Category Archives: newspaper comic strips

The Great Newspaper Comics Challenge Part 7

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It’s time for our weekly look at what’s funny — or not — in the Sunday funnies. Because surely there’s a modern-day successor to “Pogo?”

“Classic Peanuts” offers a take on Charlie Brown’s love/hate relationship with baseball. Charlie Brown’s on the pitcher’s mound and it’s raining. Lucy asks if he’s going to call the game. He tells her to get back out into centerfield. A pop fly ball is hit and … bounces off Lucy’s umbrella. That Lucy!

“Garfield” looks at a common problem for bloggers. Jon worries that no one is reading his blog. He theorizes that cute pictures of Garfield would generate clicks. But Garfield won’t cooperate. The last panel shows an extreme close-up of a mouth. Jon’s I think. With the entry, “Today I ate a smartphone.” Am I missing something?

“Wizard of Id” gives us our first April Fool’s joke of the day. The king is delighted to hear the soldier in the turret announce, “The king’s popularity is higher than ever.” But everyone else is laughing — until the king has them put in chains for playing an April Fool’s joke on him.

“Marmaduke” barks in response to the tweeting birds … and they all fly away. Are we sure that the creator of “Marmaduke” has ever seen a dog?

“Dilbert” features Catbert offering the pointy-haired boss advice on leadership. After Catbert tells him he’s being too panicky in his warnings, the boss says, “We’re doomed, and yet, I am not the least bit worried.” Catbert frowns. “That one had a creepy vibe.” And that’s not even the punchline. Pretty funny.

In “Beetle Bailey,” the men of Camp Swampy are complaining about Cookie’s meatballs. Sarge advices him to make something they would like to tear apart with their teeth. Cookie makes … cookies that look like Sarge and the men are eating them up. I’m confused. Is “Don’t ask, don’t tell” over or not?

“Foxtrot” offers “Game of Thrones” as it might be filtered through a “My Little Pony” sensibility for an April Fools Day joke. And, you know, it works.

In “Hi and Lois,” Lois cleans up the house all day and then wonders aloud if mother birds ever look forward to an empty nest. I sense a very tragic Lifetime movie in the offing.

An April Fool’s joke backfires for “Dennis the Menace.” He’s trying to be funny, but he convinces Margaret that she’s gorgeous and that he wants to hear her practice piano. I sense a very tragic Lifetime movie in the offing here too.

Okay, now we’re getting into the spirit of this special day as well as the spirit of horribly embittered and disappointed mothers. In “Family Circus,” all the kids thank their mom for vegetables, come home with perfect report cards and thank mom for taking them clothes shopping. “April Fool!” those devilish Keanes announce. Tragic. Lifetime. Offing.

And finally in “Non Sequitur,” an alien and a little boy tell a little girl they’re calculating when an asteroid will strike earth. She realizes it’s April Fools Day. Whew. After she leaves, they go back to calculating the date of impact. Wow, thanks, Wiley, for spoiling the spirit of April Fools Day! (And thanks for the plot of a SyFy Channel movie.)

If you’re scoring at home, that’s five April Fools Day jokes and three potentially tragic tales of parenthood gone off the rails.

The Great Newspaper Comics Challenge Part 6

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It’s that time again. Time to check out the funny pages. Because newspaper comics aren’t all about Mutt and Jeff!

Classic Peanuts: Linus and Snoopy are searching all over the yard for … Snoopy’s contact lenses? Who knew? And how do they get him to sit still for that puff-of-air-in-your-eye test at the optometrist?

Baby Blues: The baby crawls around the house, burbling “mama” and “choo-choo.” He passes Dad, who’s just hit his finger with a hammer and is making those comic strip #@!$& curse words. The baby then crawls up to mom and repeats the word. Mom faints. As a parent, I can tell you this is pretty accurate.

Speed Bump: A doctor tells Pinocchio he needs more fiber in his diet. So wait, Pinocchio eats wood? I mean, I know people eat meat and all, but isn’t Pinocchio eating the material he was carved from — but no longer is — strange? Maybe it’s me.

