Panel Discussion - The ILX Comic Strip Poll Results

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.

Or was that Sally Forth.

i literally cannot parse that beetle bailey obama strip

where's tuomas I assume 40 of the 68 points are from him

http://www.viceland.com/blogs/en/files/2011/09/vicecomics00c1-670x197.jpg

—Bob Marley

Damn, Rocky smoking some Dunhills or shit.

35: LI'L ABNER by Al Capp (73 points, 4 votes)
Characters catalogued by Kitchen.

Rollicking, vibrant strip that combined joyous Americana with bitter satire on venality, large and small. “I think Capp may very possibly be the best writer in the world today. I am sure that he is the best satirist since Laurence Sterne,” said John Steinbeck in a paperback introduction. Remained under the creator’s primary authorship longer than most mid-century strips, enabling it to switch to cranky right-wingery as Capp did in later years.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/kitbrash/Abner09091951ForNet_zpsdxczs0w0.jpg

http://www.printmag.com/wp-content/uploads/Abner_1950-07-02.jpg

Frazetta on this track:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/kitbrash/sdFrankFrazettaSunday261955_zpsa9scg6jt.jpg

http://www.printmag.com/wp-content/uploads/Abner_1957-08-25.jpg

http://www.printmag.com/wp-content/uploads/Fosdick_Wildroot.jpg

http://www.printmag.com/wp-content/uploads/Abner_1968-10-13.jpg

Sic, did I ever tell you about the time I literally met the Shmoo?

http://ericbeall.berkleemusicblogs.com/files/2011/03/shmoo8mt.jpg

It was at this place.

http://i.imgur.com/1jL7iQb.jpg

which lately, has looked more like this:

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

Saggiest Shmoo scrotum ever.

Though bringing up the Shmoo after Lil' Abner's appearance in a poll is a bit like bringing up Chachi in a Fonzie tribute, my apologies.

Capp has to be p much the most despicable comics creator ever:

http://www.newsfromme.com/2013/04/20/the-shame-of-dogpatch/

oh wau: Dan (The Imp) Raeburn dropped a giant Capp dis in 1999

xpost!

whenever i've tried to read abner it just comes off as a bit too broad and obvious for my taste, like capp couldn't help looking down his nose at all of his characters, even the sympathetic ones. i felt this way before i knew anything much about capp as a person.

man

The only thing about Li’l Abner that is funny now is the fact that so many people once gave a hoot about it. After plowing through all forty-three years of Capp’s daily comics—comics consisting almost entirely of vicious burlesques, boilerplate dialogue, and ridiculously contrived “situation comedy”—one is bored beyond all emotions save irritation.

brutal

34: MOOMIN by Tove Jansson and Lars Jansson (74 points, 4 votes)
Offical history.

Nine years after the first novel in Tove Jansson’s series of whimsical/existential tales for children (mostly), a UK paper commissioned her to begin a weekly strip for adults (mostly). The strip had a stronger focus on social satire than the inner dread and joy of the books, and was widely syndicated at the time, but rapidly forgotten after its two-decade run. Three years in, Tove’s brother Lars began collaborating on the writing, and secretly taught himself to draw in the event that she decided to quit. This happened in 1960, and Lars continued for another 14 years solo.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/effgeevee/moomins005.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/effgeevee/moomins009.jpg

I'm sceptical that there are 33 comic strips better than Moomin

bought a couple of jules ffeiffer books after reading about him on this thread, loving them, thank you v much ilx

Which Fieffer books, Stevie? Would highly recommend Tantrum if you haven't got it already (tho' it's one long original narrative rather than a collection of VV strips)

Fun fact (probably known by most people here): Feiffer also wrote the screenplays for Carnal Knowledge and Popeye.

Got one called boy girl boy girl, and have his nixon book coming in the post! like the sound of the long narrative...

