TS - Krazy Kat vs. Peanuts vs. Pogo vs. etc. what is the greatest newspaper strip of all time

Krazy Kat
Pogo
Bloom County
Doonesbury
Calvin & Hobbes
Mutts

I actually think the artwork in C&H alone justifies it as I do for Mutts.

I was recently turned onto the Gasoline Alley sunday pages in the Drawn and Quarterly collections, which are as beautiful as anything I've ever seen, and am curious about the daily serials...it may be another contender.

real answer: Krazy Kat. every few months i go through periods of being obsessed with it.

I pretty much named my top three in the thread title, but if you add weekly strips in the mix, I'd probably also cite Lynda Barry and Jules Feiffer. Little Nemo and Calvin and Hobbes definitely go in, too. I'm one of those guys who think that Bloom County was ruined when Opus became the center of the strip, which was pretty early. I like it a lot up to then, though.

When you ask google images for "Hagar beer," you never know what'll show up.

Still, i think we'd have to argue eras.

Early, darker Peanuts vs post-sabbatical C&H vs mid-period Bloom County, etc.

calling it "dark" is fundamental point-missing.

the complete Calvin & Hobbes collection is one of my major Christmas requests this year, but I've also been toying with the idea of asking some kind soul to pick me up a KK collection as well.

As per the thread question C&H, Krazy Kat, and Bloom County have long been my untouchable trifecta of comic perfection. While I enjoy Peanuts it never resonated with me the way those did. Likewise for Pogo (though I still think it's top of the heap as far as strips go). And Windsor McKay and Little Nemo get an honorable mention for artistry alone.

Peanuts, Krazy Kat, Doonesbury, C&H. It is really impossible and pointless to compare Peanuts and KK; they are doing totally different things.

I agree, but somehow "The Godfather" and "Singing in the Rain" always end up on the greatest movie ever lists, so it's the kind of wierdness we're just going to have to learn to live with.

were you never a child????

I'm not sure what there is to explain about C&H - some of the greatest humorous cartooning ever, lots of good gags, a distinct and intelligent sensibility, several great characters. What more do you want?

I think the single volume KK book is, if it's the one I think, about KK rather than being specifically a collection. I note there is a hardback collection of the Sundays from 1925-34 available, and that would be a pretty peerless volume.

calling it "dark" is fundamental point-missing.

yeah, everyone says peanuts is dark but i have yet to meet someone who actually finds it depressing!

i have a few pogo collections and they're certainly beautiful and funny but i sort of have to be in the right mood to enjoy them, otherwise i'll get a little annoyed at how the stories never go anywhere. i like the quasi-political satires best.

I like McDonnell's retro-styled art in Mutts a lot, and his gags are pretty good for the most part, but he doesn't really seem inspired or imaginatively gifted, which is all the diff. He does have real craft and a love for the medium, though, which puts him ahead of most everyone else, but there's definitely something missing that I can't really call him a great.

It's over 10 years gone, but Sam Hurt's Eyebeam could've been a contender. It was too weird to make it, though, and he started up a spinoff strip that was more or less a copy of Calvin and Hobbes ("Peaches, Queen of the Universe") I think it was cancelled after less than a year.

*raises hand* I would never call it one of the greats and it's pretty much in an endless rut now, but it captured the dynamics of home life with more than one kid (as opposed to Calvin, him being an only child) way the hell better than most. (You look at strips like Hi and Lois and wonder what alien planet they come from.) Also, Jason is essentially me at 10 years old.

I've never quite understood this. The art is genuinely *simple*, I agree, but I don't equate being simple with being awful.

This, how you say, 'opinion,' tell me of it.

