Panel Discussion - The ILX Comic Strip Poll Results

15: FOXTROT by Bill Amend (137 points, 7 votes)
Classics on Universal.

The Fox family lives in a suburban setting. Several storylines in the strip have focused on summer vacation trips to various places. Early on, the Fox family spent summer vacation at "Uncle Ralph's Cabin". Later vacations by the Fox family have included trips to Hawaii, Washington D.C., the desert, various amusement parks (see Bury My Heart at Fun-Fun Mountain for an example), and campgrounds. In a series of strips though, references are made implying that they live in or near Chicago. However, Amend has denied this and claims that he has never given a particular location or name for where they live.

Early in the strip's run, FoxTrot often dealt with societal issues such as drug abuse.

http://vancouver-webpages.com/security/foxtrot.png

http://www.platypuscomix.net/otherpeople/foxtrot1.jpg

http://www.wutsamada.com/aol/lshauser/foxtrot.jpg

http://www.wutsamada.com/comix/binary.jpg

http://www.math.wustl.edu/~victor/classes/puzzles/ft1.gif

kill me now, but i found those dilberts funny

It's okay. You can find some Dilbert strips funny and still think Scott Adams is a creepy dick.

re: FoxTrot - HA, anyone think I'm joking about Drabble?

I supplied an idea for a Dilbert once. The punchline in the eventual strip was "I don't have the time to read my torso"

I have a sort of mild fondness for FoxTrot even if I would never want to sit down and read any quantity of it again. Was big into it circa age 10-12-ish; naturally, me and my nerd buddy related mainly to Jason. It is, as family sitcom strips go, harmless and cleanly-drawn, though Amend generally coasted on a few very limited expressions/eyebrow positions for his cast, much like Trudeau and Jim Davis. Par for the format, I guess, but with Calvin and Hobbes shooting off visual fireworks a few strips over, par for the format started looking a bit lazy.

Still, you know, I had the first five collections and read them repeatedly; was just thinking of one storyline the other day when my friend found a lost wallet. ("You know what this means, right?" "Eugene Blankenship is out eighty bucks?" "No - we have an ethical dilemma on our hands.") Not the worst thing, but I doubt its placement this high means any individual voter actually thinks it's better than most of the stuff below.

http://www.eden-study.org/personal/images/dilbert.gif

Shitty lettering.

Bagge/Ryan's "Dildobert" is the last word on scott adams imo

The best thing Dilbert ever spawned was this video which I have probably watched 100 times in my life.

I keep getting an error message when posting the next entry, looks like Fox Trot may have to stand as our most-beloved for all time

fitting end to thread imo

wwhy shrek is piss. why shrek is piss #italiano

Still, you know, I had the first five collections and read them repeatedly; was just thinking of one storyline the other day when my friend found a lost wallet. ("You know what this means, right?" "Eugene Blankenship is out eighty bucks?" "No - we have an ethical dilemma on our hands.")

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, December 1, 2015 2:51 PM (4 hours ago)

lol, this has totally happened to me before. i guess there's just something about the name "eugene blankenship" that sticks in the mind.

kept trying in two browsers, ILX doesn't want the truth to be out there

will any BBCode seize up at the moment?

okay, let's try line by line

14: SICK SICK SICK by Jules Feiffer (145 points, 6 votes)

looks like Amazon links are the problem?

Ten years into his cartooning career at 27, Feiffer started the first incarnation of his 40-year run in the Village Voice in 1956 and quietly became one of the most influential strip creators of the half-century. Not just for inspiring cartoonists to observe the actors in their world of young people, not just for setting a standard for alternative weekly strips to be syndicated and distinct, personal voices to earn a living, but influential on culture: exposing a culture revolution in New York to an older and wider audience; holding a mirror of mockery to the participants in that revolution; being clear-eyed and cynical about politics without having to strive for a joke or joke-like form; acknowledging neurosis and anxiety as major aspects of the modern condition, while not excluding their sufferers from pisstaking. Kurtzman's editorship of MAD ended just as Sick Sick Sick began, a few shelves higher on the newstands - one could see it as a timely passing of the baton of America's satirical conscience, approaching adult concerns directly instead of mediating through pop culture parody.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_C6K4wQCgXDc/SOF9VR9mTCI/AAAAAAAADAs/GKQyKYB3A4o/s1600-h/sick01.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KcAspyo3W-Q/TaIg7s1J5OI/AAAAAAAAA0g/dij1J29aI7w/s1600/sss2-02.jpg
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/05/24/feif01.jpg

Expected the delay to be you changing your display name to Feifferk Feifferk Feifferk tbh.

if this one didn't load for some people:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/kitbrash/sick01_zpsovxcmx15.jpg

lol, this has totally happened to me before.

omg, you just made my day.

feel like feiffer is also super super important in terms of visual style. SO loopy and loose but not at all out of control - as is very clear when it comes to facial expressions specifically. not sure there'd been anything that scribbley in print before.

I'm glad Jules beat out Fox Trot.

13: POGO by Walt Kelly (195 points, 10 votes)
Mark Evanier and Kelly's daughter Carolyn are slowly putting together complete strip collections, as materials become available.

