Swim?

The comic is called life with kurami

I don't have any comics on it but I'm sure others can hook you up.

holy fuck her tits are bigger than that other woman's head

May need to start picking up the paper again to see what other big tit babes they let slip by

>playing fightan games with KB+M

No wonder he ain't fuckin going anywhere

Lio appeared in our paper for about 2 months a long while back, and people wanted it gotten rid of immediately.

I never found it funny myself, but we never got the Sunday edition of it (for some reason the paper here would often get comics just for the weekday versions but skip the Sunday comics for comics they only have the Sunday versions of but not the weekday).

Far side and this are the only ones i actively want to read

I agree user

I recently told some co-workers that I read Calvin and Hobbes, and it shocked them. They told me Calvin and Hobbes was a very political comic and looked at me strange for reading it.

Was Calvin and Hobbes very political? Which way did it lean? Left or Right?

Cynical.

Your co-workers may, in fact, be retarded.

That or they only know the strip from internet memes and Calvin pissing on (BRAND LOGO) stickers.

Calvin & Hobbes is great when you're young and can get swept along by the adventure and silliness and fun, but if you actually mature into an adult it's marred by the realization that so much of it is just Watterson whining about everything he hates like a bad webcomic.

Which is probably why it's still such a hit by thirty-somethings that love bad webcomics.

Your coworkers are probably retards who think that Calvin is right-wing because he wants to step on the little people or some shit like that. They're are utter fools and don't know what they're missing.
They'd probably get really triggered if you mentioned Bloom County near them.

>Watterson whining about everything he hates like a bad webcomic.

You deserve neither those quads, nor the dubs that precede them.

Yes, you found one of the acknowledged fun and silly comics where he isn't bitching about capitalism, pollution, deforestation, consumerism, the comics syndicate, adults, kids, or any of his other dozens of pet grumpy old hippie subjects.

Bravo.

it was philosophical plenty of times and Calvin would pretend that his dad was a politician so he could criticize him, like what and said, your coworker's just stupid

cutting deep right off the bat

finally someone understands

>Yes, you found one of the acknowledged fun and silly comics

You need to actually read the comic instead of just what your liberal friends post on Facebook to justify their political positions.

Let's play a game. Grab your local newspaper's comics page and list everything, plus your opinion of it.

>Pickles
Not always funny, but always reminds me of my own grandparents
>Red & Rover
Somewhat comfy, but leans on C&H too much
>Stone Soup
Family crap with no emotion or investment
>FBOFW
It's there and I still hate it, but what are you gonna do
>Wumo
Utter shit Far Side wannabe with bad art, bad jokes, and too much dialogue
>Dilbert
Might have given me my fear of office jobs as a child
>Family Circus
Wholesome and dull
>Mutts
Ubercomfy/10000
>One Big Happy
Middling, but when it flops, it flops hard
>Non Sequitur
Good art, okay writing
>The Other Coast
Environmental whining, plus dog jokes
>Arctic Circle
Same as above, minus dog jokes
>Born Loser
Bland
>Garfield
Garfield/Garfield
>Baldo
Actually good and funny, with solid characters that are good people
>Dog Eat Doug
It's growing on me, and the cats are great
>Doonesbury
Recently Trump/10, formerly Bush/10
>Zits
Oh, those silly stupid millenials/2000
>Baby Blues
I guess it's pretty okay
>Arlo and Janis
Comfy and funny, sometimes thoughtful
>Lola
How zany and cute that old woman is, but no, not at all, really
>Between Friends
Only as interesting as typical middle-aged women are in real life
>Tundra
Same as Wumo, with more Far-Sidey art

Why do I even read my local comics page? Jesus.

>local newspaper

the what now?

Your paper doesn't run Big Nate? Shame.

Bill himself would kick your ass for making such an ignorant claim (not really, but he'd probably be mildly annoyed that you hadn't bothered to check out Krazy Kat or something)

I always find these strips to be weird and bleak and creepy for some reason.

Literally 2min on google. You weren't forced to read this shit your whole childhood because you're latin american, am I right?

Not user, but I'm south american and I know how is to live in a socialist contry, so I despise Quino with all my heart.

I remember an episode when the dad remembered about his highschool days and how the chad of his days is now the janitor, the episode ended he yelling "the losers win! After 17 years of pain and agony". I'm still waiting for it to happen with me.

You don't remember the birthday dance episode?

>it's actually real
Thanks user, you just made my day.

I'm away at college so I don't have a copy of the Chicago Tribune handy, but it has a pretty decent comics section.

You're right about Mutts, we should have a thread one of these days

It's popular because it's almost at comfy-tier as other SOL comics like Mutts and Rose is Rose (Before 2004)

I say "almost" because there's a few things the cartoonist has to polish up on, but I believe he'll hit it as the comic progresses.

kek. What an ass.

I'm partial to Agnes.

It is the very first comic.

Didn't realize that was in proper newspapers anywhere. I read it elsewhere.

This. He bitches about other things too. Granted he's right.

Philistine.

>Let's hope its a divorce

Gets me every time.

>Bizarro by Dan Piraro
>Didn't realize that was in proper newspapers anywhere.

350 markets worldwide according to Wikipedia. We had it in the local paper in my midwestern hometown back in the 90's.

Calvin and Hobbes is the best, but there are other good ones.

I'm partial to: Foxtrot (the older stuff is better), Frazz, early Dilbert, Boondocks, and Pearls Before Swine

>not making the kids Lucio and D.Va

peanuts is SHIT. it was never funny to me even when i was a kid

this is bad. it runs like "Cathy"

Not even the cartoons?

>peanuts is SHIT

that's correct. the cartoons are a total waste of time

the christmas album was decent. my dad plays it around xmas time and even though i'm an atheist it takes the edge off.

don't get your panties in a wad.

>even though i'm an atheist

Why even mention that? It just gives away the bait.

Where do you even work at that would have people like that?

>it's marred by the realization that so much of it is just Watterson whining about everything he hates like a bad webcomic.

Oh please. You sound like you're describing an Evan Dorkin comic instead.

what's it like being so wrong?

Sheeit

>what is Krazy Kat
>what is (the Billy DeBeck) Barney Google
>what is Gasoline Alley
>what is Wash Tubbs & Captain Easy
>what is Peanuts
>what is King Aroo
etc, etc, etc...

I think we're forgetting this fucking gem

Arne Anka is fantastic, but I don't think there's much (if anything) translated, so you'll only know it if you're Swedish.

There was Minimum Security by Stephanie McMillan. I couldn't look away from that fucking trainwreck for years.

does anyone have links to archives of strips like Foxtrot, FBOFW, of Funky Winkerbean?

The only episode I even vaguely remember is when everyone in the neighborhood turns on them for some reason, and it turns out the whole neighborhood is in a cult worshiping the 10 year old boy next door. Though the Blues family don't figure that out themselves.

That is some cute-brut bullshit

That hurt to read

> he doesn't follow bloom county on Facebook

Better than the Outland and Opus years. You've made poor life choices, son