Panel Discussion - The ILX Comic Strip Poll Results

Schulz otm

I like how Shakey keeps illustrating the first line of my blurbs

I'm just here to help!

I'll say this for Doonesbury, it introduced pre-teen me to the details of Watergate in a very entertaining way

i didn't really expect any webcomics to make it this high tbh

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, December 8, 2015 8:37 AM (2 hours ago)

5: THE PERRY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP by Nicholas Gurewitch (274 points, 12 votes)
did this used to be called ThePBF.com?

One of the only strips to make a transfer from web to mainstream newspapers (David Rees and this?), just in time for the author's waning muse to make it drift away again. That a new batch of whimsy, new art style, or new black comedy in three panels still occurs to Gurewitch a few times a year can prompt a dive into the lavishly painted, darkly conceived archives. If the twist in the joke reminds itself to you before you reach it, slow down and enjoy the economy of construction, or the degree of one-off design in any given strip.

http://assets.itsnicethat.com/system/files/022013/5124be405c3e3c044600070c/images_slice_large/PBF253-The_Last_Unicorns.jpg

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3962/770/1600/Scorpy%20The%20Forest%20Friend.jpg

http://assets.itsnicethat.com/system/files/022013/5124be715c3e3c7e8e000b58/images_slice_large/PBF131-Lord_Gloom.jpg

http://assets.itsnicethat.com/system/files/022013/5124bedc5c3e3c0446000b0c/images_slice_large/PBF257-One_Time_Thing.jpeg

lol

not that there aren't some good webcomics! PBF is very funny though i wouldn't have rated it this high personally

#1 overall questionable content

PBF is brilliant, though it always feels like there's exactly the right amount of it.

I've gone on at length on other threads about my love for Doonesbury, so I'll keep it to a minimum here. I just really love how with twenty, thirty, forty years going, you actually do come to know these characters, and love nearly all of them, despite how deeply flawed they are and how much their 'voices' do overlap - the things that are distinct really sink in. Plus you know, there's something inherently poignant about things like how damned happy B.D. is to see Phred when they're reunited in the 1990s, that you can't get when you actually haven't watched these characters go about twenty years of their lives in between.

Trudeau's Reagan/Bush era is probably the most observant chronicle of boomer middle age angst and loss of purpose, but kept from being totally insufferable about that because the strip remained totally committed to the values its characters were struggling to maintain (or actively giving up on). Plus the next strip or the next storyline would swing around to absurdism again - it never had the leadenness of making a Generational Statement. He struggled much more for relevancy by the 2000s IMHO; I don't know whether that was because the muse had faded or because his attempts to write the original cast's children always felt like an outsider looking in. The exception might be Alex, with whom the strip stayed close enough that she, too, always felt like a person.

Thanks for all your thoughtful posts in the last stretch of the poll, Doctor Cas.

Don't ever change, Boopsie.

aw, thanks sic! it's a really cool poll; i can't remember whether i just missed the balloting or felt like i didn't know enough of the strips to really do it right. the blurbs have been great, too.

This poll rollout has
1) reminded me of so many classic strips I knew, some well some vaguely
2) showed me quite a few I'd seen bits of, around, that I never really knew what they were
3) loads I'd never seen before

This thread should go in as one of the BEST THREAD EVER hall of fame, btw.

PBF is the most puzzling overrated webcomic ever. I get that the bar is pretty low, but despite the (occasionally) nice art, it's never raised more than a smirk from me

Something in me always glazes over any individual Little Nemo strip I've ever seen, partly because of the tiny letting but also because of the sense that I'm still 'saving' it for sometime when I can really sit down with some collections and just slow myself down and savor every panel.
― Doctor Casino

I have the two giant-sized, ultimate editions and I've put off finishing the first and starting the second.
I like how Nemo gets closer and closer to meeting the princess every night and it seems like it will never happen; yet eventually he does get in the kingdom and is privy to whole new adventures with fully realized characters. He gains the ability to continue where he left off.

