Day Seven of a Classic Comics Christmas 2010 [Archive]

Cei-U!

12-20-2010, 07:02 AM

There must have been at least a dozen of the paperbacks kicking around our house in my formative years and I'm fairly certain they were among the first books I tackled after learning to read. That, among many other reasons, is why I love today's entry.

6. Peanuts

Like Slam and others, I tend to prefer the strip's early days, before Snoopy became anthropomorphosized and when the supporting cast included Shermy, Violet, Patty (the non-Peppermint one), Frieda and Pigpen. Some of those early installments can still make me laugh out loud a half-century after I first encountered them. Not that anything (or everything) that came later was bad. Far from it. Even at the end, Charles Shultz was still occasionally experimenting with the form (some of his single panel dailies are brilliant) amidst the all-too-familiar schtick.

And you gotta give Sparky major preps for doing it all--including backgrounds, inking and lettering--himself throughout Peanuts' five decades. In an industry where ghosts and assistants all too often do the work while the guy who signs the strip cashes the checks, that is truly extraordinary.

Cei-U!
I summon good ol' Charlie Brown!

The Darknight Detective

12-20-2010, 07:13 AM

6. Bloom County

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:IxN2i8Dtbr76yM:http://www.animenation.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/wholegang.gif&t=1

Outland and Opus were fine as spinoffs go, but the strip Berke Breathed will be remembered for most is this '80s strip.

Starting off as a Doonesbury wannabe, it evolved into something more original and outlandish than its roots (better, IMO, than Trudeau's creation, too).

shaxper

12-20-2010, 07:31 AM

6. Garfield (1970s to 1980s)
by Jim Davis

These days, Garfield is nothing but a shameless corporation churning out much of the same each day and pasting Jim Davis’ name to the product. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, though, it offered a refreshingly zany yet cynical tinge to an otherwise lighthearted strip, and those dead-pan expressions were fantastic. There was never an attempt to be cute in the strip; in fact, Garfield was the complete opposite of cute. Somehow, the later strips completely lost sight of this as Garfield's eyes got bigger, his body got smaller, and he learned how to stand on two feet and smile big.

I was darn passionate about Garfield back in elementary school, collecting all the books, reading and re-reading them with fervor, and even adopting some of his coined phrases into my own vocabulary (though I’m still not 100% sure what I’m referencing when I say “The bouquet leaves something to be desired”). Garfield certainly had its own style of humor, as well as a drawing style that was universally appealing while very easy on the eyes. I do miss what it used to be.

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1978/ga780629.gif

Scott Harris

12-20-2010, 08:24 AM

germundvw

12-20-2010, 08:26 AM

#6 Calvin and Hobbes
This may well be the #1 most picked strip when Christmas arrives, but it has to be in my list too. There’s not much I can add to what’s already been written, but Watterson’s way of describing the everyday situations of life with a twist, is so remarkable that C&H deserves all praise it gets. We retranslated slightly more than half of the run for a Swedish reprint book set last year and what amazed me was how few of the strips that were difficult to translate. Usually when you translate humor strips, you ever so often come across strips that are just impossible to translate, due to word plays or national occurrences which ain’t understood internationally – but not in C&H. The themes and jokes are simply so human that they’re easily translatable (OK, there are exceptions, but certainly not many). C&H has been around for almost 25 years and is still running in I don’t know how many newspapers and reprint comic books. Readers and editors just never seem to tire of it and that’s just another way to state the obvious: C&H is timeless.

(I'll skip the image this time, as you've seen a few already!)

shaxper

12-20-2010, 08:30 AM

6. Get Fuzzy

It's fitting that I'm posting this right after shaxper posted Garfield, because Get Fuzzy literally is Garfield for a modern audience -- frequently clueless bachelor, incredibly stupid dog, often acerbic cat, the whole nine yards. Unlike every Garfield strip since 1983, however, Get Fuzzy doesn't suck. And for some of the same reasons shaxper cites those early Garfield strips; the frequent use of silent reaction shots not just during the strip but as the punchline is an interesting and unusual choice for the comics page. Not that I could find a good example of that, but whatever.