The opposite example of this is someone like Joe Martin (Cats With Hands/Fred n Ethel/and his crowning achievement, Mr. Boffo.) His gags are pretty good and if they have a fault it's that they're really repetitive but he makes them work because his drawings are intrinsically funny. He's certainly no master draftsman in the Chris Ware/Frank King/Windsor McCay mode, but there's personality and information in his drawing that augments and in a lot of cases, just plain makes the humor.

austin no i wasn't meaning anything by it, i didn't see you'd mentioned feiffer! (i only skim-read the thread i'm ashamed to say)

in fact i actually tried to post that one you just posted but the site google sent me too didn't seem to have it --- so i went with the nixon as second-best

http://www.lambiek.net/artists/f/feiffer.htm

great site

Just went to this weird hippy book store filled with all these overstock type deals on Carmine btw Bedford and whatever, near 6th ave where Rockit Scientist and Sonic Groove used to be, and they had MANY copies of the beautiful old Krazy Kat book discussed above, the one that's as much about the strip as it is a collection of dailies and sundays. It's only NINE dollars, and makes a great introduction. They also have many copies of a Krazy Kat postcard book for 3 bucks a pop. I bought a collection of Terry Southern writings and a copy of Jules Fieffer's the Comic Book Heroes for 3 dollars each, and they had many more copies of the Fieffer. They had some comic collections of his as well. Highly recommended.

or buy it for 13 bucks...it's really a much nicer book then these prices would suggest.

http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/kmyers/web_graphics/farside%20snake%20damn.jpg

does anyone remember a 60's or 70's peanuts storyline, where linus's mom would pack him a peanut butter doughnut for lunch everyday? i remember he and charlie brown sitting on the recess yard bench, talking about it for a few strips in this paperback i used to have. every attempt ive made to google this has failed, and it's left me wondering whether i imagined/dreamed the strip in the first place.

Anybody else read Nemo magazine from Fantagraphics in the Eighties? God, I love the classic strips. Last few major purchases have all been strip oriented.

All time, Krazy Kat is definitely my favorite. Other top-5 picks would be Little Nemo, Wash Tubbs & Captain Easy, Doonesbury & Peanuts.

i've got an old issue of nemo somewhere with some pre-popeye thimble theatre strips, featuring castor oyl (olive's brother) as a newspaper editor hiring a series of increasingly annoying cartoonists. one of the funniest things ever.

*: gahan wilson was an exception, actually! he had a funny comment about schulz's kids being closer to "some kind of medieval religious pageant" than actual childhood.

I still don't think panels are the same as strips. This isn't through loving Larson or Giles less than many of my favourite strip artists, I just believe they are a different form.

There needs to be a full book of the Tiger Tea episode of Krazy Kat, which as I recall lasted a couple years. "Tunda in a teapots." Also, early Gasoline Alley sunday strips. The few that are in the Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics are incredible(as Chris Ware points out in his intro to the dailies collection).

Another weird Peanuts bit - Snoopy speaking at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm and getting caught in an anti-Vietnam riot.

There sort of was...when Raw magazine was a small book for 3 volumes, volume 2, number 3 contained the complete run, which lasted 8 weeks. In typical Bob Calahan style, the strip was re-arranged from a series of 4 panel dailies into a series of 6 panel comic book pages. I understand that was done for convenience and haven't read it in long enough time to see if that matters, I say "typical" because Calahan is infamous for mucking with collections, I have both the New Comics Anthology from ages ago and the more recent Smithsonian collection. I remember when the former came out there was a huge controversy in the pages of the Comics Journal about bad reproductions, and questionable selections. Off the top of my head, one of those books has a pretty obvious example of shoddy re-packaging, taking a classic Gary Panter Jimbo center spread and having that pagination fucked so the first half of the spread is on the right side of a page and the second half is on the back of the same page!

according to the patrick mcdonnell bio of herriman, the full tiger tea saga went on for almost two years. you can read big chunks of it at www.krazy.com! there were quite a few other long stories, too. to be honest i like most of the krazy dailies i've seen almost as much as the sundays, and i really hope they get a full reprinting someday. they may not be as spectacular to look at but i love the way the characters interact on a day-to-day basis; everyone goes on about how it's just the brick scenario over and over but herriman really branched out a lot more than ppl give him credit for. i'd also like to see some of his non-krazy work reprinted - "the family upstairs" especially.

lucy was sort of the strip's de facto feminist - i ran across this strip the other day:

lucy: what would you say if i said i could prove to you that all of beethoven's music was written by his mother?
schroeder: that's the dumbest thing i've ever heard!
[pause]
lucy: you hate women, don't you?

