Panel Discussion - The ILX Comic Strip Poll Results

21 ballots received and dozens and dozens of strips nominated. ahma start with the single votes and try to post about four a day. We should be done by 2015.
quoted text, unless noted otherwise, is from wikipedia.

A Lesson Is Learned but the Damage is Irreversible by Dale and David – 1 vote
On The Web

A Lesson Is Learned but the Damage Is Irreversible is a web comic drawn by David Hellman and written by Dale Beran. Ted Rall describes the comic as "exploring the limits of pessimism and fatal consequence in a universe that would be difficult to imagine on the printed page." The comic was officially "on hiatus” from September 2006 to December 10, 2012, with the comic "I Name Thee Annihilator" marking the end of the hiatus. Dale and David are the primary characters, although they do not appear in every episode, and there is a small cast of real-life supporting characters, including school friend/mad scientist Paul, Dale's sister Sally, and David's mother, Debby Hellman (who dated the Devil in one strip).

A Softer World by Joey Corneau and Emily Horne – 1 vote
On The Web

A Softer World is a thrice weekly web comic by Canadians Joey Comeau and Emily Horne. It first came online on 7 February 2003. Early comics had been published, intermittently, in zine form. With the launch of the website, the comic has gained wider recognition, most notably when Warren Ellis linked to the comic on his blog, and then began to feature it as a "Favored Puny Human". The comic won the first Web Cartoonists' Choice Award for photographic web comic in 2007. It often appears in The Guardian and was profiled in the September 2007 issue of the Australian Rolling Stone. With occasional exceptions of a few double-length strips, each comic is three panels long. The three panels are made up of photographic art, either a series of three photographs, or one photograph that is spread over multiple frames, or repeated with different crops and zooms. The photographs are taken by Horne, then sent to Comeau for text.

Are you just making it up or did Mordy finally had over the ballots?

thank you for lifting this burden from my shoulders, forks. ur my hero :)

hand over! i would've been happy to have someone take over at any point! i appreciate the help from forks and love all of u ilxors etc etc <3

mordy handed over the ballots; i collated over the past few hours, got them in order and did the first batch.

Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson – 1 vote
On The Web

Arlo and Janis is a comic strip written and drawn by Jimmy Johnson. It is a leisurely paced domestic situation comedy. It was first published in newspapers on July 29, 1985. The focus of the strip is tightly on its two title characters, a middle-aged, middle-class baby boomer couple with an easygoing approach to life. Arlo and Janis strips are most often daily gags based on recurring themes, with only rarely any advancement of continuity. Readers may see themselves in Johnson's observations, and have written to his blog jokingly accusing Johnson of looking in their windows.

... did I vote in this?

I think I did.

i think you both did. it was months ago.

Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman – 1 vote
On The Web

In 2009, Weissman began a web comic called Barack Hussein Obama featuring the president, his cabinet and family. All the characters have the same names and faces but live in an alternate dimension, living their lives and US government roles in different ways. Fantagraphics published the strips as a graphic novel in September 2012 and the strip continues on the website What Things Do.

so arlo and janis is basically a comic about a married couple fucking?

there's also walks and naps.

i have a hard time with the stylization of the faces in arlo and janis.

Bluey and Curley by Alex Gurney – 1 vote

Bluey and Curley is an Australian newspaper comic strip written by the Australian artist, caricaturist, and cartoonist Alex Gurney. The first strip Bluey and Curley strip appeared soon after the start of World War II. It featured two Australian soldiers, Bluey (who had served in the First AIF), and Curley, a new recruit. By the end of the war, they had served in every Australian campaign — in North Africa, in the Middle East, in New Guinea, in Northern Australia, and in the Pacific Islands — and, once the war was over, they even went to London and took part in the 1946 Victory Parade.

Bristow by Frank Dickens – 1 vote
On The Web

Bristow was a comic strip character whose everyday office life was recorded in over 10,000 "Bristow" strips created and drawn by Frank Dickens. According to Guinness World Records "Bristow" was the "longest running daily cartoon strip by a single author" since its first publication in the Aberdeen Press & Journal in September 1961. The cartoons follow the daily life of a buying clerk who works in the monolithic Chester-Perry building. He is a fantasist and has delusions of grandeur, wishing he were a brain surgeon and a writer. His epic tome Living Death in the Buying Department has yet to find a publisher, but he is not discouraged. He lives in a small bedsit in East Winchley and commutes to work by train, invariably arriving late. Bristow is surrounded by co-workers, Fudge (his overbearing manager), Jones, Hewitt, Dimkins, hapless typist Miss Sunman, master chef Gordon Blue, the Postboy and the ever-gossiping Mrs. Purdy the Tealady. Bristow has a crush on routine visitor Miss Pretty of "Kleenaphone". Another regular visitor is the pigeon who sits on a window ledge. During the winter, the bird travels to a warmer climate where she visits Bristow's counterpart, a black man in a white suit. Bristow invariably holidays at a beach resort known as Funboys Sur La Plage. Frank Dickens is often credited for "inventing" a cartoon device whereby he wrote the words of the action next to the character, such as "flinch flinch", as he was unable to draw expressions well enough to fit in the comic-strip boxes.

The Arlo and Janis vote was from me. Now that Richard Thompson's too debilitated to draw, it's my favorite daily. The fact that Arlo is the biggest horndog in newspaper comics, and has been for I guess a couple of decades now, is part of its appeal for me. But the strip also has loads of pathos, with Arlo's unfulfilled dreams of ditching the cube-farm rat race and living an idyllic life on a sailboat or a farm, both of which their son Gene has achieved. (Though Gene has his doubts that it's much of an achievement.) And Ludwig is a great cartoon cat.

A&J is the only one I recognize so far.

living an idyllic life on a sailboat or a farm, both of which their son Gene has achieved.

WHAT THE

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_14J2dEsfIG0/SntKq_5VxeI/AAAAAAAABSU/EQODd5BbS4M/s1600-h/Arlo+and+Janis+8-6-09.gif

What happened to the little kid?!?!?!?!

I didn't start reading Arlo&Janis until I was in college. Neither of the two hometown papers ever carried it. And I haven't read a daily newspaper in years now.

It's not quite Gasoline Alley -- Gene grew up but A&J and the cat aren't aging noticeably.

Calculus Cat by Hunt Emerson – 1 vote
On The Web

Hunt Emerson (born 1952) is a cartoonist living and working in Birmingham, England. He was closely involved with the Birmingham Arts Lab of the mid-to-late 1970s, and with the British underground comics scene of the 1970s and 1980s. A trip to the U.S. put him in touch with Rip Off Press who published his Thunderdogs, comic book for the underground market; while Don and Maggie Thompson included him in their mini-comic series, for which he created Calculus Cat, and he later contributed to their Eclipse Monthly magazine. Emerson art also appeared in the U.S. underground Commies From Mars. Dogman, and Large Cow Comix (a five issue series with separate subtitles) were all Emerson work cover to cover, and highly sought-after by collectors now, but it was Knockabout, a British comic book-sized and later album-sized anthology that featured some of Emerson's best strips, including the characters Alan Rabbit, Calculus Cat, Max Zillion and Alto Ego, Pusspuss, Momo and Fuzi, Charlie Chirp, plus the bizarre one-shot tales "Cakes And Bricks" "The Dentist" and "Mouth City".

how the hell was Calculus Cat eligible and The Spirit not

Since it only got one vote where The Spirit would likely have got several more I'm okay with it.

...why is "it would have got votes" a reason to exclude it?

I have no idea what the deal is with the publication of Emerson's comic, so I don't know whether it should be allowed or not. The Spirit was argued and discussed on the nomination thread, and it was decided that it wasn't a strip.

Regardless, one vote for a possible offender doesn't bother me. Multiple votes for one would have, because it skews the results for the poll in general. These single vote outliers are just that.

It was a sometime full page, sometimes multi-page story that appeared in comics anthologies and magazines. Here's a Kickstarter for a collection from Knockabout.

I'm sure there will be a LOT more webcomics that don't fit outside any of the "not a newspaper strip" reasons for excluding newspaper strip The Spirit skewing the votes to come! (ie wtf at that first one itt)

I had no clue, so thanks for the info.

And I'll be sure to be pissy down the line. I'm saving up my outrage for later.

The Spirit was eligible and received multiple votes

It was? I thought we argued it out of contention. Damn, I don't remember anything about this at all.

Oh well.

Hey - I just found the email I sent - I even voted for it! Giant hypocrite here.

didn't realize this was going on. when did it start? did i nominate calculus cat? i have some vague memory of that, like ages ago. PS i love calculus cat.

maybe i just wanted to nominate calculus cat for something

It started 11 months ago. I sorta forgot about the whole thing, and obviously misremembered arguments and my own damn ballot. I'm losing it.

this poll is tearing us apart

I'll remain outraged just in case.

Even though I just checked and the vote for Calculus Cat was mine.

http://m4.i.pbase.com/o6/25/257025/1/83856724.PU8p1BfH.emotcolbert.gif

lol at all of this btw

best rollout ever.

Carol Day by David Wright – 1 vote
On The Web

David Wright was a British illustrator who drew a series of "lovelies" that epitomized female glamour during World War II. He also created the "Carol Day" cartoon strip for the Daily Mail in 1956, creating a soap opera style of comic strip that paralleled similar work in the USA.

Cheech Wizard by Vaughn Bode – 1 vote
On The Web

Cheech Wizard is a comic book character created by artist Vaughn Bodé and appearing in various works, including the National Lampoon, from 1967 until Bodé's death in 1975. A mysterious character of unknown origins, The Wizard is constantly in search of a good party, cold beer, and attractive women. The Cheech Wizard is often drawn in graffiti murals and street art and has been repeatedly referenced in pop music. Though the character was, according to Bodé, created in 1957, Cheech didn't see print until 1967, when he appeared in various publications being produced by the counterculture developing around the Syracuse University campus (where Bodé was attending school). Cheech Wizard stories ran in the "Funny Pages" of National Lampoon magazine in almost every issue from 1971 to 1975.

Never come across Carol Day before, but I really like the look of it. A real Heart of Juliet Jones/Mary Perkins On Stage feel to it.

Conchy by James Childress – 1 vote
On The Web
Childress Interview from 1975

Conchy was a critically acclaimed but only modestly successful American comic strip that ran from 1970 to 1977. Set on a desert island with a group of beachcombers as the main characters, the strip addressed serious issues of its time. James Childress (who committed suicide in 1977, effectively ending the strip) created Conchy in the early 1960s as homage to his love of beachcombing. By 1974, Conchy was appearing in 26 papers, finally attracting a syndicate's interest, from Field Enterprises, who signed Childress up that year. His client list increased to over 150 papers.

Death to the Extremist by Michael Zole – 1 vote

Death to the Extremist is a minimalist webcomic series created by Michael Zole. Initially published in Hampshire College's magazine The Omen, it has been published regularly online since 2001. The final episode appeared on January 1, 2007. The strip follows the strange, often music-oriented adventures of two amorphous entities, named One and Two, each of whom is represented only by quarter circles. The comic is ultra-minimalist and features no artwork, only dialogue and graphics. Each comic consists of nine cells, often with one or more blank cells in which neither of the characters say anything. Each comic has its own background, and starting with season 4 there is an extra short sentence hidden in light text at the bottom of each image and in the RSS feed.

this is the thread that we deserve

eh, one vote

Thanks for doing this, Forks - that last Carol Day (one of my votes) is especially gorgeous.

The Bristow examples are maybe not so fine.

i'm unfamiliar with Bristow; don't think it has any american penetration for obvious reasons
i would welcome some better strip examples there? And in general for all these strips if anyone has a favorite or three they'd like to post.

Honestly, Bristow looks pretty dire to me... some kind of walter mitty meets dilbert mashup. i'd love to see something to disabuse me of that notion.

Well it is a very English kind of whimsy that may well not travel well, and a lot of its 'charm' or humour depends on spinning out endless variations on a relatively small number of themes and situations, so in some ways it is closest to a British sitcoms rather than other comic strips. Ronnie Barker would've made the perfect Bristow.

see i have no idea who that is!

Yeah, I'd say Bristow is very, very British with no real American analogue.

Which reminds me that I think I said I would do a UK IPC/DC Thompson poll in the other thread so maybe I should.

James Childress (who committed suicide in 1977, effectively ending the strip)

among other things

very effectively

not to snark, but why unweight the ballots?

No real way to that I saw. Half the ballots weren't ordered that way or were piecemeal or short lists.
This is nobody's definitive list; as with coint and plick I would rather have it as a reference source and for browsing

uh so even if we did weight our ballots they're not being counted like that?

Going based on number of votes only, with a few strips combined

Can't you weight the weighted ballots and make all the others one vote only?

Or maybe count all the unweighted ones as 10 pts each or something? Just trying to help; I'd like my weighted ballot to count as I intended, but I'm okay if it doesn't.

Carol Day looks goooorgeous, that justifies some of these horrible one-votees

Bristow ran in Australia too, as a kid I found it painful and tedious and a horrifying vision of daily life and read it every day

i'm afraid this is gonna have to run unweighted; I ran into the burning building once to get this thing going but I ain't up for twice.
if it's any consolation (to paraphrase lincoln), the world will little note nor long remember how we poll here.

Diesel Sweeties by Richard Stevens – 1 vote
On The Web

Diesel Sweeties is a webcomic and former newspaper comic strip that began in 2000, originally hosted at robotstories.com. From January 2007 until August 2008 it was syndicated to over 20 United States newspapers, including major daily newspapers like The Detroit News and Houston Chronicle. Stevens is a co-founder of the Dumbrella alliance of webcomic artists. Since 2002, Stevens has supported himself through online sales of merchandise related to his comics.

