Comic Strip Draft: Round 2

Grimbil:
Before there was the Office, there was Dilbert. Office humor at it’s best, strips immediately started popping up in corporate America. I challenge you to find a business in America that doesn’t have at least one Dilbert cartoon tacked up in a break room or other public space. The corporate environment is full of joke material, and Dilbert knocks it out of the park more times than not. Where would Drew Carey be without Dilbert? Would we have a Michael Scott if there was no Dilbert? It’s aimed squarely at office geeks and sometimes it’s almost too painfully true to read.

LD:
Damn it, I was holding out the hope that Dilbert would survive until my pick. Now I’m left with nothing but comics I hate.

E:
I should add to Grimbil’s earlier response that I LOVE Bloom County. It’s a fascinating look at the neuroses of our society, represented by some of the best realized absurd characters ever. It’s still one of the few strips that can make me LULZ while reading it. And yes, Bill the Cat should get a statue somewhere.

Dilbert’s cool.

JC:
I grew up in a household which lacked rules regarding what I could and could not watch. Accordingly, I was exposed to gripping thrillers, gory horror and boobies. Oh the boobies. But my first exposure to what could be seen as politically incorrect humor came in a comic strip I barely, understood, Andy Capp. If Andy, as he appeared in the early 80s appeared today in comic strips, people would be taking to the streets. He smoking, drinking and domestic violence all have become taboo for the main character of anything (well maybe a Willie Ames-Kirk Cameron project).

While I eventually gave up on old Andy, I’ll always remember that a cloud of smoke was my introduction to mature comedy.

E:
I can’t shake the image of Andy Capp from the bags of hot fries potato chips. He really sold out, that boozing no goodnik.

LD:
It would have been out of character for him not to sell out. And, can’t we all agree that both Flo and Andy had it coming?

Seriously, I never had any idea what was going on in that strip.

E:
Those hot fries were fucking good. Nom nom nom

JC:
I had completely blocked the fries out…the only place I ever saw them was at the bowling alley. I was a child bowler.

LD:
With a hardscrabble past like that, you were destined to end up here, with us.

SN:
Oh Andy Capp, you wife-beating drunk.

E:
It’s time for someone to pick Hagar the Horrible. So we can all talk about how much it sucked.

LD:
I agree. It’s time to start picking the things we hate the least, and making our hatred obvious.

E:
I still have 2-3 that I legitimately like. And one that I like a lot.

Grimbil:
Perhaps 2 rounds is enough

And I like Hagar. Of course, my dad taught icelandic studies and was a huge viking buff, so the household was a bit biased

E:
Grimbil, you never gave your spirited defense of Far Side.

SN:
Sorry E, but I’m taking another single-panel comic, Bizarro. Dan Piraro offers a weird, humorous look at the world with his panels, often including sketches of things that clearly don’t belong, yet not being as incomprehensible or pretentious as Zippy the Pinhead. If not always laugh out loud funny, his panels manage to make fun of the absurdity of life.

E:
I’m not familiar with that, so I’m just assuming it sucks and that secretly you wish it was family circus.

Y:
I’ll take Get Fuzzy.
I discovered this while receiving the LA Times when I lived in California. It’s about a guy in Boston and his two anthropomorphic pets, an insane cat, and a loyal boring dog. Bucky Katt is the cat, and is just ridiculous. He’s an over the top parody of all things conservative and stupid. He watches a ton of TV and naps a lot, and basically tortures Satchel (the dog) and Rob his owner. Part social commentary, part dumb jokes, I think it’s pretty consistently funny.

LD:
I’m taking Gil Thorp, for purely ironic reasons. It’s one of the classic story strips, which are best known for sucking, something Gil Thorp does in spades. What separates Gil Thorp from the pack is that the storylines tend to be so absurd that it reads more like a comic version of a Road House quality B-movie. The existence of super-awesome blog This Week in Milford, which was created solely to make fun of the strip, only adds to its charm.

E:
Get Fuzzy’s good. I never loved it, but it’s one of the newer comics that I don’t hate, which to be honest, is saying a lot these days.

I am picking Foxtrot. Sure, a lot of Foxtrot is very innocent and tame humor, but it was one of the first times I saw the “geek as cool” convention thrown around as a kid. Plus, there was a lizard in it. Awesome. Also, his name was Andy CAPP and he wore a cap. I thought that was pretty clever.