Beetle Bailey: Sarge gets mad because Beetle is sleeping late and goofing off. Welcome to 1963.

The Family Circus: Mom wakes up Jeffy and tells him, “Time to start another busy day. Clock’s ticking away!” Then Jeffy — get this — pictures a clock with him doing stuff on it! My face hurts from this satisfied smile.

 

The Great Newspaper Comics Challenge Part 5

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It’s Sunday and that means (at least lately it does) a look at what’s in the comics pages. ‘Cause there’s still something good even though “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side” are long gone. Right?

“Classic Peanuts” jumps into March Madness with the kids playing basketball. Unfortunately, the hoop is on Snoopy’s dog house and baskets wake him up. Not one of Charlie Schulz’ best.

“Garfield” sits by with a cup of coffee while Jon cleans out his wallet, then advises his person, “Time for a man purse, pack rat.” Is this thing on?

“Wizard of Id” has the wizard walking past various ogres and giant spiders and rats, unperturbed, only to squeek when he seeks his wife with her hair in rollers and green stuff on her face. Hello? Hello? (Cricket noise.)

“Speed Bump” is a play on old “Frankenstein” movies with the mad doctor and Igor choosing a brain for the monster. The jars are labeled “Normal Brain,” “Abnormal Brain” and “Brain With Song Stuck In It.” “No, Igor! That would just be cruel,” the doctor says. Pretty good.

“Blondie” tries out a new hairstyle and Dagwood reacts with shock. Frankly, so did I. Doesn’t this look like Donald Trump’s hairdo?

Freaky.

“Dennis the Menace” discovers, about 15 years late, that truism about how kids are better with computers than adults. Next they’re going to show Dennis signing up for an AOL account.

Finally, “Ziggy” just confuses me. Ziggy’s bird is hanging upside down on his perch with comic strip “confusion” circles around his head. Ziggy asks his dog and cat, “Did you put butter on his perch again?”

Is butter why the bird is hanging upside down? Wouldn’t he just fall off, completely unable to hang on at all, if the perch were slippery? Why does he look like he’s taken a blow to the head?

Maybe Dennis the Menace could explain it to me.

The Great Newspaper Comics Challenge Part 4

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Here’s our latest look at what’s funny in the funny pages. There’s something fun in the post-“Calvin and Hobbes” era, right?

This week: The return of Ida Know and Not Me!

“Classic Peanuts.” Okay, spring is definitely here. The estate of the late, great Charles M. Schulz gives us the first (?) Charlie Brown vs. kite strip of the year.

But oy vey, this is a lame one. Good ol’ Charlie Brown talks to the tree that’s eaten his kite for, let’s see, six panels, ultimately giving up and acknowledging, “You can’t argue with a kite-eating tree.”

Moving on …

“Zits.” Okay, good stuff here. “Ridiculous stuff moms say” includes “Wear a coat” and “Does anybody want some kale?” As Homer Simpson would say, “It’s funny because it’s true.”

“Garfield.” Jon talks to Liz on the phone, fretting about what movie they’ll watch because he doesn’t want a weepy chick flick. He’s happy she’s picked a monster movie! But she’s chosen “When Godzilla Met Sally.” Ladies and gentlemen, my nominee for funniest newspaper strip of 1989.

“Dilbert.” The pointy-haired boss spouts techno-gibberish like “Do we have enough room in the cloud to Skype?” and Dilbert explains that he “slips in and out of understanding basic technology.”

Dilbert reassures him, “We have plenty of space because we upgraded to a cumulonimbus cloud.” Good stuff.

“Foxtrot.” One of the kids gets ideas for “John Carter” sequels once they run out of Mars stories, including “John Carter of Tattooine.” Extra geeky!

“Blondie.” Dagwood and Blondie continue their master class on household budgeting and economics. Dagwood buys Blondie an expensive necklace at the jewelry store.