I didn't vote, but these excerpts of obscure comics are really fascinating

but not that one

Donald Duck by Al Talliaferro and Bob Karp – 1 vote
On The Web

Charles Alfred Taliaferro, known simply as Al Taliaferro, was a Disney comics artist who used to produce Disney comic strips for King Features Syndicate. Many of his strips were written by Bob Karp.
He is best known for his work on the Donald Duck comic strip, but he started his career lettering the Mickey Mouse strips (March 1931 – July 1932), and drew the Bucky Bug comics in 1932 as well as Silly Symphonies pages from 1932 to 1939. Taliaferro co-created a number of characters, including Huey, Dewey and Louie, Bolivar, Grandma Duck, and arguably Daisy Duck. He drew Donald Duck comic strips from 1938 until his death in 1969 in Glendale, California.

Dry Bones by Yaakov Kirschen – 1 vote
On The Web

Dry Bones is an Israeli political cartoon strip published in the English-language newspaper The Jerusalem Post since 1973. The name of the comic strip refers to the vision of the "Valley of Bones" in the Book of Ezekiel (37:1-14). Dry Bones has been reprinted and quoted by the New York Times, Time Magazine, LA Times, CBS, AP and Forbes. It offers a pictorial commentary on current events in Israel and the Jewish world. Kirschen says his cartoons are designed to make people laugh, which makes them drop their guard and see things the way he does. In an interview, he defined his objective as a cartoonist as an attempt to "seduce rather than to offend.”

Carol Day looks goooorgeous, that justifies some of these horrible one-votees

god yes. had never heard of carol day or david wright, but that's an incredible strip. nice archive of original art and sketches at the carol-day.com site linked above.

Edge City by Terry and Patty LaBan – 1 vote
On The Web

Meet the Ardins! They’re the stars of Edge City, a groundbreaking comic strip that follows a hip Jewish-American family juggling relationships, careers and tradition at the fast pace of modern life. Len owns a delivery service, and Abby is a psychologist. Fueled by caffeine and gasoline, they and their kids, Colin and Carly, power their way through self-employment, after-school activities, pursuing their dreams and lining up for carpool. Len and Abby take stress for granted—but not each other. Modern marriage isn’t easy, but the Ardins make it work, facing what life throws at them with intelligence, humor and an occasional hissy fit. It also helps to have friends and family, the latest self-help book, weekend rock-and-roll sessions and decent carryout. So, pack the kids off to school, grab a latte and try to beat rush hour on I-25—it’s life on the edge every day in Edge City!
(via comics kingdom, one of the syndicates of the strip on the web)

kudos to these troll ballots

definitely a lot of interesting variety here -- lots of these i've never heard of. i've read lots of the taliaferro donald duck strips, gladstone used to run them as filler in between barks and rosa stories. they're inoffensive and well drawn but i'd be interested to hear why someone thought they deserved to be ranked among the all-time best comic strips.

TBF the taliaferro strips are somewhat better than say, diesel sweeties by a factor of roughly infinity

Dude drew 31 years of duck strips!

why does everyone always have to hate on diesel sweeties

because it is terrible. between that & death to the extremist, someone's got some splaining to do.

i'm afraid this is gonna have to run unweighted; I ran into the burning building once to get this thing going but I ain't up for twice.

send me the ballots, I'll re-run the numbers

tell you what sic, let me get all the nominees up and then I'll mail you all the ballots and you can collate and post a final definitive tally in any fashion that works for you. Fair enough?

ilxmail me your email again plz?

This keeps getting better.

Does this mean we get to hear about the Conchy guy killing himself again? Because he's starting to get my sympathy.

this is definitely the funniest thing about this thread so far

POW! ZAP! BANG! Comics: they're not just for laffs anymore

this next one is specially for you whiney

Ettamogah Pub by Ken Maynard – 1 vote
On The Web

The Ettamogah Pub is a cartoon pub that was featured in the now defunct Australasian Post magazine. The cartoonist Ken Maynard, loving empty spaces and having nothing around him, enjoyed an area just outside of Albury at Table Top, named Ettamogah, thus christening the name of his now famous pub the "Ettamogah Pub".

Ooh, when's Snake Tales going to show up?

prob my favorite wikipedia description yet coming up here

Frank and Ernest by Bob Thaves – 1 vote
On The Web

In a non-sequential story, the main characters are seen not just as humans but as animals, vegetables, minerals and more. A constant element has been word play, including the characters' names. Frank is both a name and a synonym for honest. The name Ernest is a homophone of the word earnest, which is a synonym for serious.
Weekday strips are laid out in one long panel with one joke or pun; the Sunday strip is similarly in one large block, with a series of rapid-fire puns pertaining to the characters (usually in character as various characters including, but not limited to, the planets, "Robotics Department," or "Malaprop Man"). Example: U.S. Postal Dept. Stamp Design Office: "The department decided to have a religious message on our next stamp. How about: 'Lord, deliver us'?"
Unlike most syndicated comic strip cartoonists, Bob Thaves did not write all of the gags for the strip (nor maintain a pretense that he did) and openly solicited for gags in publications such as Writer's Market. Thaves won the National Cartoonists Society's Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for 1983, 1984, and 1986, as well as The Mencken Award for Free Speech and designation as a Champion of Creativity by the American Creativity Association in 2006.

here have another:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_W4NUG6cq1vM/TRATYR_0AUI/AAAAAAAACdA/Pyu0dsEy1AE/s1600/347522_full.gif

if you can't laugh at "Wiki Leeks" what can you laugh at

Funky Winkerbean by Tom Batiuk – 1 vote
On The Web

Distributed by North America Syndicate, a division of King Features Syndicate, Funky Winkerbean appears in more than 400 newspapers worldwide. Since its inception on March 27, 1972, the strip has gone through several format changes. For the first 20 years of its run, the characters did not age, and the strip was nominally episodic as opposed to a serial, with humor derived from visual gags and the eccentricity of the characters. In 1992, Batiuk rebooted the strip, establishing that the characters had graduated from high-school in 1988, and the series began progressing in real time. In 2007, a second "time warp" occurred, this time taking the strip ten years into the future, ostensibly to 2017, although the events of the strip still reflect a contemporary setting. Since the 1992 reboot and especially since the 2007 time jump, the strip has been recast as a drama, featuring story arcs revolving around such topics as terminal cancer, adoption, prisoners of war, drug abuse, post traumatic stress, same sex couples attending the senior prom, and interracial marriage.

FUCK WEIGHTED RESULTS. JUST ROLL THIS SHIT OUT.

um, perhaps you've noticed that's what's happening? or did funky winkerbean break yr brain?

yeah no i no. it is just an opiniom.

plus lol @ "suit yourself, creepy."

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/828/funkywinkerbean1mw5.gif

This could be the ilx thread of 2014. I can't wait for xkcd to place.

(The two Aussie entries that have been listed so far were me btw.)

I had no idea under this very morning that the Funky Winkerbean strip had gone that insane. Been reading it all morning.

the transformation of Funky Winkerbean is one of the most amazing things

also that second Death to the Extremist strip cracked me the fuck up, I may need help

Ginger Meggs / Us Fellers by Jimmy Bancks – 1 vote
On The Web

James Charles Bancks was born in Enmore, New South Wales, Australia on 10 May 1889, the son of an Irish railway worker, John Spencer Bancks. Bancks left school at the age of 14 and found employment with a finance company. His first illustrations were accepted and published by The Comic Australian in 1913, followed by The Arrow in 1914. This encouraged Bancks to submit work to The Bulletin, where he was offered a permanent position, which he accepted and remained until 1922. Ginger Meggs follows the escapades of a red-haired prepubescent mischief-maker who lives in an inner suburban working-class household. Ginger first appeared in Us Fellers on 13 November 1921, drawn by Bancks. When Bancks died on 1 July 1952 from a heart attack, Ron Vivian took over the strip (1953-1973), followed by Lloyd Piper (1973-1982), James Kemsley (1983-2007) and since 2007, Jason Chatfield.

LOL at the Winkerbean vote.

Girl Mountain by Simon Hanselmann – 1 vote
On The Web

Hanselmann’s Tumblr, Girl Mountain, is a textbook example of that platform’s reach, provided you’ve got something other people want to look at. Turns out tons of people in the alternative-comics world worldwide want to look at a strange stoner dramedy drawn by a Ben Jones-influenced Australian. Hanselmann’s comics-as-criticism series Truth Zone, which appears on Frank Santoro’s Comics Workbook Tumblr, stars Megg, Mogg, Owl, and Werewolf Jones as well, and positions them (and by extension Hanselmann) as the no-bullshit friends with the same interests in obscure alt/art/ underground comics as you – quite a feat, given his location a world away from most of the figures covered in the comics. But it’s the range of these characters’ emotional register, and the beauty of Hanselmann’s renderings of same, that make his work sting and stick. These characters struggle, and fail, to come to grips with their depression, drug use, sexuality, poverty, lack of work, lack of ambition, and their complex and often negative feelings about each other. Watching these themes emerge from a funny-animal gag strip with weed jokes is a bit like seeing the Locas saga spring forth from the brow of Jaime Hernandez’s old sci-fi stuff.
(via Comics Journal interview)

Gunshow by KC Green – 1 vote
On The Web

Gunshow and its predecessor, Horribleville aren’t for everyone. They’re vulgar and crass; the fart jokes of webcomics. Still, anyone can make a poop joke. What make’s KC Green’s webcomics so special is his unique brand of rubbery and hyperkinetic artwork. KC’s drawings — in some ways reminiscent of Looney Tunes and Spumco — is goddamned hilarious. It’s great to know that in a webcomic world where everything seems to rely on sterile Flash drawings, there’s someone out there who can make you laugh the old-fashioned way: by drawing someone with a smile that’s goofy as hell.
(Via “Webcomic Overlook”)

http://i47.tinypic.com/fu6j3d.gif

Feel like we could also be adding some of these to What's the worst online comic strip? .

omg @ Gunshow

I love a lot of the Gunshow one-off strips, but I swear, every time the dude tries to do a longer story the results are just unbearable.

Hi and Lois by Mort Walker and Dik Browne – 1 vote
On The Web

Hi and Lois is a comic strip about a suburban family. Created by Mort Walker and illustrated by Dik Browne, it debuted on October 18, 1954, distributed by King Features Syndicate. The Flagstons first appeared in Walker's Beetle Bailey. They spun off into their own strip, written by Walker and drawn by Browne. Lois Flagston (née Bailey) is Beetle Bailey's sister, and the two strips make occasional crossovers. One of these occurred on the strip's 40th anniversary in 1994, when Beetle visited his sister Lois and her family. Chip resembles his Uncle Beetle in attitude and appearance, especially the eyes. The strip made efforts to keep up with the times, such as housewife Lois Flagston taking a career in real estate in 1980. In previous decades the strip was acclaimed; in 1962 it earned Browne a Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society. The strip faced some controversy given the changes in content restrictions since its debut in the 1950s. Once, editors insisted that belly buttons could not appear; in protest, Browne included a box of dimpled navel oranges. Now produced by the sons of the original creative team, the strip is written by Brian and Greg Walker and drawn by Robert "Chance" Brown

Hi and Lois had some great years!

Ha, I was the one that voted for Gunshow! Really guys? All the horrible shit that's shown up in this thread so far and that's the one that strikes you as especially bad?

my favorite hi and lois fact is that they're related to beetle bailey

I fucking loved those three Gunshow strips

I'm surprised to see Hi and Lois get only one vote.

Yeah, Hi & Lois is all right.

http://comicskingdom.com/system/characters/avatars/4469/website-Chip.jpg?1307485653

Guess we know from where Chip gets it.

All the horrible shit that's shown up in this thread so far and that's the one that strikes you as especially bad?

I'll be honest, I wrote my post after the Girl Mountain post, but it took awhile to find just. the. right. gif.

Hi and Lois shaming Alannis Morrissette years in advance.

Hogan’s Alley by Richard F Outcault – 1 vote
On The Web

The Yellow Kid was the name of a lead comic strip character that ran from 1895 to 1898 in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, and later William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. Created and drawn by Richard F. Outcault in the comic strip Hogan's Alley (and later under other names as well), it was one of the first Sunday supplement comic strips in an American newspaper, although its graphical layout had already been thoroughly established in political and other, purely-for-entertainment cartoons. The Yellow Kid is also famous for its connection to the coining of the term Yellow Journalism. Mickey Dugan, better known as The Yellow Kid, was a bald, snaggle-toothed boy who wore an oversized yellow nightshirt and hung around in a slum alley typical of certain areas of squalor that existed in late 19th-century New York City. Hogan's Alley was filled with equally odd characters, mostly other children. With a goofy grin, the Kid habitually spoke in a ragged, peculiar slang, which was printed on his shirt, a device meant to lampoon advertising billboards.

for shame none of us voting buster brown. i shoulda.

wow, ginger & meggs is great, another i'd never heard of. and i love girl mountain, but can see as how it might (would, should) annoy.