I fucking hate Peanuts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/arts/design/14pean.html

Turns out Schulz was even more of a meticulous pro than you might have thought.

anybody else gonna rep for Funky Winkerbean?

hell no that shit sucks

man that pogo book got caught up in the wash, didn't it?
Currently reading Little Orphan Annie; it's fun but hella repetitive. Eighteen pages of angst, one and a half pages of apocalyptic climax, four panels of deus ex machina resolution, wash, rinse, repeat.

also, my new vote may be for terry and the pirates.

on amazon the Pogo book is supposed to come out in November or something but I got no idea if it's for real.

From the little I read I seem to remember that Little Orphan Annie treated its villains pretty brutally - maybe not as bloody as Dick Tracy but the good guys seemed overly celebratory of the deaths of their adversaries.

i need to read more terry and the pirates - the raven sherman story is so heartbreaking.

oh yeah re: huzzah, stomp his face in on Orphan Annie. Warbucks consistently beats people into little pieces; shades of Fletcher Hanks.

Lately I've been enjoying the Drawn and Quarterly reprints of Tove Jansson's Moomin strip. Great art, hilariously whimsical plots.

Although Schulz greatly admired Beethoven, his favorite composer was actually Brahms. He simply found that the name Beethoven — the way it sounded and the way it looked on the page — was funnier, the exhibition notes remark.

So true, Brahms humor always falls flat.

If Sparky had killed himself after his affair ended (or if his wife had shot him, or if a stray piece of Apollo 12 debris had crashed into his studio), this wouldn't even be a serious question.

So no Pogo reprint this year, due to crappy condition of the old Sunday strips.

A couple months ago I checked out one of the recent Terry and the Pirates reprints - great stuff. I love the way that the Dragon Lady becomes a semi-good guy while remaining entirely true to her character (i.e. she's perfectly willing to get the heroes killed to suit her own devices, but she's important enough to the war effort that the heroes can't do anything about it).

I have the full Terry reprint project, it's a joy.

I wish I could find old Gil Thorp collections. I bet those are a blast to read.

Discovered that this existed, and bought it, today.

http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID41617/images/TigerTea_Cover.jpg

want

Best current strip is Cul de Sac, btw.

otm!

It has Calvin & Hobbes levels of brilliance, imo. Happy to see I'm not the only one who knows about it!

last time i mentioned it on ILX, that doof shakey mo said the dude cldn't draw so i kind of gave up repping for it after that

He probably was just mad because nobody famous died that day.

http://imgsrv.gocomics.com/dim/?fh=945176559126de68e0096518b74125ac

his blog is really gd, too:

richardspooralmanac.blogspot.com/

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Non Sequitur - when Wiley is on, he's totally on fire, but then there are these long periods where he seems to get involved in some story arc that's not as interesting to me (as well as somewhat confusing). This could possibly be remedied by looking through everything in one go instead of pulling things together serially as I have time, but as it stands I never know whether I'm going to love it or end up curling my eyebrows up and going "huh!"

last time i mentioned it on ILX, that doof shakey mo said the dude cldn't draw so i kind of gave up repping for it after that

still think this, sorry. that's just some really sloppy cartooning imho, totally grace-less

that Tiger Tea book is really sloppy and incomplete FYI - a bunch of strips aren't included bcz they just didn't bother finding copies (some are left out on purpose too)

I think cul de sac is one of the top two or three strips right now but I don't read the comic page much, except when I'm visiting my grandparents.

I have a big Krazy Kat anthology type book (the cover is black and orange I think). That strip isn't very funny but it's good in some other ways like ingenuity... I'm not really a fan

I read 4 really old Donesbury books and it was interesting seeing how that strip started. I never read the strip much when it was in the newspaper but now that I'm older and I started from the beginning, I can see how people got into the many different personalities in that strip. And ofcourse it was ahead of it's time in op-ed portrayal of politics

(Please excuse the typos - sometimes I forget to edit when I'm posting with my BlackBerry)

Been looking for this one forever.

http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~eshannon/comicsCourse/summer08ComicsReadings/gasoline%20alley2.jpg

was that not in D&Q vol 3 or 4?

it's in that huge expensive sunday book for sure

Does anyone read the modern Gasoline Alley? It's totally goofy.

there's a MODERN Gasoline Alley?! why?

xpost I just meant I could never find a copy online.

