Panel Discussion - The ILX Comic Strip Poll Results

since Terry was 56 pts, 4 votes and Garfield 58 pts, 6 votes, I don't need to do any complex math to suggest that their relative placement in this poll was essentially a coin flip. One might consider it a flaw in the Borda count that a candidate that 4 people ranked an average of 36th out of 50 (was it 50?) might lose to a candidate 6 people ranked an average of 40th out of 50. Especially if 4 of those 6 people also voted for Terry in a higher position. (Apparently this is a violation of the "later-no-harm" criterion, thanks Wikipedia.) You might be able to use a single transferable vote instead and get slightly less goofballs results when you get beyond the "overwhelming consensus" part of the poll

Terry and the Pirates is too wordy. Garfield, on the other hand, is in-and-out. A set-up, a situation, a punchline – then OUT.

Shoulda been ten places in between them.

=46: GET FUZZY by Darby Conley (58 points, 4 votes)
Universal

This daily strip features the squabbling dog and cat of a Boston advertising executive, it says here. Truly a Garfield for our modern times.

http://www.quotationspage.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/getfuzzy2007261870726.gif
http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/30500000/Get-Fuzzy-bruce-willis-30555056-1650-1275.jpg
http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/6000000/Get-Fuzzy-get-fuzzy-6025370-725-378.jpg

Garfield placing behind Get Fuzzy = on no poll anywhere should that happen

Yeah, that one just shut my mouth.

Get Fuzzy often eschews the traditional "setup-punchline" format of most funnies, instead building on absurd dialog between characters.[1][2][3][4]

this seems like a longwinded way of saying 'has no good jokes'

Garfield tied with Get Fuzzy.

http://www.citizenx.cx/img/comics/get_fuzzy_food_anything.gif
http://www.argon.org/~roderick/tmp/favorite-comics/Get%20Fuzzy-2004.06.20.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6782/168/1600/getfuzzy2006043261710.jpg

Guys I am starting to suspect comic strips are all quite bad

I like to think that Satchel and Bucky are both stuffed animals IRL. We just never see them in that form since fucking Rob Wilco never leaves the house and has no friends.

What a world.

http://i.imgur.com/Gc7ehwl.png

44: FLASH GORDON by Alex Raymond (59 points, 3 votes)
Peter Maresca on restoration.

Elegant sci-fi adventure.

too low!

I'm assuming I voted for it highly. At this point I have no idea what I voted for or where on the ballot.

Guys I am starting to suspect comic strips are all quite bad

I'm sure there's stuff I've missed, but I haven't seen anything in a mainstream newspaper from the last fifteen years that didn't fall somewhere between mediocre and abysmal. I have no idea who these things are for anymore.

Like, stuff like Get Fuzzy and Mutts is, at best, blandly inoffensive and okay to look at. That's about as good as it gets these days.

i never saw get fuzzy before, i kind of like it

Never been big on characters who always wear a baseball cap. Even Chip Flagston and Curtis bug me with their's.

43: FEIFFER by Jules Feiffer (60 points, 5 votes)

As his scope broadened, and syndication expanded, Feiffer essentially removed the title of his strip, and spent several decades chronicling the concerns of American culture and politics through the eyes of middle-aged, middle-class white East Coasters, plus the seasonal whimsy of a dancer's metaphor.

http://www.adambaumgoldgallery.com/feiffer_jules/family_get_togetherWB.jpg
http://www.sahej.com/images/Feiffer-Splat_em.jpg
http://www.adambaumgoldgallery.com/feiffer_jules/a_dance_to_autumn1997WB.jpg

http://www.27east.com/assets/Article/196788/AFieffer4.jpg
http://www.ifstone.org/images/feiffer.jpg
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/photos/uncategorized/2009/01/26/julesfeiffer.jpg

http://press.uchicago.edu/sites/feiffer/gallery/img/Feiffer3_Dance_to_spring.jpeg
http://www.adambaumgoldgallery.com/feiffer_jules/Feiffer2015/do_you_bernard_take_oliviaWB.jpg

42: LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE by Harold Gray (62 points, 5 votes)
Gray vs Sin City

Strip about an adorable dead-eyed orphan girl and her benevolent dead-eyed industrialist protector makes its way from social liberal concerns to dead-eyed pro-management, under the sinister anti-influence of FDR.

ME: And the weird thing was they didn't have pupils...

BEEPS: Like zombies?

ME: No, not scary, if you can believe it. And she had really curly red hair.

BEEPS: You mean brown hair.

ME: What? No, I meant red hair. How would you know?

BEEPS: I saw the movie. She also has brown skin.

ME: What?

<3

Annie is garbage

yeah, that's wrong. the art and writing and control of the medium is top notch, the politics are nauseating.

find it hard to understand how anyone could dismiss LOA wholesale as "garbage." have not delved too deeply into any of the recent collections yet but there are a few sunday pages in the smithsonian collection that rank among the most stunning pages of comic art i've ever seen. tbh i don't care much about the politics of old strips, obv i am more likely to agree w/ the politics of any shittily written and drawn weekly comic than cranky old harold gray, but i'd rather look at a LOA strip and ignore the words than suffer through a tom tomorrow collection or whatever.

Yes, I agree with you J.D. - the early(ish) LOA strips in particular have a very unique, semi-supernatural flavour that is quite masterly. Gray's freewheeling approach to narrative reminds me quite a lot of Segar, which is obv a v. high compliment, and I just love the 'anything goes' feeling these early[(ish) American newspaper strips have - they're far from formulaic or predictable.

it's true I've read v little of LOA since I find it loathsome in a way that exceeds the garden variety racism common to p much every strip of the era. I've read the strips in the Smithsonian collection and some other random bits here and there. I can't deny the brushwork and the overall competence on display, but I just can't get into it.