It's interesting that you draw such parallels between the two comics because I absolutely cannot get into Get Fuzzy. I see the Garfield inspiration in it, but I don't find the humor as accessible. The cat feels like it tries too hard to be Dogbert, and I get no read on the owner at all. I love the dog, of course. He's 20 times funnier than Odie because he can articulate his thoughts and yet seems to understand even less than Odie did.

Aaron King

12-20-2010, 08:37 AM

More synchronicity. Maybe today will be Peanuts day.

6. Peanuts
by Charles Shulz
I never particularly read Peanuts in the newspapers. As a child, I watched the holiday specials on TV, I'm pretty sure I had a few Peanuts picture books, and I was in the chorus of a stage version of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I've found a few of the Complete Peanuts books for cheap, though, and devoured them. My favorite strips (like Cei-U!'s) are from the first few years. His original style clicks with me more, maybe because it feels more subdued and drawn in. It feels like Minnesota. Also, I love how the gang dressed back then.

Slam_Bradley

12-20-2010, 08:55 AM

Steve Canyon - Milton Caniff

Caniff makes his second appearance on my list with what was almost unquestionably the most anticipated comic strip of the 1940s. Caniff left the hugely successful Terry & the Pirates for his mystery strip. What people got was different, but almost equal to Terry in aviator and adventurer Steve Canyon.

I'm limiting this to the first ten or so years of Canyon, because that's what I've read. Unfortunately Checker Publishing seems to have gone out of business, so Canyon doesn't appear to have a home. But he certainly deserves the deluxe treatment so many strips have had over the last few years.

http://blog.newsarama.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10005/normal_canyon_deen.jpg

http://www.art4comics.com/canyon1.jpg

Roquefort Raider

12-20-2010, 09:17 AM

6. Peanuts again!

I could do without the endlessly repeated TV specials, but the strip has always made me happy.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y205/RoquefortRaider/snoopy.jpg

RichardWrite

12-20-2010, 09:36 AM

6. Andy Capp

I like Andy Capp because I've always liked comic strips about "everyman" character types. And Andy fits the bill nicely. Plus, to me, Andy Capp is as funny today as he ever was. That's a rare trait with comic strips.

http://www.arcamax.com/newspics/14/1401/140115.gif

Polar Bear

12-20-2010, 09:44 AM

Here's a strip that has a subtle spiritual side to it, not ramming the artist's point of view down the reader's throat, but presenting it and allowing it to be laughed at.

I love the relationship between the parents. They're not smart-alecky towards each other; on the contrary, they're actively affectionate and search out ways to express their love. How often do you see that in the funny pages?

It's a strip that warms me up instead of hitting my "sitcom" button, getting cheap laughs out of cynicism and sarcasm. I'm slowly acquiring a complete run of his books (it's my kids' favorite strip, by the way).

http://grimmy.sahuagin.net:8080/~tcovert/dailystrips/2007.09.30/Rose%20Is%20Rose-2007.09.30.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~ccdesan/Chickweed/Influences/Brady1.jpg

The Confessor

12-20-2010, 10:12 AM

...and even more synchronicity...

Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz

I had a ton of the paperback Peanuts books as a kid in the late 70s/early 80s and I used to love reading the strip in daily installments in the Daily Mail, while I worked as a paperboy in 1987 and 1988. Unlike some posters here, I also enjoyed the TV cartoon series, but of course, the strip itself was always superior to the cartoon. Peanuts remains something that I have never tired of over the course of 30+ years.

http://i54.tinypic.com/2dqvz2h.gif

Oh, and you know what? It doesn't matter how many times Charlie Brown goes to kick the football and Lucy pulls it away...it's always funny. :smile:

http://i56.tinypic.com/21e9p5d.gif

Drusilla lives!

12-20-2010, 11:25 AM

Sorry, but the synchronicity ends here. :frown: :smile:

6. Dilbert by Scott Adams

Is there anything left for me to say about this strip that hasn't been already?