The 2000s did good work with the war strips I think - BD, Ray and Toggle - it's kind of cheating, but the effect of BD's helmet eventually coming off after 40 years is something.

Hard to think of anyone who's made a worse bet that the internet would be a fad, when giving Mike and Kim something to bond over - there's a howling void whenever he mentions their company because he clearly has no idea what a dotcom startup is or does.

I share Οὖτις's mystification at Achewood - I dig that it's something that's funnier when you get to know the characters, but that's a bad alley to go down.

I dig that it's something that's funnier when you get to know the characters, but that's a bad alley to go down.

OK, I don't comprehend this at all.

Achewood always struck me as basic bitch HAHA CARL FROM AQUA TEEN MUSTACHES AND .38 SPECIAL BRUH HAHAHA RITE jokes x 1000

these results are officially bullshit btw

xxp

xxp In that familiarity with the characters will raise people's comfort with strips (or, anything) past where their critical faculties might kick in - "I know it's terrible but I've been watching it for 30 years!"

Annoyingly being cut back to one strip a week hasn't made Doonesbury any funnier - if there was ever a cartoonist to do a Lehrer over Donald Trump as the Republican Front-Runner...

I mean, I'll mention the Simpsons if I have to..

yeah I am also generally skeptical of the "you just have to digest x amount of y before it starts to taste good" argument

I thought the bad alley to go down was possibly sic's 'Lavish brush illustration would never have worked on glowing CRTs when you click over for five minutes at 11am while waiting for someone to reply to an email', but I found I couldn't really dispute the idea that we read and experience things very differently these days - there's no longer the time, inclination or cultural competency to savour something as linguistically rich as Krazy Kat.

there's no longer the time, inclination or cultural competency to savour something as linguistically rich as Penny Arcade.

Really good Mac & Cheese : Cheeseburger Pizza.

Ha, fair point about Trudeau and dot-coms. In general the period since I was really really into the strip (late 90s/early 2000s, when I bought all the old collections) has felt weird in that he's *really* clung to certain ideas that seemed at the time like just some more short-term engagements consistent with the history of the strip - Berzerkistan, Jeff (?) as the Red Rover or whatever. I'm honestly surprised to learn Kim and Mike are still dot-commers of any sort. IMO Mike-as-advertising-guy seemed much more useful to Trudeau but of course it'd be silly to undo all the character/soap opera work that got him out of that biz.

As someone who gives zero fucks about Aqua Teen whatever, Achewood is excellent. Really one of the most wonderful strips ever. I have no idea where I would have ranked it because I didn't submit a ballot, but it's fucking great and instead of talking shit why don't yall just read the first 100 or so and get back to the thread

I know USA culture is forced down everyone's throat, but sincerely, how do you non-Americans get anything out of Doonesbury, or even Pogo? They're nicely drawn, sure, and there's some good storylines.

But as I've said before, even I didn't know who the hell Jerry terHorst was when I came across that series in the books.

yall just read the first 100 or so and get back to the thread

so I took your recommendation and ... (drumroll)... yeah I don't get it. the artwork is like physically painful to look at. otherwise it seems like kinda generic "lookit this cute thing doing something offensive/disgusting" joeks, a style I tired of in the 90s.

Interesting, on topic article here about gambling, race and comic strips
http://www.tcj.com/on-ching-chow-lucky-numbers-and-gambling/

4: THE FAR SIDE by Gary Larson (305 points, 16 votes)
A note from Gary Larson.

