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Peanuts? What is your all-time favorite syndicated comic strip?

Started by 14 of spades,

74 posts in this topic

rjpb

rjpb

Posted
Posted

Humor - have to go with Calvin & Hobbes

 

Adventure - Tracy (especially the 40s and 50s stuff)

 

Currently running fave - Get Fuzzy

 

I agree that the early years of Garfield were not bad - but after the early 80s - suckola.

Peanuts is timeless - but Schultz should have retired earlier.

 

 

Other current strips I like are Pearls before Swine and Bizarro.

 

Wish there were still good adventure strips - I enjoy old strips like Kerry Drake and Johnny Hazard in reprint form.

 

I was a big Zippy the Pinhead fan for along time, but Bill Griffith seems to be stuck in a rut the last several years - It's become as predictable as Blondie.

 

 

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tth2

tth2

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Posted

In terms of older strips, I loved Gasoline Alley and Buck Rogers back in their heyday (obviously I read reprints). The Sunday adventure strips, like Flash Gordon and Tarzan (by Foster) are wonderful and a real feast for the eyes. I never got that much into Prince Valiant, even though I loved the artwork.

 

The critically acclaimed strips that I could just never get into were Li`l Abner and Steve Canyon.

 

Peanuts was absolutely brilliant into the mid-1960s, and then the strip ran out of inspiration, in my opinion. Which is a problem of the medium--too many of them just run on sheer inertia after some initial quality because it seems newspapers are too afraid of retiring dead strips. Which makes it really difficult for new talents to break through, because there`s such limited space available.

 

Other favorites through the years have been Doonesbury, Calvin and Hobbes, For Better or Worse and Dilbert.

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goldust40

goldust40

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Bloom County is being published in a nifty new format, but I've already got all the original volumes. I'd go with that, Peanuts (obviously), B.C. , Doonesbury and the Far Side. As for the English stuff, there's Andy Capp, If..., Alex and Modesty Blaise.

 

However I'm not following much these days, except for some of the strips in Private Eye.

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143ksk

143ksk

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Here's a link to a top 5 comic strip thread from 5 years ago.

 

This was my take then:

 

In my opinion the five greatest comic strips are:

 

1). Peanuts. No question about this one. Charles Schulz is the one true genius of the American comic strip. From the security blanket to Lucy's psychiatric booth to the Red Baron, no other strip has given as much to American culture as Peanuts. Schultz literally rewrote the rule book for the comic strip. Just imagine opening your newspaper in the newly optimistic post-WWII days of 1950 and seeing the new comic strip with the punchline "Good old Charlie Brown--how I hate him!"

 

2). Pogo. Walt Kelly was by far the most accomplished artist of the American comic strip and not far behind that as a writer. Mixing sight gags, dialectic humor and slapstick with biting (and in some cases dangerous) political humor, he too helped rewrite what was acceptable content for a comic strip.

 

3). Doonesbury. Takes politcal humor to the next level. Plus any strip that has a chemically altered Duke freaking out over having to give a speech to a room full of savage winged lizards has to make my list.

 

4). Calvin and Hobbes. Reminiscent of both Peanuts and Pogo. It also adds both a hard edge and soft side that neither of those two strips had. By far the prettiest strip since Pogo.

 

5). Dilbert. You've all seen Scott Adams' artistic talents. That's how good his writing has to be to make this list! And I don't even work in a cube...

 

My favorite newer strip is Pearls Before Swine

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Jeffro.

Jeffro.

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Glad to see a couple B.C. fans. What a great strip. Very dry sarcastic humor.

 

My favs include

 

Bloom County

B.C.

Far Side

Foxtrot

Calvin and Hobbes

Peanuts

 

 

Speaking of Bloom County above,does any body have

the Billy and the Boingers flexi single??

 

Yep. Still attached to the book I believe.

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Wrightson fan

Wrightson fan

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Really Old stuff.....Alex Raymond's Secret Agent X-9, Toonerville Trolley, Tracy in the 1940's....superior stuff with all of the unique villians and death traps set for Tracy. Peanuts in the 50's-mid 60's. Doonesbury in the 60's through the Vietnam/Nixon Watergate years. Probably my favorite strip...especially with the creation of Duke and his Hunter S. Thompson persona. Loved Zonker, BD, Phred and Boopsie. Awesome characters all.

 

Older stuff no longer created, Bloom County (Billy and the Boingers baby) Calvin, and definitely Far Side. Far Side would be my favorite

 

Newer stuff, doesn't exist.

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