Howard the Duck by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan – 1 vote
On The Web

Between June 1977 and October 1978, Howard the Duck appeared in a daily comic strip that comic strip historian Allan Holtz has described as having low distribution and that was eventually replaced by the Hulk strip. Among the handful of newspapers it appeared in were the Toronto Star and Spokane Daily Chronicle. A total of eleven story arcs, as well as a number of single-joke strips, constitute the 511 individual strips that were printed. The strip started with original stories written by Steve Gerber and illustrated by Gene Colan: "Pop Syke", "The Cult of the Entropy" and "The Self Made Man". The latter was started by Colan and completed by Val Mayerik, who stayed on to do two additional Gerber scripted stories: "The Sleigh Jacking" and "In Search of the Good Life". These were followed by an adaptation of the "Sleep of the Just" story from issue 4 of the Marvel comic, scripted by Gerber and illustrated by Alan Kupperberg. Gerber was replaced by Marv Wolfman as writer while Alan Kupperberg continued as artist. The remaining stories were: "Close Encounters of the Fowl Kind", "The Tuesday Ruby", "The Clone Ranger", "The Mystery of the Maltese Human" and "Howard Heads Home". As the series drew to an end, its already meager list of client papers shrank, making copies of these last post-Gerber stories particularly hard to find. In November 1978, the first of a projected eight-issue series reprinting the entire strip was published by John Zawadzki. Titled It's Adventure Time with Howard the Duck, only the initial issue was published.

If… by Steve Bell – 1 vote
On The Web

If... is a sharp and cynical satire of British politics and current affairs from a left-wing perspective. It's named after the famous Rudyard Kipling poem. Suiting both Bell's anarchic artistic style and the paper's political stance, it consists of a short (usually three-panel) daily episode in each Monday to Thursday edition of the paper, with subjects usually covered in these 4-day-long segments. If... occasionally utilizes wordplay and coarse humor; Bell is fond of using the pejorative British word "wanker" and its euphemistic variants, for example. With the Guardian's move to new presses, If... started to appear in full color in September 2005. Initially, the title was reflected in the concept, with each week presenting a separate stand-alone story such as 'If... Dinosaurs roamed Fleet Street,' or 'If the Bash Street Kids ran the country'. This shifted into a different approach during the 1982 Falklands/Mavinas war, when Bell started to concentrate on two central characters: Royal Navy officer Kipling and the Penguin he befriends.

Jeff Hawke by Sydney Jordan – 1 vote
On The Web

Jeff Hawke was a British science fiction comic strip created by Sydney Jordan. It was published in the Daily Express from 15 February 1955 to 18 April 1974, by which point Jordan had "written or co-written and drawn 6,474 episodes." Despite its obscurity in English-speaking countries, it is often regarded as one of the most important science fiction comics ever released, especially in Italy and Scandinavian countries. At first Jeff Hawke, presented as an ex-R.A.F. pilot (just like Jordan) was a rather ordinary, Flash Gordon-like heroic character. The plots were centered around ordinary adventure and science fiction themes common in pulp comics and fiction of the age, and at this stage the drawings were only of average quality. Nevertheless the strip was good enough to be published daily in the Daily Express.
In 1956 William Patterson joined his childhood friend Jordan, at first writing only the dialogue. Prior to this he did work on the Children's Encyclopedia for Amalgamated Press, also doing stories for Dan Dare and war comics. However after a few years he began to produce plot lines and stories as well. This led to a dramatic improvement in the quality of the comic. Patterson made Jeff Hawke the first science fiction comic strip for adults, not just children or adolescents. Jordan, now concentrating entirely on drawing, improved his style to a highly suggestive, realistic, contrasted black-and-white mark. The Patterson-Jordan period is considered the "true" Jeff Hawke by most.

JL8 by Yale Stewart – 1 vote
On The Web

JL8 puts the likes of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman up against birthday parties, an evil gym teacher from the planet Apokolips, and a playground full of bullies that look an awful lot like the Legion of Doom. Most of the strips are funny, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself getting choked up one every once in a while. They can be surprisingly touching.
(via “Geekosystem”. Also, no they can’t.)

this thread is great, thx so much for doing this forks. and i consider the presence of haters in this thread to be ideal. isn't hating comics a really important part of interacting w/ the medium? they're generally so bad!

Oh I'm a hater all right.

http://a3.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/79/cee5770e5312e472eab550d7f4051073/l.jpg

I think Jeff Hawke was me? If not then it must have just missed out.

Is that second Hi & Lois really Browne? Is it just the shitty recolouring that’s throwing me off?

I'll be honest, I wrote my post after the Girl Mountain post, but it took awhile to find just. the. right. gif.

FP’d you for this, Hanselmann is 19x the cartoonist most of these web cunts are

wow, ginger & meggs is great, another i'd never heard of.

Ginger Meggs, not &

If should have had B&W strips as the example, ideally from the Falklands-ish era

^^ not grumping at heroic poll-rescuer forks, just saying in case I can't find any to post later

nu-meggs always looks like he's taking a slash off-panel

post-Bancks doesn't count obv

http://adventuresincollecting.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/If-Miners-Strike.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_vhdNCCyJaj8/TM79ZaGDuYI/AAAAAAAACeQ/KAY-rLr6acA/s1600/if-peng.gif

http://belgranoinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/stevebell11.jpg

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzSteve-Bell-If-_2__-24_12_0-001_5223.JPG

http://www.lambiek.net/artists/image/b/bell_steve/bell_steve.gif

not great but

post-Bancks doesn't count obv

Johnny Hazard by Frank Robbins – 1 vote
On The Web

Johnny Hazard was an action-adventure comic strip published from 1944 until 1977 with separate storylines for the daily strip and the Sunday strip. After work in advertising, Robbins took over the daily strip Scorchy Smith from Noel Sickles in 1939 with a Sunday page added in 1940. King Features then asked Robbins to do Secret Agent X-9, but Robbins instead chose to devise an aviation comic for the syndicate, and Johnny Hazard was launched on Monday, June 5, 1944, one day before D-Day. While working on the strip during the 1940s, Robbins contributed illustrations to Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines. Robbins stopped drawing Johnny Hazard in 1977 and retired to Mexico in order to devote himself to painting full time.
The strip followed the globe-trotting adventures of aviator Johnny Hazard, initially as a member of the United States Army Air Corps in World War II, later as a Cold War secret agent. Comics historian Don Markstein described the transition: As the story opened, Johnny, like most American men of his generation, was fighting World War II. But his gig with the Army Air Corps didn't last long, as D-Day came when the strip was only a day old. But the only effect civilian life had on him was to enlarge the scope of his adventures—as a freelance pilot, Johnny ranged throughout the entire world. (An early focus, though, was China, putting him head-to-head with the rival Chicago Tribune Syndicate's Terry and the Pirates.) Johnny dealt with spies, beautiful women, smugglers, gorgeous dames, sci-fi style menaces, fabulous chicks and all the other kinds of folks a two-fisted adventurer of his caliber would be expected to deal with. As he did, unlike many fictional two-fisted adventurers, he matured—not as quickly as real people, but after a third of a century or so, he was quite gray at the temples. And a third of a century was as long as the strip ran. It was popular enough at first, and ran far longer than most post-war adventure strips, but the times were against it. Newspaper editors were more interested in daily gags than continuous stories, and Johnny Hazard succumbed to the trend in 1977.

Les Frustres by Claire Bretecher – 1 vote
On The Web

Claire Bretécher (born 1940) is a French cartoonist, known particularly for her portrayals of women and gender issues. Her creations include the Frustrés, and the unimpressed teenager Agrippine. Bretécher was born in Nantes and got her first break as an illustrator when she was asked to provide the artwork for Le Facteur Rhésus by René Goscinny for L'Os à Moelle in 1963. She went on to work for several popular magazines and in 1969 invented the character "Cellulite". In 1972 she joined Gotlib and Mandryka in founding the Franco-Belgian comics magazine L'Écho des savanes. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she published successful collections, such as The Destiny of Monique (1982). In 2001, Bretécher's series Agrippine was adapted into a 26-episode TV series by Canal+.

Lio by Mark Tatulli – 1 vote
On The Web

The strip focuses on the adventures of a creative little boy, Liō, who lives with his father (unnamed in the strip) and his pets. Liō's mother is deceased. It is currently unknown how she died. The setting of the story varies from Liō's house to his school and the general outside world. The time period appears to be contemporary, except for an episode set in the year 2101, when Liō is in his nineties but still very much capable of mischief. The story is told visually, with little or no dialogue. Gags frequently involve the supernatural, alien invasion or mass destruction of many sorts, creating a surreal, disturbing atmosphere. Some of the strip's recurring themes involve Liō getting even with grade-school bullies, helping animals (most of which are non-anthropomorphic but display obvious intelligence) defend themselves against humans or their predators, and performing mad scientist style experiments. He is often seen using robots that he constructs himself for causing mischief. Another recurring gag in the strip is parody of other famous comic strips, including Cathy, For Better or For Worse, Garfield, Zits, Calvin and Hobbes, Blondie, Peanuts, Pearls Before Swine, The Family Circus and Berkeley Breathed's strips.

The Magic Whistle by Sam Henderson – 1 vote
On The Web

Henderson has been self-publishing xeroxed minicomics since 1980. In the mid-to-late 1980s he drew and published a comic called Captain Spaz with his friend Bobby Weiss. The series ended in 1988 as he was busy in college. In college, he drew a series of minicomics featuring a character known as Monroe Simmons. In 1993 he began self-publishing his best-known title, The Magic Whistle, now published by Alternative Comics. Also in 1993 he began the wordless comic strip "Scene but Not Heard," starring a pink man and a red bear, in Nickelodeon Magazine. It was the magazine's longest-running comic strip. A collection is due out in 2010.

Malfalda by Quino – 1 vote
On The Web

Mafalda is a comic strip written and drawn by Argentine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known by his pen name Quino. The strip features a 6-year-old girl named Mafalda, who reflects the Argentinian middle class and progressive youth, which is concerned about humanity and world peace and rebels against the world bequeathed by their elders. The strip ran from 1964 to 1973 and was very popular in Latin America, Europe, Quebec, and in Asia, leading to two animated cartoon series and a book. The comic strip is composed of the main character Mafalda, her parents and a group of other children. However, the group was not created on purpose, but was instead a result of the development of the comic strip. The other children were created one at a time, and worked by countering specific aspects of Mafalda. The exception was Guille, Mafalda's brother, who was introduced during a period when the author did not have other ideas.

Marmaduke by Brad Anderson – 1 vote
On The Web

Marmaduke was created by Anderson, with help from Phil Leeming (1955–1962) and later Dorothy Leeming (1963–1969), and (since August 2, 2004) Paul Anderson. The strip revolves around the Winslow family and their Great Dane, Marmaduke. The strip on Sundays also has a side feature called "Dog Gone Funny", in which one or more panels are devoted to dog anecdotes submitted by the fans. Anderson, who says he draws on Laurel and Hardy routines for his ideas, received the National Cartoonists Society Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for the strip in 1978. Marmaduke continues to be widely syndicated, and is popular with readers: attempts to cancel Marmaduke have drawn protest, such as those by readers of The Toronto Star in 1999, of the Sarasota Herald Tribune in 2007, and of the Chicago Sun-Times in 1986. Despite this, its longevity and perceived monotony have been noted by satirical publications such as The Onion[8] and have made it the butt of jokes. It has become "a hot source of retro-ironic-subversive humor." For example, a blog called "Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke" deconstructs the strip to offer an alternative explanation for what's happening in the drawing. Another blog called "Marmaduke Can Vote" gives each panel a political slant, while "The Marmaduke Project" re-imagines Marmaduke in other forms. In his satirical analysis at The Comic Strip Doctor, David Malki of Wondermark ranked Marmaduke among "the worst newspaper comic strips" alongside Heathcliff, Family Circus and Dennis the Menace.

holy shit who voted for marmaduke?

in the uk we had fred bassett, an equally useless dog strip. here is a picture of charles schulz and bassett creator alex graham - they were both published in the Daily Mail :-(

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/74872412528255057/

aaargh i am so fucking useless at posting pictures

oh we had Fred Bassett, too

Marmaduke and Fred Bassett both way better than half the stuff appearing here so far

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/57/88/d5/5788d5267c32cd94870bc39dfee7483f.jpg

marmaduke is not better than a square of unprinted paper

xpost
didn't know that! marmaduke may even have appeared in a uk newspaper at some point or other.

thank you for yr assistance, f&wa. graham's cig holder is a treat

we have fred bassett in the US too. it's pretty worthless.

a friend of mine tried out for the job of ghosting fred bassett after graham died, but he didn't get the gig, which was prob bad for his bank balance but gd for his sanity.

i prefer the gambols

fyi... depending on yr browser, right click on an image to find its url. in firefox "copy image location" gets what you need to paste here.

in the 90s the Mail on Sunday used to do a whole pull-out cartoon section that printed both Fred Bassett and Marmaduke, as well as a load of other US syndicated strips!

thanks again, f&wa, i use firefox and will remember yr advice in future

soref, yes! that's where i've seen marmaduke. also Shoe by Jeff MacNelly, which was nicely drawn at least.

marmaduke is not better than a square of unprinted paper

― sci-fi looking, chubby-leafed, delicately bizarre (contenderizer), Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:38 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The thing that makes me hate Marmaduke above most other comics is the waste of space in the Sunday strip. Like, during the week, whatever, it's another shitty one panel strip, it sucks, it's never funny, but someone gave this asshole space for a full strip on Sunday when he's clearly only capable of doing one panel, so the majority of Marmaduke Sundays are OMG-MARMADUKE-BARKING-IN-HUGE-LETTERS-AND-RUNNING-AROUND and then the final panel with his owner saying "Whoa Marmaduke sure is running!" or whatever the horrible punchline is.