“Did you see anything new at the golf shop today?” Blondie asks. “You won’t believe the amazing golf bags they just got in,” Dagwood replies. ‘Cause it’s okay to spend as much money as you can when everybody shares the loot.

“Curtis.” Curtis gets good grades so his dad takes him to buy a reward, “something called an iPad,” Dad says. They return later, sans iPad, at odds over spending money. Counting this and the “Blondie” strip, I think this week’s theme is household spending.

Finally — and I am so excited about this, “Family Circus.” Mom has the kids — have they always had four? — lined up for interrogation.

There’s a broken dish in her hand and a disappointed look on her face.

“I think I know the answer but I’ll ask you anyway,” Mom says. “Which of you broke my good plate?”

Wait, the Keenes have only one good plate? Times must be tough in the newspaper comic strip industry. But I digress.

Joining the line-up of kids being grilled: The see-thru forms of Ida Know, Not Me and Nobody.

Nobody in particular is unfamiliar to me and has me a little worried. He’s got a moustache, for Pete’s sake. How old is this imaginary blame-taker? What’s he doing hanging around with a bunch of school-agers?

 

 

The Great Newspaper Comics Challenge Part 3

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I’m way overdue for a look at the funny pages in this, an irregularly recurring look at newspaper comics.

The premise: The glory days of the newspaper comic ended with “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side,” but there’s still some good stuff out there. And if not good stuff, at least familiar. And you know the old saying: Familiarity breeds content. That was the old saying, wasn’t it?

In today’s Sunday strips:

“Garfield” talks about the weather. Seriously, this strip sums up my feelings about the transition from winter to spring. Standing outside, Garfield experiences sun, snow, rain, hail and wind. “I’m done with March,” he tells Jon.

Weather is the theme of the day. In “Classic Peanuts,” Linus grumbles about having to walk to school in the rain, worrying that he’ll catch  a cold. When he finally sneezes, he takes it as a sign to head for home. One more weather strip in my Sunday paper and I’ll take it as a sign the cartoonists collaborated like they do for those fabulous annual Arbor Day tributes.

“Pickles” actually has a pretty good joke that cat owners can relate to. Two people dispute the possibility that cats really care about people, noting that a neighbor with gourmet cat food could lure the cat away. “Muffin would never do that to me,” the lady says. “Would you Muffy?” The cat thinks — because cats don’t talk — “I’m doing it now. I actually belong to the lady down the street.” No weather.

In “The Wizard of Id,” campaign leaflets are tossed from a balloon and rain down on people below. Does that count as weather?

“Dilbert” features a robot with attitude that calls for a robot apocalypse. Does the end of the world count as weather? I’m sure the Weather Channel would claim it.

In “Hi and Lois,” one of the kids is sick and hopes he misses school. Hmmm. Counting “Peanuts,” maybe the real trend for today is childhood illness.

Meanwhile, Dagwood considers taking a nap at work.

In “Dennis the Menace,” Dennis and Joey try to hit Margaret with a snowball. I think that counts as weather.

In “The Family Circus,” Dad takes a nap and one of the kids gives him a teddy bear. Awwww …. and dammit. Now I think naps are the trend of the day.

“Non Sequitur” has the little goth kid complaining that it’s snowing when it should be spring. I think that settles the matter:

Weather: 6 (right? right?)

Kids too sick to go to school: 2

Grown men taking naps: 2.

 

The Great Newspaper Comics Challenge Part 2

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For a moment there, I thought I had slipped through some kind of time portal into the distant past.

Here in front of me, in an Indianapolis community newspaper called the Eastside Voice, was the old “Flash Gordon” newspaper comic strip.

I hadn’t seen “Flash Gordon” in years. No newspapers that I knew of carried it. Yet here it was, in this little neighborhood newspaper.

Upon doing a little research on the Interwebs, I figured out why I hadn’t heard of the strip lately. “Flash Gordon” hasn’t been an actively-published newspaper comic strip since 2003, when artist Jim Keefe — following in the footsteps of classic “Flash Gordon” auteur Alex Raymond — stopped drawing it. Papers like the Eastside Voice run reprints of Keefe’s strips, which ran for several years.