I guess I'll just add that I'm pretty sure my first exposure to this strip was in the pages of the NY Post in the early 90s and that as a person having worked in the IT field as a computer programmer, it resonated with me from the start in ways that few other "modern" strips ever did. And in many ways it pretty much captures the zeitgeist of our times... well, at least for me anyway.

http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/8233/dilbert20101126.gif

dan bailey

12-20-2010, 12:05 PM

6. Tumbleweeds

I liked lots of funny-page regulars when I was a kid -- Peanuts, Wizard of Id, B.C., Andy Capp, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus & undoubtedly at least a couple of others that aren't coming to mind at the moment. Only one of those I just named will be making my list, though ... along with my 2nd-favorite from those days --

http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg91/unsightlyandserene/ryan_tumbleweeds2.jpg

Cei-U!

12-20-2010, 01:36 PM

I first encountered "Tumbleweeds" in my great-grandfather's stack of True West or a similar magazine. He crossed America in a conestoga wagon as a small boy and often knew the people and places featured. I seem to remember his name appearing in the occasional letters column correcting some factoid or other. Thanks for the memory, dan!

Cei-U!
God bless old Elmer Miller! I apparently come by it honestly! :biggrin:

dan bailey

12-20-2010, 01:56 PM

I bought a few issues of True West &/or something similar as a kid, as it happens, though offhand I'm not sure why. Not that there's anything wrong with such mags, but unlike you, Kurt, I don't know of any particular familial connections with the Old West ... my people apparently got to NW Louisiana & SW Arkansas in the mid-1800s & gave up going any farther.

Jezebel Bond

12-20-2010, 02:17 PM

6. Blondie.

My first memory of any character from Blondie was not from the comic-strip. It was parodied in a MAD paperback and Mr. Dithers had just shot Dagwood (can't for the life of me remember which MAD it was but I do remember seeing Dagwood getting blown away with bullets flying out of his body). Shortly after, I began to take notice of the strip in one of the dailies we got (up to 4 per day). I might be a wee bit biased because it's a strip which features a female lead :biggrin:

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/2655/blondie.jpg

Also, this strip gets tweaked into adult versions quite often, but before someone starts moaning lol....

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/1083/dagwoodsandwich.jpg

Slam_Bradley

12-20-2010, 02:25 PM

JKCarrier

12-20-2010, 03:24 PM

http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u313/JKCarrier/12%20Days%20of%20Classic%20Christmas%202010/raymond_flash.jpg

Flash Gordon
by Alex Raymond

Flash! Aaaa-AAHHH! The gold standard of sci-fi/fantasy adventure, as far as I'm concerned, and some of the most gorgeous art ever to grace a comics page. Swashbuckling heroes, sneering villains, stunning damsels, terrifying monsters, all parading across breathtaking alien landscapes...Raymond's art is like sex on paper.

Red Oak Kid

12-20-2010, 04:22 PM

#6 Funky Winkerbean

I was reading this comic when I was in high school. Seems like the characters at that time were the same age as me. I really liked it and I think it was one of the first "new" comics to make it onto the local paper's comic section which at that time seemed to be made up of strips that had already been running for decades.

I could identify with all the characters and situations. I believe it is still running tho all the characters have grown up.

MWGallaher

12-20-2010, 04:34 PM

6. Stern Wheeler by Jim Aparo and Ralph Kanna
http://i444.photobucket.com/albums/qq168/MWGallaher/stern0410-1263.jpg
The only Stern Wheeler I've read was the single issue of reprints from 80's B&W glut small publisher Spotlight Comics, but, c'mon, I'm gonna pass up the short-lived newspaper strip by my favorite comic book artist, Jim Aparo? Nope, not this year!
Like many comic book artists of his generation, Jim wanted a newspaper strip, and he tried pitching them several times. Stern Wheeler only got published in his local Hartford Connecticut newspaper, and only lasted for a short time, but it kept Jim in the comics field--as a sideline--for a few years, after his lack of success breaking in at the comic book publishers. If not for this, who knows?--he might have given up his cartooning dreams, and my favorite artists wouldn't have bothered trying again at Charlton...
A look at that nice sequence above should convince anyone that Jim had what it took to be a good adventure strip artist, had the stars aligned differently. Years before he had the chance to prove himself on Batman, the Phantom, and Aquaman, his self-taught skills at pencilling, inking, and lettering were already well-honed and ready to see print.
And some day, when the Hartford Times is fully archived on google, I'll read the entire run, but until then, that comic book version continues to hold a treasured place in my collection.