Some Old Man Still Churning Out Marmaduke

the moment when we get to a comic strip voted on by more than one ilxor will be like the moment in a long duration drone piece when the pitch suddenly shifts a tiny notch

celebrated uk comedy wasteman charlie brooker wrote a sketch in the early 00s about a bunch of people on a desert island forced to read nothing but the daily mail, it was fucking dire as you'd expect but one part did make me lol quite a bit - this guy who starts believing he's fred basset

mostly cause of how the actor plays it

Fred Basset is at least a cute character design. Marmaduke is an all around monster.

My uncle breeds Great Danes so I am irrationally fond of Marmaduke

they should get that guy to do the voice and motion capture stuff if they ever make a CGI Fred Basset movie

Maxwell the Magic Cat by Alan Moore and Steve Moore – 1 vote
On The Web

Maxwell the Magic Cat was a comic strip written and drawn by Alan Moore under the pseudonym Curt Vile (a pun on the name of composer Kurt Weill), with a friend Steve Moore under the pseudonym 'Jill de Ray' (in parody of Gilles de Rais, a French murderer).

Medium Large by Francesco Marciuliano – 1 vote
On The Web

Francesco Marciuliano is the writer of Sally Forth, a popular comic strip syndicated by King Features and currently illustrated by Jim Keefe. Marciuliano also wrote The New York Times bestselling book I Could Pee on This and Other Poems by Cats, the national bestseller I Could Chew on This and Other Poems by Dogs, and the upcoming I Knead My Mommy and Other Poems by Kittens. He also writes and draws the satiric webcomic Medium Large.

Mutts by Patrick McDonald – 1 vote
On The Web

Peanuts creator Charles Schulz praised Mutts, calling it "one of the best comic strips of all time." The friendship of Mooch and his neighbor Earl focuses on the differences between cats and dogs as pets and friends: Earl is friendly, loves the company of his human companion and likes to play outside; Mooch is often indifferent to his human companions, except for being fed, and prefers to stay inside or is often seen with Earl, his best friend.. Both animals frequently express themselves through thought balloons when their owners are present. On occasion, McDonnell devotes the strip for a week or so to animal welfare issues, especially the adoption of pets from animal shelters. Themes include Farm Animal Awareness Week and Shelter Stories, where pet adoption as well as pet shelter life is focused on. McDonnell also created artwork for the second generation New Jersey Animal Friendly specialty license plate first issued in 2001. A portion of the revenue from the plates goes to the New Jersey State Department of Health's Animal Population Control Program.

WAY too low imo

Nedroid by Anthony Clark – 1 vote
On The Web

Nedroid is the pen name of online artist Anthony Clark who draws silly pictures and comics "when there's nothing good on TV." You may recognize his work doing the colors for a little-known comic called The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. On his own site, Nedroid draws all kinds of interesting stuff - he has a special fondness for dinosaurs, ladies, and lovingly rendered landscapes following his self-image character, the Eternal Homeless Robot. But the most popular and recurring subject, and likely the reason you're here, is comics based around the adventures of Beartato, Reginald and their friends, officially titled Beartato Comics.

Odd Bodkins by Dan O’Neill – 1 vote
On The Web

Odd Bodkins began its run in 1964 in the San Francisco Chronicle when O'Neill was 21 years old. The strip consisted of the adventures of Hugh and Fred the Bird. During the course of the strip's run, it increasingly reflected O'Neill's life in and his critique of 1960s counterculture. Though he considered himself a strong writer, O'Neill said of his artwork, "I had a very weak line. Either that or palsy."
As Odd Bodkins became increasingly political, O'Neill feared that the Chronicle, which held the strip's copyright, would fire him and hire another artist. The Chronicle had axed Odd Bodkins a few times already, but it had been reinstated following reader protests. O'Neill decided on an odd tactic to regain control of his strip: he would engage in copyright infringement, which he reasoned would force the paper to surrender the strip's copyright back to him for fear of being sued. O'Neill worked 28 Walt Disney characters, including Mickey Mouse and Pluto, into the strip. In late November 1970, the Chronicle fired O'Neill for the final time but did not continue to run the strip. In 1972, during O'Neill's legal battles with Disney over Air Pirates Funnies, the Chronicle finally transferred the copyright of Odd Bodkins back to O'Neill. O'Neill currently lives in Nevada City, California, where he continues to draw Odd Bodkins and is a director in the Original Sixteen to One gold mine.

Oor Wullie by Dudley Watkins – 1 vote
On The Web

Oor Wullie is a Scottish comic strip published in the D.C. Thomson newspaper The Sunday Post. It features a character called Wullie, the familiar Scots nickname for boys named William. Oor Wullie means Our Willie. His trademarks are spiky hair, dungarees and an upturned bucket, which he often uses as a seat - most strips since early 1937 begin and end with a single panel of Wullie sitting on his bucket. The earliest strips, with little dialogue, ended with Wullie complaining ("I nivver get ony fun roond here!"). The artistic style settled down by 1940 and has changed little since. A frequent tagline reads, "Oor Wullie! Your Wullie! A'body's Wullie!" (Our Willie! Your Willie! Everybody's Willie!).
Created by Thomson editor R. D. Low and drawn by cartoonist Dudley D. Watkins, the strip first appeared on 8 March 1936. Watkins continued to draw Oor Wullie until his death in 1969, after which the Post recycled his work into the 1970s.

Pictures for Sad Children by John Campbell – 1 vote
On The Web

Pictures for Sad Children was a webcomic created by John Campbell in 2007. The comic, first focusing on the adventures of Paul, "who is a ghost," later branched out to introduce other characters, such as Gary, whom Paul was forced to train at a call center after Paul initially lost his job because he was dead. Gary then became the main character and other characters were introduced including Gary's cousin Sara, her husband Afsheen, and their daughter Maddy. The Gary storyline was abandoned after strip 226 and the comic transitioned to stand-alone strips. As of 2014, Campbell has removed all comics from the comic's website, making the page blank.
In May 2012, John Campbell set up a Kickstarter crowdfunding project to fund production of the second book of Pictures for Sad Children, entitled "Sad Pictures for Children". Some of the perks were outlandish or bizarre, such as Campbell drawing a comic under the influence of DMT, going to the dentist "for the first time in ~8 years" or putting up paste-ups in the donor's city under the risk of being arrested. The campaign succeeded, with $51,615 raised from a goal of $8,000. On September 19, 2012, Campbell posted an update to the Kickstarter project claiming that he faked depression "for profit". This post was followed up by a post stating he had faked faking depression. On February 27, 2014, Campbell posted a final update explaining that 75% of the rewards for supporting the project had been sent out, and that no more would be sent out in the future. Attached was a video of Campbell burning one book for every email received asking about the unreceived books, totaling 127 burned copies of the book. In addition, Campbell stated that one book would be burned for every email received after the update was posted. Campbell also noted that he would be ending the comic, and expressed discontent with money as a concept and stated in part: "I want direct funding for my living necessities. I want to establish relationships with a group of people who can pay for my baseline needs like food and rent. I am looking for people who do not feel they need to see any “return” on their “investment.”

oh shit, a stick figure comic that I forgot to add to my "worst comics" list. (you're going to post those too, right forks?)

at some point

That last Dudley Watkins strip is The Broons, not Oor Wullie.

Am I really the only person that voted for it?

I think I voted for the Broons but not Oor Wullie - in both cases it's really only the post-war Watkins stuff I like

Actually, I might have done that too now I think about it.

i don't think i voted for nedroid but i find it super enjoyable

I liked my life better 20 minutes ago when I didn't know that John Campbell had ever existed.

I really like the art on Mutts. It would be so much better if the guy who draws it would work with a writer to give it a little more substance than a Hallmark card.

I forgot to vote (or I'm guessing even nominate) a strip that thus will likely not appear here. RIP, Wildwood.

xp -- otm. I quit reading Mutts a few years ago. I didn't want it to charm me, I wanted it to be funny.

I think the strips with the crab are pretty funny. I wish it was just about the crab.

oh cool, didn't realize this was happening. thanks for taking the reins, forks.

hey J.D. and DJP - your ballots look like they're meant to be in order; am I assuming correctly?

I have no recollection of my ballot so I will say "yes"

had to look mine up -- yes it is.

ta dudes.

i think i voted in this poll? was it polled a long time ago? idk

you did

haha cool! thanks

http://www.drudgesiren.com/siren.gif BREAKING http://www.drudgesiren.com/siren.gif BREAKING http://www.drudgesiren.com/siren.gif

Your diligent ordering of ballots has now been taken into account and the ILX COMIC STRIPS AND SHORT WEBCOMICS AND SOME OTHER THINGS POLL will imminently resume. We start just outside the top 100, due to clustering of ties.

103: THE ANGRIEST DOG IN THE WORLD by David Lynch (24 points)
Lynch fansite

“The dog who is so angry he cannot move. He cannot eat. He cannot sleep. He can just barely growl. Bound so tightly with tension and anger, he approaches the state of rigor mortis.” Filmmaker / visual artist / composer Lynch’s strip ran with the same four panels and different dialogue weekly in the LA Reader, New York Press and other alt-weeklies from 1983 to 1992, and was later revived on davidlynch.com

did the thread just start over?

Sic is driving from here on in; I don't believe we're starting over

Think this is now the tally of all strips that got more than one vote. The single votes were "honorable placers" or something.

I didn't get around to voting (unless my memory is *really* bad), but probably would've tossed off a vote for the Angriest Dog in the World. Real comics fans should probably be glad I didn't vote, as most of my choices would've been webcomics. Not the super shitty stick figure webcomics (though actually I think stick figures *can* work, sometimes), but still webcomics.

It's a soft reboot.

The ILX Comic Strip Poll Results NOW!

sic, would it be possible to also tell us how many people voted for each strip? also, the names of everyone who voted for bloom county. thanks

Can we get a breakdown of left-handed vs right-handed voters?

=102: SLUGGY FREELANCE by Pete Abrams (25 points)
Sluggy.com

One of the first successful, and probably the longest successful, native web strip. Has evolved from daily gags to long arcs, but still uses something like Comic Sans for lettering.

how many votes did that get?

(obv i'm stoned bc i just realized i could check myself nm) it looks kinda terrible tho esp that second example

that is atrocious

1 vote for Sluggy Freelance. Obv the voter is welcome to provide better examples than I found!

(sorry, I didn't tally number of votes when I ran the numbers. Happy to check on specific examples, and forks and Mordy feel free to answer if I'm away for timezone reasons!)

or as long as I remember I'll include them

=102: SCARY GARY by Mark Buford (25 points, 1 vote)
Universal

Cold, staring eyes mesmerize their victim's attention as sharp teeth nuzzle into the necks of the surprised captive. The warm blood eases the vampire's hunger pangs and desire for life.. . But after a while, a vampire gets older and wants to quit working. That's where Mark Buford steps in. The creator of "Scary Gary" gives fans an inside view on the life of a 700-year-old retired vampire and his evil but very funny friends. (TheCartoonists.ca)

Let’s try some others.
http://www.thecartoonists.ca/images/MarkBuford1.jpg
https://thedailyfunnies.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/11-10-10-scary-gary.png

And a couple of links to different ones just in case:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9kqk7YrbOBc/SlJ1TqC5SQI/AAAAAAAAA8c/WQvU9QjWe4c/s400/sunday+1.gif
http://gocomics.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c5f3053ef019aff6d6159970b-800wi

lol ok that's pretty charming. it reminds me a little of joann sfar's vampire in love (tho cruder + more comic strippy)

Assuming that CTRL + ALT + DEL will be Top 40 material.

yeah, Scary Gary is the first one I've found so far that I'd never heard of, but thought I'd enjoy finding in a newspaper, if I read a newspaper

i continue to read the comics page of the newspaper at the same place i read them as a child - my parent's kitchen table. they're the only ppl i know who sub to a newspaper!

Wrapping up the outside-the-top-100:

=102: Dry Bones by Yaakov Kirschen (25 points)
(already posted)

=102: The Magic Whistle by Sam Henderson (25 points)
(already posted)

One vote each, obv. Angriest Dog In The World got 4.

I cant remember if I can voted in this but angriest dog and magic whistle showing up make me think that I did.

Fuck hat!

I guess I was the Scary Gary voter? It's on my ballot anyway, down at #16. It's still one of my daily reads. (I follow a couple dozen strips with my morning coffee on my pixelated newspaper.)

Pluggers better get like 90 votes because if it doesn't, this one's coming out any time someone starts talking some shit.

http://comixtalk.com/images/jun2007/sluggy3.gif

There were 19 voters.

One of whom was Shakey.

Sploosh

Just found the worst awful my eyes my eyes Pluggers On The Beach panel during a smart-aleck Google Image Search, so I'll just shutthefuckup now.

I know I nominated Dry Bones but I don't think I voted, so somebody else threw it a vote?

threw it a bone, you mean

Was it this one?

http://comicbooth.com/images/pluggers_beach.jpg

98: Medium Large by Francesco Marciuliano (25 points)
(already posted)

=97: Diesel Sweeties by R Stevens (28 points)
(already posted)

=97: MOON MULLINS by Frank Willard (28 points, 2 votes)
Toonopedia

Moon Mullins, created by cartoonist Frank Willard (1893–1958), had a long run as both a daily and Sunday from 1923 to 1991. The strip depicts the lives of diverse lowbrow characters who reside at the Schmaltz (later Plushbottom) boarding house. The central character, Moon (short for Moonshine), is a would-be prizefighter—perpetually strapped for cash but with a roguish appetite for vice and high living. Moon took a room in the boarding house at 1323 Wump Street in 1924 and never left, staying on for 67 years. (Wikipedia)

http://www.comicstripfan.com/newspaper/m/moonmullins/MoonMullins19400122.jpg

http://www.comicstripfan.com/newspaper/m/moonmullins/MoonMullins19470521.jpg

http://photos1.blogger.com/img/149/1105/1024/mm450118.jpg

I voted for Sluggy Freelance almost exclusively because of the first Kitten storyline, which is what I first read. The strip is very heavily serialized, to the point where pulling out individual daily strips is almost an exercise in futility. It also devolved into self-referential nonsense several years ago and I don't read it anymore aside from checking in every few months to see if a particular storyline has finished.