Yeah, they probably should have ended it before all the original characters would logically be dead.

There was a plot line a few years ago that was enjoyably loco – Slim was angry at these kids playing basketball near his house. iirc, a meteor landed in his yard around the same time, and he had some several-week plan to stop the basketball playing by destroying the court with a meteor. I don't remember it very well – I only saved the last strip to my computer:

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/1068/i070825gasall.gif

Slim was institutionalized!

I feel kind of shameful showing you that.

I had no idea Little Orphan Annie was still going until its ending was just announced.

haha awesome!
http://www.schulzmuseum.org/exhibits/permanent/Christo/christo.html

answer to thread question is Thimble Theatre for dailies, probably edged out by Acme Novelty Library if weeklies count

http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Fantagraphics-to-Publish-Crockett-Johnson-s-BARNABY.html&Itemid=113

Such good news! Not that I'm caught up with any of the other reprints, mind you, but this gives my about a year and a half to get my shit together.

yay! it's the thing me and j.d. wished for way back at the beginning of this thread. i've still never read the whole series, because the last reprint effort stalled out after 4 or 5 books, i hope this collects the whole thing.

Glad this was revived given the Krazy Kat content:

http://www.dustygroove.com/browse.php?kwfilter=george+herriman&x=0&y=0&incl_oos=1&incl_cs=1

wow those are good prices

VERY good prices. Already went ahead and ordered most of them.

Not an expert but <3 Doonesbury and Calvin and Hobbes. Like Far Side but it does seem a different beast. Totally hate Dilbert and actually don't get Peanuts.

I would think that Zippy the Pinhead belongs in this discussion. I haven't seen it in years, though.

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/3p6uthbmkusf2ja/MASTABA%20SNOOPY.html

You are an explorer...

...

It is horrid...

so a friend sez F'graphics is 'done' w/ Popeye? How long did Segar do it?

really enjoy Katzenjammer Kids

Segar died in 1938. So Thimble Theater was about 20 years, with Popeye appearing about 10 years in.

i'm hoping they'll go back and reprint at least some of the earlier stuff -- from what i've seen it was pretty good for at least a few years before popeye showed up.

xp Yeah, they only started collecting TT from Popeye's first appearance on. I do really wish they'd go back and collect the rest.

Yeah, I'd buy them.

Write-in vote here for Dick Tracy. Every volume I assume before reading is going to be my last, every volume pulls a superb story out of the bag, every new volume pre-ordered without thinking (saying it's going to be the last one).

I've enjoyed the Alex Raymond period of Rip Kirby a lot, but I'm not continuing into the Prentice years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS0vUbWdNxg

getting a little concerned that Pogo Vol 4 will never come out, every time I check the status the publication date is pushed back another 4 months.

every time fantagraphics starts some reprint project of a strip that went on for decades i always find myself wondering if it'll actually make it to the finish line. the "complete" dennis the menace reprints they were doing sputtered out after a few volumes. it felt strange to see the last peanuts book came out -- still remember the excitement when that series was first announced. makes me feel old.

I, sadly, did not have the money to keep up with their Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge reprints

they made it all the way to the end of Peanuts, didn't they?

yeah peanuts just got done... 26 volumes.

Their Nancy series also seems to have petered out after three volumes - two in 2012 and one in 2014.

Bloom County's first several years were good, but not great (Breathed's a mediocre artist, and the whole shtick was very Doonesbury-derived).

BC's cast were and are far more memorable than any of Doonesbury's pile of white yuppies

Sad grimace at the respect accorded Scott Adams, back when we were young

hey Pogo vol 4 is finally out, the publishing delay was apparently due to the death of Carolyn Kelly.