Here's how long The Far Side has been gone: the Complete hardcover box set came out 12 years ago. But during its (only!) 15-year run, it never became rooted in time, partly due to the consistent oddity of Larson's point of view, partly due to aggressive recycling that has carried on for the decades since. A joke about dinosaurs becoming extinct due to smoking was no more relevant in a newspaper in 1985 than on a t-shirt in 1989 or a greeting card in 1997, or on a page-a-day desk calendar in 2001, or rerun in a newspaper in 2015.

http://blog.londolozi.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/fars-side-2.jpg

http://s1.hubimg.com/u/209782_f520.jpg

http://www.hdforums.com/forum/attachments/the-general-b-s-forum/203615d1314302166-do-you-moo-at-cows-when-you-ride-past-them-gary_larson_cows.jpg

Still laugh every time at this one:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/187/442760104_8d57e8fc37.jpg

so many of these gags are embedded in my consciousness. Like the cows yelling "yak yak yak" as they drive by a field of people.

he was a master of minimalist, perfectly formed gags

Far Side's genuine oddity and humor sort of blunted by years of overexposure and all the endless knockoffs, but it really was great. My favorite remains this one:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v258/pdmike/death.jpg

I read and reread the Prehistory of the Far Side volume as a kid. Would make a great pair with the Calvin & Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, and it has a lot more "bonus" content and funny anecdotes, though certainly fewer impassioned arguments for the medium and so on.

Vegetarians returning home from the hunt

The "Pull" sign on the "School for the Gifted"'s front door

First socks, THEN shoes

Thought Far Side would be top three for sure. Hmmm.

discovered far side collections in my late teens and no comic has ever given me as many massive lols as then.

Actually think Perry Bible Fellowship takes its cues from Far Side more than anything else - a lot of the humor is in pregnant awareness of what will happen next, a doomed or murderously sick situation that only one character yet realizes, etc., as in the classic "Here, Fifi! Come on... faster, Fifi!"

there have been a LOT of knockoffs, hugely influential obviously

Both Perry Bible Fellowship and The Far Side owe a considerable debt to Kliban (and I think it was a source of some vexation for him, iirc)

Like this one, Ballard Street:
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fc0389161.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com%2Fdyn%2Fstr_strip%2F336867.full.gif&f=1

which always appealed to me but had some kind of deeper, more melancholy underpinning to it

3: KRAZY KAT by Geo. Herriman (312 points, 14 votes)
scans galore

Zig-zag mountains. Changing backgrounds. Behaviour patterns and expectations. Identity politics. Futility, hope, and never-requited love.

http://www.ignatzmouse.net/pics/archives/kk/dailies/12-May-1915.gif

http://www.ignatzmouse.net/pics/archives/kk/dailies/25-dec-1919.gif

http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/201108101214-2.jpg

http://comicsalliance.com/files/2015/08/herriman-04.jpg

http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Krazy-Kat-1.28.1922.jpg

Somewhere on ILX there is a very excellent Mark S post on KK that would've made the basis for an even more excellent article

for all the (justified) talk about how gorgeous and weird and intellectual krazy kat is, after you've read it for a while and sort of let it soak in, one thing that eventually dawns on you (or did on me, at least) is how wonderfully silly it is, full of terrible puns and broad slapstick and un-subtle visual jokes. (the early daily strips are basically just vaudeville sketches, with krazy and ignatz doing "routines" like abbott and costello.) as strange and sort of profound as it is, herriman meant it to be read and enjoyed. even herriman's long boxes of narration, with their elaborate syntax and big words, seem meant to be read in a 1940s-style "radio announcer" voice like the ones you hear in old warner brothers cartoons. somehow that makes the strip's frequent moments of eerie silence and its large, forlorn landscapes seem all the more effective.

Gary Larson on 20/20, 1986:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57wcedtGpc8

was anyone else sort of surprised to learn about Krazy/Ignatz' genders? it was years before I was clued in.

strip is immortal, obviously

http://www.creators.com/a-note-from-gary-larson.html
dude has been really really quiet; those of you too young to remember when this was popular may forget but this was bigger than as Calvin and Hobbes in its prime, tons of auxiliary marketing and books

Wow at this, from Wiki: Gary Larson produced 23 The Far Side books, which were all on The New York Times Best Seller list.