"Kitten" starts before this strip with some background material but this is where the meat of the story starts. Like pretty much every Sluggy storyline it's best read as a whole rather than in daily format. It's also not as funny 14 years later but there are still some good bits.

Was it this one?

― rage against martin sheen (sic), Tuesday, June 24, 2014 3:22 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, it was this one.

http://comicbooth.com/images/pluggers_multiboobs.jpg

classic unnecessary anatomic correctness

I wonder if he tried to draw a cow to accompany the bull, but couldn't work out how to do the udder just right.

Cows, dogs... I mean, even a bird would've likely been a better idea.

(btw I agree that the Torg/Oasis strip everyone is laughing at is terrible and unnecessary but the Oasis story as a whole is kind of cool)

moon mullins looks great! is it collected anywhere?

I only know it from the handful of strips in the Smithsonian/Blackbeard book

i was the moon mullins vote; put it in based on some Nemo strips and this book:
http://smile.amazon.com/Moon-Mullins-Adventures-Frank-Willard/dp/0486232379/

i'm a sucker for any strip where character goes "OH! Oh!"

I believe that the aforementioned 1976 Dover book was the last reprint of any of the Mullins stuff.

That bull is trying to fuck that dog

How else do you get bulldogs?

*applause*

classic unnecessary anatomic correctness

I do like that the caption observes this too.

95: “Tijuana Bibles” by various anonymous (29 points, 2 votes)
Guide to the Tijuana Bibles Collection, 1930-1998

Proto-minicomics by divers hands, providing pornographic reinterpretations of popular strips of the day, or erotic fan-fiction about Hollywood and stage stars.

an okay selection here: http://www.tijuana-bibles.com/tijuanabible-comics.html

http://www.tijuana-bibles.com/comicpics/snowwhite/snowhite-pg4.jpg

[redacted picture of whiney g]

=94: THE FART PARTY by Julia Wertz (30 points, 2 votes)
The Comic Formerly And Regrettably Known As ‘The Fart Party’

Web-based outlet for blackout autobiographical one-pagers; after the first two book collections, Wertz moved away from the name and further into long-form, more analytical stories about her adult life.

[redacted picture of whiney g]

=94: BAD MACHINERY (30 points, 1 vote)
Scary Go Round

Set in the fictional West Yorkshire town of Tackleford, England, and loosely based on characters and situations from John Allison's previous webcomic, Scary Go Round. The story of Bad Machinery picks up three years after the end of Scary Go Round and involves two groups of schoolchildren that investigate mysteries. - wikipedia

what I was posting was less offensive than that

Why didn't you vote for something better, then?

=94: JL8 by Yale Stewart (30 points, 1 vote)
(already posted)

Aw, I really like Bad Machinery.

Me too.

Whiney's critiques of comics are always so nuanced and analytical, you guys are right to feel shamed

Trying to get Whiney threadbanned for posting an image from one of the honored comic strips has been the funniest thing I've seen in this thread so far.

Well, besides this knee-slapper, of course.

http://comixtalk.com/images/jun2007/sluggy3.gif

I love Bad Machinery too! The Bad Machinery / Scarygoround / Bobbins universe is also one for your "comics where the characters age in approximately realtime" thread; was pleased recently to see Eustace "The Boy" all growed up, and to note that two of the Bad Machinery kids appear as primary school kids in Scarygoround.

Anyhow I didn't vote because I don't know much about real paper comics and feared the wrath of people who do.

tl;dr newsie-wewsies. Speaking of which:

in the 90s the Mail on Sunday used to do a whole pull-out cartoon section that printed both Fred Bassett and Marmaduke, as well as a load of other US syndicated strips!

My Nan's neighbour saved this for me every week late 80s to at least mid 90s. Things I remember it including: Fred Bassett, Marmaduke, Robotman/Monty, Wizard of Id (BC too?), Crock, Herman, The Born Loser, Shoe, the horrible Love Is..., maybe Garfield? I suspect many of these are not very good but I have childhood/Nan-related nostalgia for some of them anyway; see also the Gambols (nod to Ward Fowler's mention).

I love Julia Wertz

me itt

http://pixel.nymag.com/content/dam/custom/images/2012/01/24_cantornoreaction1.gif

enjoying it tho; mordy otm upthread

http://i.colnect.net/images/f/103/449/Garfield-Waiting.jpg

http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/i-dLFDRSd/0/1050x10000/i-dLFDRSd-1050x10000.jpg

sic, i abdicated this thread cause I thought you wanted to handle it... do you want to hand it back over, or....?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/business/media/jay-maeder-67-newspaperman-who-wrote-annie-comic-strip-dies.html

To think he didn't get to see this thread end.

=91: Mafalda by Quino (31 points, 1 vote)
(already posted)

=91: Pictures for Sad Children by John Campbell (31 points, 1 vote)
(already posted)

=91: MOTHER GOOSE & GRIMM by Mike Peters (31 points, 2 votes)
Grimmy

The strip revolves around a yellow dog named Grimm, owned by an anthropomorphic goose named Mother Goose, along with a dimwitted Boston Terrier named Ralph and a cat named Attila. The strip is noted for its references to popular culture or recent news ,such as Grimm's creation of a website known as "GrimmyLeaks," devoted to publishing rumors relating to fellow comic strip characters). The comic strip also makes multiple references to iconic fictional characters including Mr. Potato Head, Superman, Batman, and more, along with popular products including Amazon Kindles. -wikipedia

oof those punchlines

88: FOOTROT FLATS by Murray Ball (32 points, 2 votes)
a fansite last updated in 2005

Beginning as a local strip by an actual Kiwi farmer, quickly grew to huge popularity, with book collections selling millions in Australia, and a theatrical feature animation in 1987 spawning a #1 single in both countries. Focussing on the nitty-gritty of farming and rural town life, but remaining hilarious, and featuring the best dog lead-ish character in strip history. Ball later became New Zealand’s Dave Sim.

http://www.townsvilletale.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/footrotflats_006.jpg

http://www.footrot-flats.net2go.info/images/the_dog_01.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NMXMSTec_BY/UNpla4LZjYI/AAAAAAAAEaQ/h7qysy9dyWg/s1600/footrot9.jpg

http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/n590/rmacfarl/Footrot%20Flats/Dolores.jpg

http://www.oneil.com.au/footrot/comics/ff17_15a.gif

best dog lead-ish character in strip history

...

have some more

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/kitbrash/rangi_zps8b357f88.jpg

http://furrypause.com/cartoons/footrotflats/strip/ff_strip0002.jpg

http://www.oneil.com.au/footrot/comics/ff19_15a.gif

http://www.angryasianman.com/images/angry/mothergooseandgrimm2008-08-17.jpg

jesus h christ

ummmmmmmmm

maybe you should go back to posting cartoon tits

Mike Peters won a Pulitzer Prize! It was for his editorial cartoons though, not Mother Goose and Grimm

He who protests the loudest... I think I know who our two MG&G voters were!

Ball later became New Zealand’s Dave Sim.

lol is this true?

https://trademe.tmcdn.co.nz/photoserver/tq/255230707.jpg

[redacted picture of whiney g]

=87: DENNIS THE MENACE by Hank Ketcham (33 points, 2 votes)
Complete Ketcham books

Single-panel family comedy, twee-to-vapid subject matter, magnificent line and design.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2126/1553740369_46bddd0708_o.jpg

http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/4734/6841448_1.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/kitbrash/lefthanded_zpsfdd8f4ba.jpg

http://cdn.coollinesartwork.com/Images/Category_2/subcat_42987/aDennis10131970s.jpg

http://cdn.coollinesartwork.com/Images/Category_2/subcat_42987/aDennis10261979.jpg

http://sekotsstudiosblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/dennis-the-menace-daily-1979-11-08.jpg

Nice to see a Ketcham original there, tho' I'm not expert enough to detect the work of his assistants.

Well that's better than the other "Jackson" panel I've seen

[redacted picture of whiney g]

The other Jackson panel, ftr.

=87: HAGAR THE HORRIBLE by Dik Browne (33 points, 3 votes)
fansite with both Dik and Chris

Domestic Viking lols. ”The strip is a caricature and loose interpretation of medieval Scandinavian life,” per Wikipedia.

http://cdn.coollinesartwork.com/Images/Category_2/subcat_34001/Thumbs/HagarD1973.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ah2Y1SNOrfE/TrakTBkfgkI/AAAAAAAAAEk/h7XxaRsjbR4/s1600/hagarthe%2Bhorrible.gif

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_3563/subcat_34001/Thumbs/HagarTheHorrible815th1980DikBrowne,insideBathroom.jpg

I always though Hagar was a British strip, I think because of these ads?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amTlzYf1HJ8

he was published in The Sun for a long time, as a kid i also assumed it was a British strip even tho i knew Peanuts wasn't so must've been aware that international syndication existed

concorde244 6 years ago

I was the one who got Hagar's voice Changed to Micheal Elphic the original voice was Brian Glover (bless his soul never to be replaced) but his voice was too high pitch so they changed it

=85: Howard the Duck by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan (34 points, 1 vote)
(already posted)

=85: Death to the Extremist by Michael Zole (34 points, 1 vote)
not even nominated

=85: Cheech Wizard by Vaughn Bode (34 points, 1 vote)
(already posted)

=85: THE KIN-DER-KIDS by Lyonel Feininger (34 points, 2 votes)
at the Billy Ireland

31-week elaborately-illustrated strip from 1906 by the German painter. Wikipedia: The Kin-der-Kids's "full-fledged, frankly suspenseful week-to-week continuity," writes cartooning historian Bill Blackbeard, was a "real innovation for the time" when even Winsor McCay's Little Nemo had not yet developed into ongoing stories. The artwork is lauded as well, and has been called "exquisitely drawn" in Time.

Art Spiegelman: “Feininger's visually poetic formal concerns collided comically with the fishwrap disposability of news print... The cartoonist, a New Yorker who had emigrated to Germany at sixteen and returned to safe harbor in America in 1937 became a celebrated second-generation cubist, one of the Bauhaus boys, but his handful of Sunday pages -- testing the uncharted waters between the high and low arts, between European and American graphic traditions--remains his greatest aesthetic triumph."[5]

http://cartoons.osu.edu/digital_albums/lyonelfeininger/Large%20Online%20Format/SFT96-1_1906-05-27_lrg.jpg

http://cartoons.osu.edu/digital_albums/lyonelfeininger/Large%20Online%20Format/SFT96-3_1906-09-09_lrg.jpg

http://cartoons.osu.edu/digital_albums/lyonelfeininger/Large%20Online%20Format/SFT96-4_1906-11-11_lrg.jpg

wow I guess Chris Ware must have been a fan of these, at least they seem similar to me

Feininger is what's up forever; it's a sin that his work is primarily out of print except for this
http://www.amazon.com/The-Comic-Strip-Lyonel-Feininger/dp/1560978201
all of kinder kids is like 60 pages fer crissakes

i have the kinder-kids collection, it's wonderful stuff.

81: Oor Wullie by Dudley Watkins (35 points, 1 vote)
(already posted)

Kin-Der-Kids rules. I'm about 90% certain I voted for it.

=80: THE BROONS by Dudley Watkins (36 points, 1 vote)
Scotland’s Greatest Cartoonist

Also created by R.D. Low and Dudley Watkins in 1936, but about the laughs and struggles of a large working-class family living in a single flat. “There were very, very, few cartoonists in the world producing work of the quality of Watkins's work. The Broons pages contained less panels than the more action-orientated Oor Wullie, so there was more of a canvas for Watkins to experiment on. His command of perspective and shifting points of view was almost peerless and I think, with the exception of a handful of European and American greats, like Winsor McCay, it would be difficult to think of a more talented and influential cartoonist. He truly was one of the all-time greats.” - McKie

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_iB_EdMEPk6Y/Ss6AGScAmkI/AAAAAAAAEFY/Np0gHe2ZW6g/s1600-h/broons1.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_iB_EdMEPk6Y/Ss6AFzIzP_I/AAAAAAAAEFQ/PWAGTC-BJCI/s1600-h/broons2.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Klfz36T6_so/Tba_6tH2wpI/AAAAAAAAGJk/tDq4PUeJH0I/s1600/scan0156.jpg

I voted for both of these and the article sic linked to is kind of right - effortlessly beautiful, I guess his closest peer is maybe Frank King?

=80: A Lesson Is Learned but the Damage is Irreversible by Dale and David (36 points, 1 vote)
(already posted)

=80: CURTIS by Ray Billingsley (36 points, 3 votes)
Awards and Distinctions: The President's Award from the American Lung Association

Curtis details the day-to-day life of a close-knit contemporary African-American family living in the inner city.  It is a comic work that does not fit easily in any category.  Though it mainly features children, it is not necessarily “child-themed.”  It can be humorous, thought-provoking, topical in subject and have bursts of pure zany fantasy.
Sometimes falling victim to censoring, Curtis is best welcomed by those modern free-thinkers who appreciate it for the work of art it is.  It is often called "The Thinking-Man’s Strip,” for its witty approach, satire and use of storylines with an unexpected twist.

http://chrispearce.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/curtis3.jpg

http://aalbc.com/authors/images/cut80606.gif

https://comicskingdom.com/system/blog/2012/12/15.jpg

not a bad strip but his drawing style has never appealed to me

Why have some things already been posted?

there was an initial listing of everything that got one vote

no, I don't know why

xpost
iirc we began w/ forks' unsorted first take and we are now on sic's sorted second edition, so a few of the low entries have already been printed first time round?

i'm about 90% certain i voted for the broons

http://joshreads.com/images/08/07/i080703curtis.jpg

I've never liked how his hat hangs off his head like that.