So no danger that I’ve been missing new adventures of Flash, Dale and Ming the Merciless all these years.

So if “Flash Gordon” is still stuck on Mongo, what is in the comics lately?

A few weeks ago I acknowledged that I haven’t been reading newspaper comic strips regularly since the passing of “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side” and vowed to remedy that.

Well … I haven’t been reading the funny pages daily. But I thought I’d check out the Sunday edition today.

In “Peanuts” — a rerun, of course, since the passing of Charles Schulz a few years ago — takes a page from Calvin’s book by having Linus make a realistic snowman figure of Lucy. But instead of destroying it, Linus says he’ll get back at Lucy’s latest bullying by standing and watching the Lucy effigy “slowly melt away.” Yikes.

In “Garfield,” Jon insults Garfield’s bulge. Check. Garfield says talk about his waistline is making him hungry. Hmmm. Check, I guess.

In “Zits,” the teenage son in the household complains about having to take out the trash. Weirdly, however, the artists show the guy’s naked butt in the shower. Do we normally see naked butts in comics? Not since the great “Sgt. Snorkel Goes Streaking” incident of 1975, I would bet.

“Dilbert” looks at smartphone rage. It leads to a silly gag but it’s a good idea.

Jeff and Bil Keane’s “Family Circus” is a good execution of a simple idea. One of the kids — Billy? Jeffy? Honestly I can’t tell them apart — is seen giving a recitation of excuses about how he didn’t make his little brother cry.

More to come next time. Hopefully.

Family Circus: Zippy meets Jeffy

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I mean, really, who knew?

Well, obviously a few people knew.

When Bil Keane, creator of the daily “Family Circus” newspaper panel, died about a week ago, I noted in this blog that while Keane’s panel wasn’t my favorite strip — that honor falls to “Calvin and Hobbes” or “The Far Side” — you had to admire Keane for his staying power. Although he had turned over the strip to his son, Jeff, in recent years, he maintained it for decades after creating it in 1960.

Now, thanks to a terrific Comics Journal column by Bill Griffith, the creator of the offbeat “Zippy the Pinhead” strip, I have a newfound appreciation for Keane’s sense of humor.

Griffith writes about how he didn’t expect to have much in common with Keane and other grand old masters of the comics page until he met them at a National Cartoonists Society dinner in 1990.

Griffith said Keane and the other members of the old guard were surprisingly funny and profane and the farthest thing from their squeaky-clean strips that you could imagine.

Keane and Griffith hit it off and, a few years later, Griffith wrote a 1994 series of “Zippy” strips in which his character spends time in the world of “The Family Circus.”

Keane favored Griffith with a tip of the hat with a 1995 panel in which young Billy is dreaming of Zippy. Keane even asked Griffith to draw Zippy for the panel.

Now, if you can get past the fact that the mixing of the two comics is perhaps more disturbing than funny, I can’t think of a revelation that made me smile more and think more highly of Keane.

It’s unfortunate that we sometimes appreciate people the most after they’re gone. And while I will still no doubt shake my head a bit when I come across a “Not Me” or ghostly grandparents panel in “The Family Circus,” I won’t be doubting Keane’s good sense of humor.

Who will take over ‘The Family Circus?’ Not me

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Regular readers of this blog might know that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of “The Family Circus,” the longtime newspaper comic strip — panel, actually — that presented the adventures of a typical American suburban family haunted by the ghosts of dead grandparents and phantoms called “Not Me” and “Ida Know.”

But today, in the wake of the passing of Bil Keane, creator of the comics page fixture, respect must be paid.

Keane started the cartoon in February 1960, according to the Associated Press obit for the man, who died Tuesday at age 89 at his Arizona home.

Keane was part of a generation of artists, including the creators of “Beetle Bailey” and “Hi and Lois,” who turned the mid-20th century American experience — family life, child-raising, the foibles of work (and in Beetle’s case, the peacetime military) into five-days-a-week chuckles.