Jezebel Bond

12-20-2010, 05:21 PM

That would be from A Mad Comic Opera. It took the top place in my favorite single stories as I recall.

Thanks, took note and saw that it was originally published from MAD# 56, July 1960.

benday-dot

12-20-2010, 08:57 PM

It's interesting that you draw such parallels between the two comics because I absolutely cannot get into Get Fuzzy. I see the Garfield inspiration in it, but I don't find the humor as accessible. The cat feels like it tries too hard to be Dogbert, and I get no read on the owner at all. I love the dog, of course. He's 20 times funnier than Odie because he can articulate his thoughts and yet seems to understand even less than Odie did.

I'm the same way Shaxper. For the longest time I would consistently read Get Fuzzy. It seemed like a strip i ought to enjoy... nicely drawn, ostensibly smart writing... but it always seemed to fall flat for me. I've rather given up on it lately. Today I only read Bizarro, Dilbert, Pearls Before Swine and usually Blondie. But as we always say... it's all a matter of opinion.

benday-dot

12-20-2010, 08:59 PM

6. Stern Wheeler by Jim Aparo and Ralph Kanna
The only Stern Wheeler I've read was the single issue of reprints from 80's B&W glut small publisher Spotlight Comics, but, c'mon, I'm gonna pass up the short-lived newspaper strip by my favorite comic book artist, Jim Aparo? Nope, not this year!

Another surprise from your corner MWG. I had no idea Aparo had an adventure strip. Thanks.

benday-dot

12-20-2010, 09:17 PM

Those who insist on drawing their lines severely between the fine and the popular arts may be confounded when it comes to Little Nemo.

Our sage friend Roquefort Raider was correct when he earlier called Nemo "sheer poetry." Others here have spoken just as eloquently about this venerable newspaper strip's commanding virtues.

I'll only add that Little Nemo remains an art nouveau masterpiece, successfully staying in print a century later in some form or other. It is of a dream eternally recurring, as Nemo finds breathtaking, surreal, and often frightening adventure in Slumberland on endless voyage to King Morpheus. It is work of everlasting and exquisitely haunting beauty.

In the history of comic strips Nemo abides bold and indelible.

foxley

12-20-2010, 11:30 PM

6. Terry and The Pirates
by Milton Caniff

A classic strip I had never read but always suspected I would like. When IDW started bringing out the complete collection, I hemed and hawed about buying it. Eventually my LCS had a sale with 30% off storewide, so I splashed out and bought the first volume and I'm glad I did. I'll defintely be buying the later ones.

Dragon Lady may be well be one the way to supplanting Catwoman as my favourite villainess.

My one complaint is that, viewed through modern eyes, the supposed comedy relief Chinese character Connie is positively cringe inducing.

http://i52.tinypic.com/2ntbdr6.jpg

inferno

12-21-2010, 01:38 AM

6. Red Meat

This just appeals to the SubGenius in me. I've followed it in various alt.weeklys (And online) since the late 1990s.

http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/1996-10-07/index-1.gif

http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/1997-01-06/index-1.gif

http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/1998-01-26/index-1.gif

berk

12-21-2010, 05:48 AM

TheHistorian

12-21-2010, 05:57 PM

#6: Barnaby

I am so thankful that a full reprint of this has been announced by Fantagraphics - more people absolutely NEED to see this strip. The existing paperbacks are hard to find and staggeringly priced.