Also every time I see it I am reminded of that Eisner Spirit strip w the parodies of LOA and Dick Tracy

(which - how could I forget - opens with the murder of "Al Slapp")

Poll should have been called "Panel Beating"

41: INVENTIONS OF PROFESSOR LUCIFER G BUTTS by Rube Goldberg (63 points, 3 votes)
Art influences life.

In my cartoons Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts invented elaborate machines to accomplish such Herculean tasks as shining shoes, opening screen doors, keeping moths out of clothes closets, retrieving soap  in the bathtub and other innocuous problems. Only, instead of using the scientific elements of the laboratory, I added acrobatic monkeys, dancing mice, chattering false teeth, electric eels, whirling dervishes and other incongruous elements…

I have never seen any of that strip before and omg I love it

TOP 40!

40: POLLY & HER PALS by Cliff Sterrett (64 points, 3 votes)
enormous hardcover of colour Sundays from syndicate proofs

Starting in 1912 as a strip about a ~liberated~ young woman, it widened cast scope and eventually settled on largely being about Polly’s pa. As the strip continued into the Jazz age, Sterret’s cartooning became more stylish, stylized and demonstrative.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/65/Pollypals72752.jpg

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/wp-content/o/Polly%26Pals%201927%20Surreal3.jpg

http://artnote.blog.com/files/2012/04/polly1.jpg

http://www.ustownhall.com/usth/images/stories/Library-American-Comics/polly-181124.gif

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/wp-content/b/polly%209.jpg

http://webcomicoverlook.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/pp4.jpg

http://ryalltime.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/polly_260808.jpg

will, seriously? get this book asap.
https://www.rubegoldberg.com/product/the-art-of-rube-goldberg/

sterrett's cartooning, page layout and use of color some of the best all time of course

yeah that opera strip is incredible

biggest disappointment about having to wait to be laid off to finish this rollout is not being able to look at those Polly strips huge again (my laptop screen is about 13cm high)

39: DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR by Alison Bechdel (65 points, 4 votes)
Three-quarters of the strip in one book.

Alt-weekly strip that neatly balanced being a chronicle of lesbian personal politics through the 80s and 90s with engaging soap opera narrative.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lfc1rcqsAB1qgnkh1o1_500.jpg

http://blog.1979semifinalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/bechdel-2.jpg

https://media2.wnyc.org/i/620/793/c/80/1/1542_DTWOF_438.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2018/2416536152_6d97521964_b.jpg

<3

38: BLONDIE by Chic Young (66 points, 7 votes)
RC Harvey summarises.

Beginning as a fad-riding flapper adventures strip, the titular floozy shacked up with a young rich wastrel (who was promptly cut off), and quickly ossified the strip into decades of “men take naps like THIS”. Largely ghosted from 1935 to 1970, which made it hard to find images for the nominated period.

http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0006/images/blondie_4.jpg
http://d1g4sq00ps2bp3.cloudfront.net/images/0120.jpg
http://www.animationresources.org/pics/blondie06-big.jpg

http://d1k217qge1tz5p.cloudfront.net/img/Items/20000/19106.jpg

I didn't realise that Blondie is still written by Chic Young's son (does he actually write the scripts or just sign off on them or something?)

I would never trust the credits on a family legacy strip.

37: PRINCE VALIANT by Hal Foster (67 points, 5 votes)
Books galore, so many that most of them are out of print.

The prettiest-drawn and most boringly-written strip in newspaper history? Five people might say nay!

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6e6wpa7Y_0I/UzV-80LItkI/AAAAAAAATes/o20RKBXzoyA/s1600/prince+valiant+Sunday.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ff/00/db/ff00dbc56cdb73fb8c930bac01e58650.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/kitbrash/39valCAF_zpsedv1nv5b.jpg

The prettiest-drawn and most boringly-written strip in newspaper history

This is my feeling too, but I suppose there are more than enough prettily written and boringly drawn comics to cut Foster some slack.

Wally Wood's Prince Valiant tryout page after Foster died (he didn't get the gig):

http://princevaliant.marianobayona.com/wallywood1762.jpg

I love the reprints, but can't disagree that they're art books and little more.

i came to prince valiant expecting it to be boring but it became one of my favorites of the recent reprint projects. i can see how people find it staid but there's a certain charm to its rhythms.

fun to wonder whether Wood would have been able to become rich and happy on Valiant, or would have angrily, month by month, tried to sneak more naked tits in there until he was acrimoniously fired

Yeah, I'm sure Wood's inability to stick with anything for very long counted much more against him than that tryout page - and for sure, PV is p chaste/de-sexed even by mainstream American newspaper strips standards. John Cullen Murphy, the guy who did take over the art from Foster, was nowhere near as exciting or sensual an artist as Wood, but he did stay on the strip for 34 years.

36: BEETLE BAILEY by Mort Walker (68 points, 5 votes)
You can buy original pages that Mort Walker didn’t draw, signed by Mort Walker, from Mort’s E-Shop. feedback is appreciated.

Soldiers are lazy and lecherous. Hey, it’s a living!

http://cdn.coollinesartwork.com/Images/Category_2/subcat_29916/Beetle12301956.jpg
http://beetlebailey.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/152/files/vintage/BBT19740624.jpg

One day, the University of Missouri may erect a statue of one of my characters. And then, I can go slack off next to it.

http://i.imgur.com/GtVTW6t.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/9fVca6o.jpg

Would've liked to see Wally Wood's Miss Buxley, while we're on topic.