Panel Discussion - The ILX Comic Strip Poll Results

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