And WGW still making this thread worth clicking.

=80: A Lesson Is Learned but the Damage is Irreversible by Dale and David (36 points, 1 vote)
(already posted)

shout out to wins there

=77: THE BASH STREET KIDS by Leo Baxendale (37 points, 1 vote)
Leo Baxendale, The Master Of Bash Street

On the 13th of February 1954, a half-page story by the name of 'When the Bell Rings' debuted. Apparently inspired by the view from the Beano Office window, which overlooked Dundee High School's playground, the strip depicted the joyous explosion of children from the confines of the classroom when the home-time bell rang. The pen of Leo Baxendale, already busy on 'Little Plum' and 'Minnie the Minx', was responsible for this breakthrough in comic form, varying between traditional comic strip panels and full page scenes crammed with figures involved in all sorts of mischief.
Originally these strips and scenes would involve dozens of unruly pupils and hapless teachers, but before too long the focus became the kids of Class IIB, with Danny, Plug, Smiffy, Toots and Sid, Wilfrid, Erbert, Spotty and Fatty gaining in prominence. In November of 1956, the title was changed to the more familiar 'The Bash Street Kids', though by this time the kids had already burst out of the school gates and out of the pages of The Beano, having appeared in prose stories and cover strips in the adventure paper, 'The Wizard' in 1955.
Leo Baxendale continued to draw the chaotic class until 1962, by which time the strip had grown in size into a double page spread. – beano.com

http://www.paulmorris.co.uk/beano/strips/bellrings.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iwLzhffLiJU/T-G5Rbg8tXI/AAAAAAAACvc/RBDt6WQEkAI/s640/Bash_Street_Kids_1959_09_19_896.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hk0sfKml_BU/UdETeyg8dbI/AAAAAAAAMbA/r0OPgNu7KYU/s1069/leo+bash+st.png

http://www.quotev.com/quiz/342583/Which-bash-street-kid-are-you/

ilx has two threads titled 'Which Bash Street Kid Are You?'

=77: TOOTHPASTE FOR DINNER by Drew (37 points, 1 vote)
Toothpaste For Dinner

Toothpaste For Dinner is a daily one-panel cartoon written and drawn by Drew, author of Veins, Married To The Sea, The Worst Things For Sale, et al.

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/012511/cant-tell-what-theyre-saying.gif

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/102912/its-your-birthday-kitty-cat.gif

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/102012/grindin.gif

I voted for several questionable webcomics but not that one

=77: LES FRUSTRES by Claire Bretecher (37 points, 1 vote)
cliquez ici

In France, long hospitable to women artists and writers, Claire Bretécher specializes in cruel, Feifferish (non)communication. Active since the early 1960s, she has appeared in the elite political magazine Le Nouvel Observateur since 1973. – Britannica

Claire Bretécher is currently the most popular (and very probably the best) cartoonist working in France. The two books she has edited and published herself, Les Frustrés and Les Frustrés 2, consisting of material culled from the regular strip she does for the weekly French news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, are among the wittiest, sharpest, and most insightful collections of contemporary satire appearing in any medium. – TCJ, 1978

http://www.bdnet.com/img/couvpage/04/9782901076049_pg.jpg

http://www.bedetheque.com/media/Planches/frustres.jpg

http://www.bdnet.com/img/couvpage/39/9782901076391_pg.jpg

=77: SAM'S STRIP by Jerry Dumas & Mort Walker (37 points, 2 votes)
Collected, Complete

Sam’s Strip was ahead of its time when it debuted in 1961. Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas’ offbeat creation took the inside joke of breaking the “fourth wall” to a new level, playing with the basic elements of the cartoon form, experimenting with different art styles and featuring famous characters from other strips. Sam and his cartoonist assistant owned and operated the comic strip they inhabited. The Yellow Kid, Jiggs, Krazy Kat, Dagwood, and Charlie Brown were among the many familiar faces who made walk-on appearances. Sam and his assistant discussed the inner workings and hidden secrets of life within the panel borders. - fanta

http://westfieldcomics.com/wow/art/feature/large/v5feat_228-samstrip3.jpg

http://www.fantagraphics.com/images/stories/books/samstr/samstr-intros03.1.jpg

http://www.weirdspace.dk/JerryDumas/Graphics/SamAndSilo02.gif

http://www.tcj.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/humptystrp.jpg

http://www.du9.org/wp-content/uploads/img/jpg/SamsStrip2.jpg

Now I wished I'd voted. Sam's Strip woulda been in my top 5 easy. Easily the best/funniest/most creative thing Mort Walker's been a part of.

Always loved "and take your shading with you!"

from the strips I saw while putting the posts together, it looks really fun. and yeah, much cleverer than you'd expect from Walker

=73: Mutts by Patrick McDonald (38 points, 1 vote)
already posted

really I was the only vote for this

this poll is weird

=73: AMERICAN ELF by James Kochalka (38 points, 3 votes)
Complete archive for free. The first five years, in print. Buy digital, year-by-year.

Beginning as a local-only strip, then gaining worldwide distribution in comic and book collections from Top Shelf, and eventually influencing a generation of autobiographical cartoonists on the web. At the time it started, by a long walk the best thing the prolific Kochalka had ever done, and quickly made him get better. An every-day, usually four-panel strip about something from his life that day, it focused his drawing, his observation and the concision of his cartooning, and was frequently hilarious and profound. Concluded a year or two ago, and for the best. Relive the early years before he was a father.

http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/previews/amelf2000/amelf2000_09.gif

http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/previews/amer_elf/amer_elf_01.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/kitbrash/elfart_zps956e215a.jpg

I like its look and like McDonnell's book about Krazy Kat, but gave it a protest non-vote for never being funny. (xp)

time jump

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/American%20Elf%20mar%205%202007.gif

http://www.comicsreporter.com/images/uploads/colors_thumb.gif

http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/previews/americanelf4/americanelf4_10.jpg

Mutts probably has more value as part of a comics page than in collections; its care for drawing and dedication to a deliberate aesthetic made it stand out amidst a sea of whatever turds it was pared with in your area. Said aesthetic just becomes overwhelming en masse, without anything to react against.

That said, there was a tribute exhibition as part of the BD Festival in Lisbon last year, where they'd recreated a "house" and room from the strip to display art in, and it felt really charming and cosy. I can see that mindset informing people who enjoy settling into an armchair and immersing themselves in a paperback.

mutts is gorgeous and generally quite clever; certainly one of the last best of the remaining strips

=73: TARZAN by Burne Hogarth (38 points, 3 votes)
Collected by Titan

One day, a friend at United Features told Hogarth that Hal Foster — the guy who’d studied at the same Chicago schools as young Burne — was leaving the popular Tarzan comic strip that ran in hundreds of papers every Sunday.
Was Hogarth interested? Does Tarzan poop in the woods?
Smart enough to know that continuity would be key, Hogarth submitted a Foster-like panel. The bosses couldn’t tell the difference and Burne got the job, starting in the middle of 1937. Burne was 25 years old and Tarzan — his sinews and muscles, the tendons that form the shape below the skin — was his. Along with Jane and lions and apes and all the rest of the teeming jungle — an entire page’s worth every Sunday.
Hogarth moved slowly from a spot-on mimicking of Foster’s style to his own. Over the next dozen years — from 1937 to 1950 — he synthesized aspects of popular cinema with his fine art training to bring respect to an art form that had known few true masters. Hogarth thoroughly understood the elements of action and tension; translating the fragile tether between the two into a rigorous approach to foreshortening and shadows. Thus: a template that has defined the comic book hero from the 1950’s boom to the near-literary present. – burnehogarth.com

http://fantasticocenario.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/tarzan-hogarth-pl1.jpg

http://www.gwthomas.org/BurneHogarth12.jpg

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_28/subcat_139920/HogarthTarzan2-5-50.jpg

the hogarth tarzan feels like the apotheosis of the full page adventure strip but it's so hard for me to engage those storylines
i have like fifteen chapter books of the oversized prince valiant fanta run and i dunno if i even ever cracked them

goddamn can that guy ILLUSTRATE though

=73: MICKEY MOUSE by Floyd Gottfredson (38 points, 4 votes)
Lavishly collected by Fantagraphics

Hired as a temporary fill-in in the early months of the Mickey Mouse strip (taking over from Disney and Ub Iwerks!), Gottfredson went on to co-write and draw it for, oh four and a half decades. Generally regarded as the best Mickey material ever, and certainly the version of the character that retained a personality for at least a couple of decades. Rip-roaring adventure and zings that still more or less land.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/assets/images/articles/1298908338.jpg

http://www.comicbookresources.com/assets/images/articles/1298908340.jpg

http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/comicsalliance.com/files/2012/07/mickeya.jpg

Loving this thread, thanks for all your hard work sic, and every one else.

You're welcome.

get back to gta, you. it's been ages since you told us all a story.

Oh, the tragedy that occurred this weekend… I now know what YLOD means.

Little man can't play his Mickey Mouse game anymore, we've covered up all the mirrors.

NOOOOOOOOO [just had to google YLOD]

69: Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson (39 points, 1 vote)
already posted

Any other strip and I would've let it go:

http://i.imgur.com/bUUfo5r.jpg

thought one of you Arlovers or Janisatics would have delighted in its placing.

I was the only A&J voter -- my #2 -- and I am delighted in its placing.

Is it always as badly drawn as that example above?

I would say no -- that one's an older strip, and a busy mess. I was going to say Johnson's pared the strip down to the visual essentials, but today's puts the lie to that:

http://assets.amuniversal.com/c914e0a02afb0132a1f4005056a9545d

Rather than a "bigfoot" style of cartooning, I guess what he goes for is more "bigface."

what even

It looks better with colour, and i like the fact that the first two panels are silent and involve real comics storytelling, but I don't think this is one for me.

=68: TOONERVILLE FOLKS by Fontaine Fox (40 points, 2 votes)
Toonopedia

The single-panel gag cartoon was a daily look at Toonerville, situated in what are now called the suburbs. Central to the strip was the rickety little trolley called the "Toonerville Trolley that met all the trains," driven in a frenzy by the grizzly old Skipper to meet each commuter train as it arrived in town. A few of the many richly formed characters included the Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang, the Physically Powerful Katrinka, Little Woo-Woo Wortle, Aunt Eppie Hogg (The Fattest Lady in 3 Counties) and Mickey McGuire, the town bully.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j0LJ7wZtiMU/Tg09r5a7ghI/AAAAAAAAIAs/NovwSOWWI_k/s1600/ToonervilleSunday.jpg

http://www.artbaxter.com/images/blog/2008-postings/03.03-fox/toonerville-sunday.gif

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_3563/subcat_30295/FontaineFoxToonervilleFolksSunday32352.jpg

=68: THE FABULOUS FURRY FREAK BROTHERS by Gilbert Shelton (40 points, 3 votes)
Fansite / Pretty much everything in one book.

The use of assorted psychoactive drugs is a predominant theme that runs throughout all volumes of this title. Marijuana is the most frequently mentioned, but numerous other stimulants and hallucinogens are mentioned as well. Most of the Freak Brothers stories include the use of drugs, or attempts to purchase them, for humorous effect..

Food is a commonly recurring subject. These stories most often involve Fat Freddy and his marijuana-induced "munchies" (increased appetite). The squalor engendered by the Brothers' indolence is often highlighted. Several stories satirise governments, particularly the U.S. government. These stories invariably show politicians and their agents as corrupt, incompetent, or both.

It is common for the storylines to begin with an air of realism, but rapidly descend into comic pantomime. - wikipedia

http://www.tcj.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/FreakBros0001.jpg

http://3rdeyedrops.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/freakbros1-jpg.jpeg

https://maddogmedia.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/freaks.jpg

one of my mom's hippy friends gave me a whole basket of comics like these and Zap when I was around ten years old, mind was blown

just saw today's A&J in a real physical American newspaper. In b&w, the sleeve disappears into the spotting on the window.