As much as I love “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side,” the creators of those beloved strips couldn’t touch Keane for longevity. Although Keane had in recent years passed the strip along to his son, Jeff — immortalized as Jeffy — Keane cranked out the daily panel for decades.

Somewhere tonight, Barfy and Sam are missing their master, although Jeff Keane can probably be assured that his father will still be hanging around, in spectral form, looking over his shoulder with an amused expression, as long as the panel appears.

The Great Newspaper Comics Challenge Part 1

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A couple of days ago I noted that Dick Tracy, in a recent strip, cracked that he didn’t really have time to read newspaper comic strips anymore. Aside from the meta reference there, I found it to be a sad but true commentary on the state of the funny pages.

I haven’t made a daily devotion of newspaper comic strips since the passing of Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side. In the newsroom where I worked, we made a daily ritual of weighing in on The Far Side each day. Who got it? Who didn’t?

So I’m checking out the daily funnies again, hoping something will catch my eye and become a regular thang.

For Better or For Worse: If I hadn’t heard that the strip had virtually stopped production and dipped back into its own history, I might wonder why the family’s kids were little again and there was less drama and tragedy in the strip. So there’s a “been there, read that” feel to the strip now.

Baby Blues and Crankshaft: Strips that mine the dawn and sunset of life for humor, these two are pretty dependably amusing.

Beetle Bailey: Hmmm. Has anyone else noticed this trend? It seems like Sarge can be pretty hard on Beetle.

Blondie: Dagwood makes a joke about food or sports. Blondie makes a joke about shopping. Repeat.

Lockhorns: This couple is always kind of insulting each other. I think this is a bad sign for their marriage.

Pickles: After the cantankerous old guy observes his wife putting on makeup and notes, “My grandpa had a saying … Even an old barn looks good with a fresh coat of paint,” He finds himself out on the stoop. “I just realized why grandpa got locked out of the house so often.” Pretty good.

Dilbert: The strip might be most appealing to office workers, but you’ve got to admire Scott Adams’ diligence in exploring the many facets of idiotic bosses and shiftless workers.

Today’s strip is fine, but my favorite Dilbert — maybe of all time — was a few weeks ago.

Be back in a couple of days with part two.

Hey Dick Tracy: Read this

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The blow, when it came, was like a swift punch to the kidneys: Dick Tracy, the peerless comic strip detective, doesn’t read newspaper comic strips anymore.

My first thought: They’re still publishing Dick Tracy?

My second thought: Maybe ol’ Dick is right.

Let me fill in the backstory: I was perusing the Interwebs today when I saw a link to a story on Examiner.com in which writer Brian Steinberg notes the current Dick Tracy strip, in which the sharp-chinned cop, when asked if he reads comic strips, replies, “Usually don’t have time.”

At first I thought, “Well, the hell with Dick Tracy. If he’d turn in that two-way wrist radio and get an iPad or even an iPhone, maybe he’d keep up with the news a little better.”

Then I thought, well, to be honest, I’m not reading newspaper comic strips every day either.

Regular readers of this blog might have noticed that I’ve mentioned Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, a long-gone adventure strip along the lines of Dick Tracy, as well as classics like Calvin and Hobbes and the inexplicably popular Family Circus.

But since Calvin hurtled off this plane of existence on his sled, I haven’t spent a lot of time with the funnies.

That’s a shame too. I work for a newspaper and read it, in print and online, every day. But I haven’t paid as much attention to the comics since the heyday of not only Calvin but the Far Side.

So when I realized that I was no better than Dick Tracy in my inattention to newspaper comic strips, I decided to rectify the situation.

Beginning tomorrow, I’m going to take a few minutes and check out the comics, both in print and online. I’m going to find some new favorites. Maybe I’ll catch up on Funky Winkerbean. Are those crazy kids still in high school?

I’ll let you know how the comic strip reading is going.

I can’t promise I’ll read Dick Tracy every day, however, That guy’s attitude is just annoying.