I can sum up why I love this strip in one word: charming. It's simply drawn, and simply told, but it just grabs you and won't let go. This is among the top tier of strip you will love (but that no one you know will have heard of).

http://longstreet.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/14/blogaugust_14empty_ross387.jpg

Cei-U!

12-21-2010, 07:48 PM

"Barnaby" was my #13 choice.

Cei-U!
I summon the forgotten classic!

zilch

12-24-2010, 07:59 PM

Its funny... these are no way in the order i originally wrote them down...

6. Doonesbury by Trudeau (and his helper whose name i can never remember)

Read a bunch of the earlier strips in an early collection and a Scholastics Books collection. Been reading this for what seems forever...

Shouldn't Mike be close to 60 by now?

Rob Allen

12-25-2010, 11:38 AM

6. Bizarro by Dan Piraro

Several people have already commented on the strip's humor. There's also the fact that it often uses superheroes; Piraro is clearly one of us.

But there's a special extra in the strip that no one has mentioned. In most of the strips there's a number right above Piraro's signature. That's the number of little "extras" that are in that day's strip. He has a specific group of visual elements that he chooses from. Here's how wikipedia describes them:

Most Bizarro cartoons include an eyeball (the Eyeball of Observation), a piece of pie (the Pie of Opportunity), a rabbit (the Bunny of Exuberance), an alien in a spaceship (the Flying Saucer of Possibility), the abbreviation "K2" (referring to his children Kermit and Krapuzar), a crown (the Crown of Power), a stick of dynamite (the Dynamite of Unintended Consequences), a shoe (the Lost Loafer), an arrow (The Arrow of Vulnerability), a fish tail (The Fish of Humility) and/or an upside down bird (the Inverted Bird) hidden somewhere in the cartoon.

So after reading and enjoying the cartoon, there's a whole second phase of enjoying Bizarro - finding all the hidden pictures.

Scott Shaw!

12-27-2010, 11:30 AM

#6. CONCHY by Jim Childress

CONCHY was about a little beachcomber and the people and critters he encountered on the shore. I discovered CONCHY through the MENOMONEE FALLS GUARDIAN, and later picked up all of the CONCHY paperbacks. At first glace, CONCHY looks like many of the other gag strips from the “Connecticut cartoonists”, but it has a thoughtfully philosophical tone that was somewhat unique in the funnies of those days. Unfortunately, CONCHY is no longer seen, because Jim Childress committed suicide in 1977.

Aloha,

Scott!

TheHistorian

12-27-2010, 06:16 PM

I discovered CONCHY through the MENOMONEE FALLS GUARDIAN, and later picked up all of the CONCHY paperbacks.

Scott - do you have a copy of Conchy: Man Of The Now? The other two books can be found with a little persistence, but that one has evaded me for quite a while.

prince hal

12-27-2010, 07:08 PM

In keeping with the theme of strips we love, or at least have an emotional connection with, I'm going with one called "Myrtle," aka "Right Around Home.'

This one used to knock me out every Sunday because of its unique design. It was one huge panel drawn from a bird's-eye view and contained dozens of word balloons and characters. It was reminiscent of some of the great "Gasoline Alleys' that used a similar technique, but Dudley Fisher did this every week.

I loved the neighborhood feel he gave to these snapshots of people gathered in a backyard, or at a picnic, or on the street. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and there was just so much going on in them, plus it took a while to read, which was fun. I wish there were more on the strip on the Internet because it was a ball to read way back when: a little bit "They'll Do It Every Time," a little bit "Gasoline Alley."

I recall that Myrtle's boyfriend was a guy with a lisp named -- of course -- Samson!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Fisher

MDG

12-28-2010, 09:07 AM

Doonesbury

Since my politics are slightly to the left of Lenin, the ideological slant of the strip doesn’t bother me. What I love about the strip is how Trudeau’s developed a large and constantly-evolving cast of characters that do seem real (as well as caricatures like Mr. Butts and Duke). And while he sometimes “draws with a Xerox machine,” that’s usually when it’s in the service of the gag. Just as often he changes POV to make a point.