Still, seeing an entire US comics page (a double page!) makes me forgive p much anything people voted for itt, it's a fucking turd-strewn wasteland in there against which even Nemi would be semi-tolerable

don't feel too bad, we also don't subscribe to newspapers anymore

Not in this town anyway, fuck a Seattle Times

it was the Seattle Times obv

(left out for free in a dive bar)

=68: RED MEAT by Max Cannon (40 points, 3 votes)
Universal

Begun in 1989, Max Cannon's Red Meat is one of the most popular independent comic strips today, currently appearing in over 75 alt weeklies and college papers in the U.S. and abroad. Usually bizarre, sometimes tasteless, always delightfully twisted, cheerfully dark, and laugh-out-loud funny, it features a cast of beloved, repulsive freaks. - Universal

http://www.vorpral.net/images/Spider%20Goat%20Red%20Meat.jpg

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/index-1.gif

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MVLFO6wd5Qg/TBVnBM0bXwI/AAAAAAAAA4U/Z8Jxeh1_nt8/s1600/redmeat.gif

red meat was a web comic before web comics were web comics

=65: LUANN by Greg Evans (41 points, 2 votes)
Universal

The strip takes place in an unnamed suburban setting and is mostly about teenager Luann DeGroot, dealing with school, her love interests, family and friends. Some storylines center on other characters, including her older brother Brad.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/kitbrash/luann_zps766d9f4d.gif

http://www.robotcombat.com/images/luann1.gif

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v328/Clayskater/Print%20Matter/Luann803gJan1.gif

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v328/Clayskater/Print%20Matter/Luann104gJan2.gif

=65: "Chick tracts" by Fred Carter, Jack T. Chick, and various (41 points, 2 votes)
Tract listing

Chick’s scary, angry Fundie diatribes have given many a kid terrible nightmares. His favorite topics tend towards subject matter like “You’re going to Hell,” Halloween is evil, eternal damnation, abortion, the Vatican is evil and created Islam, demons walk amongst us, child molesters, the Antichrist will rise soon, New Age beliefs, Judaism, Mormonism and Islam are Satanic, witches are everywhere, homosexuality is an abomination (Chick’s solution? Fire-n-brimstone, baby!), Darwin’s theories are Satanic, Harry Potter is Satanic, feminists are Satanic, the Satanic plot behind rock music (The Beatles were Druids!), “You’re going to Hell,” the Commies are everywhere (Catholics are to blame for this, of course) and just about any other crazy, fucked up conspiracy theory you can think of. He’s kind of the Glenn Beck (or maybe better still Alex Jones) of paranoiac Christian comic books. Did I mention that a lot of his comics were about how YOU (that’s right you, the person reading this) are going to Hell? Chick’s God is a VENGEFUL God. The Old Testament Jehovah has got nothin’ on Chick’s version. – Richard Metzger spruiking Dan Raeburn’s unparalleled Imp #2

http://santitafarella.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/beignning-of-chick-tract-titled-this-was-your-life.jpg

http://images.tcj.com/2013/12/TopicLisa0001_zps489bb899.jpg

http://www.lambiek.net/artists/image/c/carter_fred/carter_fred_thedeceived.jpg

http://media.chick.com/tractimages67491/0084/0084_16.gif

http://evangelicaloutpost.com/images/boo_19.gif

http://www.therobotspajamas.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/0046_15.gif

http://media.chick.com/tractimages67491/0273/0273_10.gif

man, i've always hated luann

Luann and Fox Trot run together for me.

=65: B.C.by Johnny Hart (41 points, 3 votes)
A 50th anniversary collection

A “re-committed” fundamentalist Christian who taught Sunday School every week in the little Presbyterian church in the nearby New York town of Ninevah, Hart frequently delivered sermons in his comic strip. Said Maxwell: “Hart believes the Lord put him into the cartooning world for a reason. Every prudent chance he gets, he takes advantage of it. On Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter—and many days between—Hart’s characters offer messages reflecting the cartoonist’s own firm belief in the gospel message. ‘I find myself trying to put the gospel into practically every strip I create without being obvious about it,’ he says.” - R.C. Harvey

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_3563/subcat_33998/bcsunday53187.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2XiHE57ofTY/T39BfgR796I/AAAAAAAAHSQ/uoac1j6mvbM/s1600/B.C.%2BJohnny%2BHart%2BGood%2BFriday.jpg

The early Pre-Christian era of B.C. is great - good solid gag stuff w/ quite hip drawing

hmm I kinda miss my jack chick collection

=65: BUZ SAWYER by Roy Crane (41 points, 3 votes)
On The Web

Roy Crane created the adventure comic strip with Wash Tubbs, and many a superhero owes a debt to Crane’s square-jawed, hard-hitting adventurer Captain Easy. But during World War II, he left the Captain Easy strip to create a more realistic fighting man, a Navy pilot named John Singer Sawyer, who fought in the Pacific Theater from 1943 until V-J Day in 1945, and whose adventures continued under Crane's pen for three more decades.
"If I had to pick a favorite [classic comic-strip reprint] right now, I’d say the Fantagraphics reprints of Buz Sawyer by Roy Crane. I just love the energy, humor, adventure and charm of them." – Kurt Busiek quoted at Fanta

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a7/Buzjune44.jpg/550px-Buzjune44.jpg

http://www.bordercrashcomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Roy-Crane-Buz-Sawyer.jpg

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_3563/subcat_29143/CraneD01031977.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g4GZ377sBkA/TW-g5aIdh5I/AAAAAAAAQfg/3wO323lQifE/s1600/crane03.jpg

http://cdn.coollinesartwork.com/Images/Category_2/subcat_29143/RoyCraneBuzSawyerDaily10181950.jpg

haven't read any buz sawyer, but the wash tubbs sequence in the smithsonian collection is outstanding.

busiek loving crane makes perfect sense

and at the top of the 65 bracket:

=65: ANDY CAPP by Reg Smythe (41 points, 4 votes)
Longform Best Of 2012

“[Reg Smythe] is the most popular English humorist with Americans since Charles Dickens.” -
      - Al Capp

http://www.benzilla.com/uploads/2007/09/andy_capp.jpg

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_3563/subcat_29856/SMYTHEREGAndyCapp61473.jpg

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140225171859/ukcomics/images/b/bf/Andy-Capp.jpg

http://api.ning.com/files/kxOsEzy6ZB1FEQjO-kIkk6cRQCcUsmGCRXK0fXpvO*dnbsOC6dD0N0xawo5hFVQcEh1D3GY0kMU-u1Y5qP9Gi3Zuwem57PuL/Andy_Capp_2.jpg

That violent alcoholic is comedy gold i tell ya

That longform piece is really good btw.

i'll give it a look

is Andy Capp the only character to appear in this poll who has been adopted as a mascot by ultras?

http://paper-fang.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/youre-some-hero-andy-capp.html

that depends. what are ultras?

I missed voting on this, but how on earth do Chick tracts count as "comic strips"? They are printed as multi-page "books" that tell one story, seems to me they're comic books, not strips.

we already did this exchange upthread when the poll shifted hands, on the other thread that you didn't vote in and forever and ever over and over until we all die and our bodies are mulched, used to make newsprint with terrible comics printed on it and then we are wrapped around dead fish

or more to the point, if you are disturbed by the inclusion a selection of cartoons placing at #65 in an obscure website's yearlong roll out of a grass roots poll conducted among twenty people (that, incidentally, doesn't even include you) solely because of how those strips are bound, may i recommend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI_AoUDReOU

I don't remember the exchange either. When did it take place, 16 months ago when this poll was created?

Freak Bros shouldn't count either.

Freak Bros do count -

The Freak Brothers first appeared in The Rag, an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas, beginning in May 1968; and were regularly reprinted in underground papers around the United States and in other parts of the world. Later their adventures were published in a series of comic books.

Chick tracts don't.

Didn't know that about the FFB.

There's got to be some scary newspaper somewhere in the United States that runs Jack Chick tracts as some kind of Rex Morgan serial. If there isn't, I've got an idea to pitch to my publisher.

60: SALLY FORTH by Greg Howard (42 points, 3 votes)
paperback (used) from 10c

idk man, this isn’t the Wally Wood tits-out army strip?

https://comicskingdom.com/system/blog/2012/01/archivist_SFT19820104.png

oh dear god i hate that fuckin strip

sally forth the only strip i can think of where the guy who took over the strip (the medium large guy) i know better than the original artist

http://comicsidontunderstand.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/12.gif

in fairness the one i hate is the one in papers now, that original version is unsettlingly different -- reminds me more of the lockhorns, what with the huge heads and characters yelling at each other instead of just smiling blandly and smirking at each other.

=59: WASH TUBBS by Roy Crane (43 points, 3 votes)
a 1932-33 sequence

Wash Tubbs didn't begin as an adventure strip. Landon wanted down-home humor and dictated that the Wash character work as a store clerk. Crane had other ideas and within a year bespectacled little Wash had hung up his clerk's apron for a fortune-hunting jaunt in the South Seas. He never went back.
Crane's strip adventures were given a tongue in cheek treatment from the very beginning. Wash Tubbs was an extroverted and exuberant strip with a sense of fun to match the adventure. Sound effects blasted from the panels with a blast of stars and exclamation points. The fights, a Crane trademark, were often brutal, drawn with an excellent feel for fluid anatomy, and had a certain cheerfulness about them. Fight sequences in Crane's strips could take days of continuity, rather than the one or two panels other strips used. Wash himself often enthusiastically participated in the kicking, biting, wrestling brawls, but he was fairly puny, somewhat resembling a diminutive Harold Lloyd.
Wash needed a sidekick and in 1928 Captain Easy was introduced into the strip. Easy was the adventurer Tubbs had aspired to be, a brawler and a soldier of fortune with a mysterious past. It was a perfect team up and gradually Captain Easy became the strip's central character. By 1933 Easy was given his own Sunday page, while the Wash and Easy team continued on in the Wash Tubb dailies. In the 1940s the two strips were combined as Captain Easy.
- Steve Stiles

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PT72gIOi-ms/TeewoE7z7HI/AAAAAAAABpE/qqfeJCETh9c/s1600/rc05.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fmMhDKPB4Y0/TeewdIlIbRI/AAAAAAAABo8/juPioi6gMc4/s1600/rc08.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4x069DIpIQ4/Tee0TvJlnJI/AAAAAAAABr0/b-0DyJiwJ9c/s1600/rc31.jpg

"There is no gay, feminine companionship."

Only bears on that ship, then?

=59: STEVE CANYON by Milt Caniff (43 points, 4 votes)
reproduced in color directly from Milton Caniff's personal set of syndicate proofs;featuring every Sunday in color and the daily strips in their original, uncropped versions.

The prominent display there of Lynx’s bosom was too much for many readers: hell hath no fury like that of parents who believe their children are being corrupted into thinking about sex. Letters poured in to subscribing papers. - R.C. Harvey

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_61/subcat_4512/caniff-steve-canyon.jpg

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_3563/subcat_29062/Canyon1950sSun.jpg

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_3563/subcat_29270/CaniffSteve04101951.jpg

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_13014/subcat_34278/cancanypicc.jpg

http://d1g4sq00ps2bp3.cloudfront.net/images/4455.jpg

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_38701/subcat_110367/Milton%20Caniff%20Steve%20Canyon%20.jpg

http://beyondthebunker.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/kirby-caniff-steve-canyon-1961-sunday.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VI5bJV2LucI/UVTLAS8-clI/AAAAAAAAHgs/_uuQCMl81w4/s600/Milton_Caniff-Steve_Canyon.jpg

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_3563/subcat_29270/CanyonD03231956.jpg

sic can you tell me if you got a ballot from me y/n?

not this week, I'm away, but 98% sure that I (/previous pollrunners) did

k cool bcz I remember starting to make one and maybe even finishing one but I cd not find it in my Sent folder!

=57: BRINGING UP FATHER by Geo McManus (44 points, 3 votes)
Archival samples.

Bringing Up Father told the story of Irish-American Jiggs, a former bricklayer, and his wife Maggie, an ex-laundress, who came into sudden wealth. While the snobbish Maggie and beautiful daughter Nora (referred to various times as Katy and Mamie in the strip's early days) constantly try to "bring up" Father to his new social position, Jiggs can think of nothing finer than sitting down at Dinty Moore's restaurant to finish off several dishes of corned beef and cabbage, followed by a night out with the boys from the old neighborhood. The clash of wills that ensued often resulted in flying rolling-pins, smashed crockery, and broken vases, all aimed in the general direction of Jiggs's skull.

http://comicskingdom.com/system/blog/2012/12/Bringing_Up_Father_1913-strips.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Bringupfather-comic1920.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iqL22lHxzHs/TnzXWKR3BXI/AAAAAAAAG_I/ke7HdiwFp7E/s1600/Wrigley+Ad+-+Bringing+Up+Father+-+6-6-26.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VF-11hNyS1Q/T5b9rUOsbHI/AAAAAAAAEmU/rbUfUeuuAiA/s1600/Bringing-Up-Father-19360112.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_SvmlM7-oNw0/S9nOjNbCJXI/AAAAAAAARug/_0TfN5VzqE0/s1600/bringing+up+Father.jpg

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/fatherpanel.jpg

=57: DREAM OF THE RAREBIT FIEND by Winsor McCay (44 points, 3 votes)
Torrent on archive.org

Eat cheese at night, trip out in your sleep.

http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/dream-of-the-rarebit-fiend/dream-of-the-rarebit-fiend-19041014-l.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Dream_of_the_Rarebit_Fiend_1905-01-28.jpg

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_4398/subcat_13732/McCay%20-%20Rarebit%20Fiend%201906-04-14.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--bGht5kcc-g/Tyf1ydfHh3I/AAAAAAAAA80/cXS3qvw2dSs/s1600/200-11.JPG

http://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/828/flashcards/856828/png/*windsor_mccay__dream_of_the_rarebit_fiend__april_7__1909_1336530921197.png

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xR1wW9HnQPA/Ts0yBL4ZKSI/AAAAAAAACJs/KdEsyOzI7eY/s1600/dreamoftherarebitfiend.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Winsor_McCay_-_Dream_of_the_Rarebit_Fiend_1913-05-25.png

http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/wp2013/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/katherine-roeder-commentary-winsow-mccay-dream-rarebit-fiend.jpg

=55: OGLAF by Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne (46 points, 3 votes)
Oglaf.

Creators of Platinum Grit give up on freeform print whimsy for sexy, squishy fantasy parody on the web.

http://i.imgur.com/i5zyXhY.png

http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/oglaf-comics-nsfw-time-travel-1047749.jpeg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XUvhNhFTMYA/T6fZRgsp7hI/AAAAAAAABtk/IZrnmtAg-A0/s1600/0047+also_elves.jpg

those rarebit fiend strips are amazing

^ can't really be said enough

this next one should have been the previous one:

=55: SCARY-GO-ROUND by John Allison (46 points, 2 votes)

I can’t find an accessible archive online. Here, buy four books’ worth and figure it out for yourself.