My favourite Feiffer screenplay is for Little Murders, based on his play - criminally unavailable on DVD

? The elliot gould movie? That is on dvd, i've watched it

It was once issued on DVD in the US, but has been out of print for years, and has never had an official European release

It's on youtube, I've had it cued up to watch for a while (and never quite managed it)

it's good!

still kinda marveling at that Al Capp takedown, I had no idea about most of that stuff. Have read bits of the strip over the years and (kinda similar to Pogo) been kinda perplexed at its rep - what was it with 40s-50s America's fascination with fake yokel vernacular? - but that piece really lays it out well.

xpost Jim O'Rourke once wrote a nice piece about Little Murders:

http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49687

Also search: 'Hey Jules' by Drew Friedman

if Boy Girl Boy Girl has a bunch of Bernard and/or Huey strips, it ought to be great

33: GREAT POP THINGS by Colin B. Morton & Chuck Death (78 points, 3 votes)
a 1998 best-of collection printed so badly that it hurts one’s eyes to read

A ratty, funny, wildly-inaccurate parodic history of rock and pop music, appearing in weekly music papers int he late ‘80s to mid-‘90s, pseudonymously drawn by the lead singer of The Mekons. Most strips managed to condense an artist’s entire career into three or four panels, and continuity was rarely maintained from one week to the next.

Fricke: Packing each frame with rude caricatures, textual puns and mischievous apocrypha, Death and Morton recount rock's crucial episodes and life stories, skewering superstars and demolishing hagiography along the way. When Dylan goes electric, a heckler doesn't shout, 'Judas!' He yells 'Boo! Do you know any Judas Priest?' U2 make a concert film about 'a hugely famous Irish group going to America and inventing all forms of American music simultaneously.' … Morrissey was outraged by the huge chin that Langford gave him in an early cartoon. (Langford made the chin even larger in later strips.) But when Morton interviewed Polly Jean Harvey for a magazine article, he confessed to his part in "Great Pop Things"' devilish PJ Harvey parody ('She tried to change the world in her fake-leopard-fur fifty-foot invisible-bunny costume'). Her response was a shriek of delight: "Oh! I've got it up on my fridge."

http://sp8.fotolog.com/photo/40/55/57/ashbrg/1126871966_f.jpg

http://www.beefheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MortonDeath4.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zsSCH4C2dvI/U8ZMqCNcAMI/AAAAAAAABgY/UcyABkUu7ns/s1600/msppop1.jpg

https://33.media.tumblr.com/25ca4e265a219185c5a0e008d39edcde/tumblr_nd6mx6svmp1s180omo1_500.png

http://www.beefheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MortonDeath3.jpg

if Boy Girl Boy Girl has a bunch of Bernard and/or Huey strips, it ought to be great

it does, and it is!

omg I have never heard of Great Pop Things, wow thanks

Heh I remember Ben Watson once fuming abt Great Pop Things because they took the piss out of Alexander Von Schlippenbach's name

Wish I could find 'Steve Albini feeds his cat' somewhere.

Thats like ILM THE COMIC STRIP

32: JULIUS KNIPL, REAL ESTATE PHOTOGRAPHER by Ben Katchor (81 points, 4 votes)
Kniplpage. (Official site, containing a single strip.)

A middle-aged man, seemingly out of time, wanders the city with the aim of capturing still moments of dignified architecture, but frequently gets distracted from his inner ruminations by the intrusion of human flotsam.

http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/9/8/1410186754018/22bb248d-4adf-48d5-bb7a-edae6e956639-1020x698.jpeg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3Nr-z3vV_V4/TccGoJuM9EI/AAAAAAAAA2Y/AURWyX_cQZE/s1600/katchor-the-radiator-musician-da-julius-knipl-real-estate-photographer.jpg

http://www.uky.edu/~grissom/knipl.gif

ben katchor is great

in my top 10

Such an amazing piece of work. Super nice guy, too.

Here's a link to a really big pic of a book he signed to me:

https://highter.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/tumblr_mld7whrbrn1qbknquo1_1280.jpg?w=700