Supernatural high-school & twentysomething series set in West Yorkhire.

so to get it back in order, have some extra Oglaf for Xmas

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/a3/43/82/a34382ebd0010e049da7957ceaaa38d6.jpg

http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/comics-oglaf-sex-chance-848753.jpeg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ys8Xjc8Wy9Y/T6fY_5k3NQI/AAAAAAAABtU/fX_J2MtlvTQ/s1600/0024+skulls.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UH0KJ1GWJ40/T6fZiPL6R3I/AAAAAAAABt0/GjAKHtoV3ws/s1600/0016+Fountain_of_Death.jpg

nsfw

nsfw

nsfw

nsfw

nsfw

note to those unfamiliar with oglaf, "nsfw" not to be taken lightly in this case.

I think Oglaf is pretty hot tbh

can't remember if I voted for it, of course

oglaf is great. nsfw barely does it justice though.

also i totally just bought a copy of the 1973 dover rarebit fiend compilation on the strength of this thread.

oglaf & scary-go-round are cute, rarebit fiend is a miracle. need much, much larger images tho...

for people looking for much, much larger images of early-C20th newspaper strips, Sunday Press is having a sale - eg two table-sized volumes of McCay's Little Nemo for US$185, down from $250

http://www.sundaypressbooks.com/

Speaking of Little Nemo, this exists. I am very close to breaking down and ordering a copy.

that one's still the same negs as the Fanta books from the 80s AFAIK.

So are the Sunday Press versions much higher quality in addition to being larger? I wound up ordering that new collection last night regardless; reviews seemed generally positive and I had Amazon gift cards burning a hole in my pocket. I don't know all that much about the reputations of all the prior anthologies.

53: CAPTAIN EASY by Roy Crane (49 points, 2 votes)
Four enormo hardcovers in a bundle

Wash Tubbs gets taken over by sidekick.

http://www.lambiek.net/artists/image/c/crane_r/crane_captaineasy1941.jpg

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_16688/subcat_32609/Captain%20Easy.jpg

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

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/easy2-625x337.jpg

Are these colours legit?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Am9n2FV8y7U/TxaXTHtV8kI/AAAAAAAABlA/kHibSFMCy-4/s1600/captain%2Beasy%2B1.JPG

Yep. There are some coloring notes from Rick Norwood in Fanta's vol. 1 that confirm that and describe the process. Almost all the pages are reproduced from scans of the printed pieces.

amazing, would love to see that (in some kind of generous library). (also for ppl to post it on DK2 argument threads 13 years ago!) that one seen alone, seems done almost entirely for effect, not realism or narrative flow or anything traditional.

also a+ on the varying body types in the harem.

And the page composition, esp. on the right side: top of tree, middle of tree, bottom of tree. Decades ahead of Neal Adams.

Because I'm bored and waiting for work that should have come to me a week ago, here are those coloring notes. Most of this stuff won't be news to people who know the pre-digital comics production process.

For most of the history of the color Sunday comic strip, the colors were produced mechanically rather than photographically. The artist drew the strip on heavy, slightly off-white "boards," usually twice the size of the printed art. Then, in those pre-Xerox days, Velox copies were made on glossy white paper. The Velox process was both more time-consuming and more expensive than modern methods, and so the number of Velox copies was kept to a minimum.
Roy Crane then splashed colors directly onto the original art as a color guide, at least for the first frew years of the Sunday page.
The original and four Velox copies were then sent to the color separators. (Most Sunday comics were colored by Chemical Color Plate Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut.)
Young women sitting on tall stools at drafting tables created the color by adding black ink to three of the Velox prints, one for yellow, one for cyan, and one for magenta. The fourth Velox print provided the black. They were helped in this task by the artist's color guide and by a colorist who placed a transparent sheet over the color guide and, with a grease pencil, wrote color values. For example R2B3 meant that the magenta Velox would get a number two screen would have a number three screen in the same area. The result, when printed, would be a shade of purple.
A proof page was then prepared with each color on a separate overlay, and changes were made as necessary. The artist did not see the strip in color until he got that proof page in the mail, in some cases not until he saw the printed strip in the Sunday paper.
As you can see on the following pages, the artist's colors were not an attempt to create a painting, but just enough color to help the color separators do their job.
All of the Sunday pages in this book, with one exception, are from color color scans of Sunday pages printed in the newspapers. The one exception is the strip for October 6, 1935, where no color newspaper page could be found. That page has been colored in-house from a scan of a page in a newspaper that ran [the] strip in black and white.

That specificly dense luridity looks like it might have been designed for a specific storyline (I found the week before's). Wonder how much of that was Crane and how much might have been a separator who was on that particular job that month.

52: GET YOUR WAR ON by David Rees (51 points, 4 votes)
Entire thing here.

Clip-art office “lols” acquire furious satirical bent.

http://mnftiu.cc/blog/images/war.002.gif
http://mnftiu.cc/blog/images/war.006.gif
http://mnftiu.cc/blog/images/war.093.gif

=51: AMY & JORDAN by Mark Beyer (54 points, 3 votes)

Even Amazon doesn’t have used copies of the Pantheon hardcover. Anybody want to buy mine? And the German one?

Amy and Jordan has only three recurring characters: the eponymous couple and Amy’s sickly son Ba Tilsdale, who dies of neglect but occasionally returns as an ominous statue. Amy and Jordan’s relationship is antagonistic, yet they’re resigned to being stuck with each other–somewhere between Akbar and Jeff and Vladimir and Estragon. They share a decrepit apartment (critics speculate that they live on the Lower East Side) and slog through various mediocre jobs. Each strip chronicles a mysterious or unfortunate occurrence. The minor, disheartening tribulations of urban life–navigating the subway, run-ins with weirdos, vermin–take on monstrous proportions, and the city becomes a horrific carnival of disaster. Amy and Jordan are menaced by “demons carrying carving knives” and gigantic insects, and plagued by poisoned food. Many of the strips combine ordinary annoyance with surreal violence: when Jordan goes outside to ask a crazy man to stop screaming, the man responds unexpectedly: “He’s wrapped his snakelike tongue around my body. I’m paralyzed. I can’t move! Well it’s good. Now Amy can sleep unmolested.” Beyer’s stilted, clunky dialogue makes even the most disturbing events funny, and his characters’ reactions to tragedy are gruesomely pragmatic. … Watching the parade of downtrodden souls trudging past their window, Amy concludes, “The world is a horrible place filled with terrible people.” - Zoe Roller

YAAASSS

I had two copies of this. Gave one to an ex. The other came with a signed Beyer illustration on an index card B-)

I love this comic so. fucking. much.

have almost bought that book a few times because it feels like it's the kind of thing that's right up my alley, but something about beyer's art is really creepy and off-putting to me. but i love the way those panels are designed, so i should probably just suck it up and give it a chance.

OK have some more then

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_528/subcat_154126/beyer2.jpg

http://www.outsiderartnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/7D485583-27DC-4CDE-ABA92332B58949CF.jpg

http://www.comicartcollective.com/artImages/8040BE08-AC23-498F-8B5AC1FA3C0791D3.gif

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fYDQ9nbUgT8/TZypwTH0IzI/AAAAAAAAA7w/tp1rJAKz6Ow/s1600/beyer2.jpg

http://www.scotteder.com/Images/Category_2/subcat_850/beyer-aj-what.jpg

http://www.comicartcollective.com/artImages/7173A64B-63F8-4EA9-92377AD076929B38.gif

I can only take Beyer in small doses, but damn, his stuff never looks less than fucking GREAT.

yeah, that's the tragedy of his aesthetic - absolutely perfect for once-a-week exposure in a paper, wearying even in the Maroverlag collection, let alone the Pantheon one - I never came close to finishing the latter

Get Your War On such a Bush-era thing, from back before we all stopped really even caring about wars

=51: LITTLE LULU by Marge (54 points, 3 votes)
Marge and Lulu: The Art of the Deal

You might be thinking of the comic books, done anonymously by John Stanley.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Firstlittlelulu022335.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/Little-lulu-1943-marge.jpg
http://www.lambiek.net/artists/image/m/marge/marge_lulu2.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/1656/3636/400/marge_lulu1.jpg

=49: PEARLS BEFORE SWINE by Stephen Pastis (55 points, 2 votes)
Universal

Pearls Before Swine is a syndicated comic strip that runs in 750 newspapers around the world. The strip pairs an angry, arrogant Rat with a sweet but dumb Pig, the latter of whom is protected by a violent, albeit delusional Guard Duck. Pig and Rat’s friends also include a bookish, intelligent Goat, and a poor, besieged Zebra whose only goal is to keep from being eaten by his inept and inarticulate next-door neighbors, the Fraternity of Zeeba Zeeba Eata crocodiles. Oh, and there are some lemmings who kill themselves.

https://fashionsspeaklouder.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/bwvnkw.jpg

http://www.indyweek.com/binary/7417/1349599133-pb100823__library_fine_.jpg

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content//photo/2008/08/13/PH2008081302511.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-07XFuj_4A-o/TZOKOy7zmJI/AAAAAAAAAVo/idmzYjd33Wg/s1600/pearls%2Bbefore%2Bswine%2B2011%2B03%2B30.gif

=49: WONDERMARK by David Malki (55 points, 3 votes)
Wondermark

C19th illustrations detourned for ironolols.

http://www.wondermark.com/comics/013.gif
http://www.wondermark.com/comics/147.gif
http://www.wondermark.com/comics/119.gif

http://www.wondermark.com/comics/260.gif
http://www.wondermark.com/comics/275.gif

i like marge's original LL cartoons a lot, really wish they'd get a full reprinting. it's funny how little resemblance they bear to the john stanley comics -- lulu's personality seems very different.

Yeah, it was interesting to see how distinct Lulu is when I was looking for images. How late did it run or reprint anywhere? Genuinely curious how much exposure the voters had (obviously, from the blurb)

couldn't you just have had a post with the word "wondermark" and left it at that?

you assume Wondermark is going to be the best-known strip in the entire poll?

can we just like maybe post a list of the rest of the results

I was happy posting the results! sic wanted to do it.

I blame the poor reliability of undersea fiber to Australia

try kale.

should be re-rolling out as soon as I'm unemployed & have moved 10,000 comics and records into storage

=47: TERRY & THE PIRATES by Milt Caniff (56 points, 4 votes)
Complete in six volumes.

The adventure begins with young Terry Lee, "a wide-awake American boy," arriving in contemporary China with his friend, two-fisted journalist Pat Ryan. Seeking a lost gold mine they meet George Webster "Connie" Confucius, interpreter and local guide. Initially, crudely drawn backgrounds and stereotypical characters surrounded Terry as he matched wits with pirates and various other villains. He developed an ever larger circle of friends and enemies, including Big Stoop, Captain Judas, Cheery Blaze, Chopstick Joe, Cue Ball and Dude Hennick.
Most notable of all was the famed femme fatale, the Dragon Lady, who started as an enemy and later, during the war, became an ally. Caniff included a number of non-American female antagonists, all of whom referred to themselves in the third person. These included the Dragon Lady herself and crooks and spies like Sanjak and Rouge. In a rather bold move for a 1940s comic strip, Sanjak was hinted at being a lesbian cross-dresser with designs on Terry's girlfriend April Kane.[3] Caniff purportedly named the character after an island next to the isle of Lesbos.
Over time, due to a successful collaboration with cartoonist Noel Sickles, Caniff dramatically improved to produce some of the most memorable strips in the history of the medium.

http://allstarcomicart.com/auctionimages/uploads/775_2.gif
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/cartoonamerica/images/ca062-06582v.jpg

http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_10270/subcat_93001/CANIFF_TERRY%20SUNDAY_CAF.jpg
http://cdn.comicartfans.com/Images/Category_5676/subcat_10373/Milton%20Caniff%20-%20Terry%20and%20the%20Pirates%20Partial%20Sunday%20Comic%20Strip%20Original%20Art%20dated%2011-19-39%20Chicago%20Tribune%201939%20small.jpg

=46: GARFIELD by Anonymous Employees (58 points, 6 votes)
The official web site for the cool fat cat with games, fan club, e-cards and online catalog.

Jim Davis created and contributes jokes to this comic strip about a fat cat who is lazy and likes lasagna, and his proto-Redditor owner. Piggybacked on the format of B. Kliban’s “dead cat” cartoon books, and was so successful it became the default format for strip collections for a decade.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_M6vB-ENvPwQ/Rg8qZTytkSI/AAAAAAAAACM/6DHr6JtwTpA/s1600-h/Garfield.gif
http://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/comics/0129.png
http://www.reocities.com/televisioncity/5479/garfcomc.gif

debut strip:

http://www.comicmix.com/media/2007/06/19/garfield_19_jun_1978.png

Because someone had to:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_D7ZpkVIAAXHR8.jpg

what the

idg this poll, the rollout, or the joke in that Garfield strip

the joke in that Garfield strip is that Jon just drank a cup of dog sperm

Does dog semen resemble coffee in any way

Apart from being hot when freshly made

I'm not familiar enough with dog semen to say

but... drinking dog semen doesn't make you pregnant. so the implication is that the cup contains ... dog pregnancy test results? idgi

which would be (I guess) dog urine (or blood)? neither of which resemble coffee.

Garfield hates puppies

but... drinking dog semen doesn't make you pregnant.

oh my god dude

maybe Garfield is pregnant with puppies somehow