And appropriately, we hit an antecedent one stop higher. Kelly's Pogo had artfully been melding political and cultural satire into a family-friendly funny animal strip for eight years by now (and earlier in comic books). Even if it hadn't been one of the best-regarded artefacts of social commentary of the era, Pogo would still be remembered as an all-time classic strip, for Kelly's warm cartooning, gorgeous brush drawing, and decades-ahead-of-his-time illustrative lettering (farmed out later, but still conceived by Kelly).

http://www.batesline.com/archives/2012/01/13/Pogo_1965-08-09_100.jpg

http://d1g4sq00ps2bp3.cloudfront.net/images/11608.jpg

http://www.animationresources.org/pics/pogo02-big.jpg

http://www.animationresources.org/pics/pogo01-big.jpg

https://nex0003.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/walt-kelly-02.jpg

http://www.galerielaqua.de/galerielaqua/IMAGES/Original/original%20art/usa/kelly/PogoSunday10191971.jpg

cartooning in Pogo is incredible but I've kinda soured on the writing

Sorry, that last one looks unreclaimable. Have another colour Sunday instead.

http://i0.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/PogoPage197-1.jpg

as with Li'l Abner, the faux hillbillyisms are just too much

I don't really think of them as faux-hillbillyisms in the style of Lil Abner, more of his own invented dialect. Anyway the late-era Sunday strips aren't my favorite, there's a bit too much frenzied action with less wit. The 50's-era writing, particularly in the daily strips, is brilliant.

http://www.zompist.com/illo/pogo-bear.gif

One of the things I love about Pogo is the totally free-flowing narrative structure. Like, the famous appearance of the Joe McCarthy character is the culmination of a plot that starts with the swamp's resident creep attempting to make money by selling boxes of dirt. Several characters decide that they need a platform to advertise dirt, and set up a TV station. The leaders of the local bird-watching society plot to take over the TV station by declaring that the showrunners are in fact migratory birds that are sneaking across American boarders (do u see?), and soon are labeling everyone who disagrees with them (including the turtle, alligator, etc) a migratory bird who must head for Canada. And in order to enforce this they bring in Simple J Malarkey.

http://i839.photobucket.com/albums/zz311/tobiagorrio/054a-1.jpg

I remember Watterson praising the hell out of Pogo, both for the cartooning (which is obviously hugely influential on his style) and for that kind of unfolding narrative - something about plots turning around on themselves, getting lost, etc. Some of that, imho, has to come from still-earlier strips, especially adventure strips and soaps. I have a few cherished collected volumes of Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy and it's the same kind of thing back in the 20s - story starts out with them investing in a soap company, their success attracts the attention of gangsters and have to stow away on a boat to escape to South America, where they discover chinchilla ranching... etc. etc.

As for Pogo, its relatively unavailability in worthwhile collections, at least at my public library growing up, kept me from really following up Watterson's hype as a kid. I feel like the few times I did check it out I maybe liked it but didn't love it. But boy is it a good looking strip.

I completely understand why (poor quality source material in the main), but The Complete Pogo has been a publishing disaster. The first book was 4 years late, and the third a year late against the annual schedule.

12: NANCY by Ernie Bushmiller (215 points, 13 votes)
A random poster on Straight Dope

A transitional strip, that deftly rose the change from a trend for flapper strips (as Fritzi Ritz) to kiddie strips (as Fritzi's niece rose to prominence. Quickly settled into its zen mode of almost-jokes, three rocks, a hole in a fence – minmalism in structure and humour alike, but bearing the markers of careful and deliberate craft in both.

http://www.digitalmediatree.com/getpic/2724/

http://peteykins.com/sparklepics5/Nancy062847Big.jpg

https://illustrationconcentration.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/nancy_invisible_glass.jpg

https://conversazionisulfumetto.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/nancy-bushmiller.jpg

11: LIFE IN HELL by Matt Groening (217 points, 14 votes, 2 of them spelling the name correctly)
bootlegged weekly

In the decade before Matt Groening helped to transform the American sitcom, he helped to transform the entire landscape of alternative cartooning in the country. The success of his strip enabled dozens of other young, alternative, non-comic-book focussed cartoonists to be read and often make a living, as alt-weekly editors looked for something else to run alongside Life In Hell in a half-page.

Originally his letters to friends about what a new life in late '70s LA was like, the self-syndicated version settled into largely being rabbit Binky and his cast's emotionally harried reactions to cultural shifts of the 1980s; brother/lover/fez-wearers Akbar & Jeff's dances (some mobile like Feiffer's dancer, some paralysed on the sofa, internal by inference) to the interplay of passion and resentment in long-term relationships; and long, funny lists. By the '90s, once Groening's Simpsons wealth had largely removed him from the concerns of regular life, a new focus came on reporting the interactions of his young kids, Will & Abe. This shift was heralded by an early interview's assertion that Children Say The Darndest Things should be retitled Kids Say The Most Motherfuckinest Shit, although the Will & Abe strips stay on the side of whimsy for the wide audience Groening was now reaching.

Groening kept the strip alive for many years past when it would have made sense as a workjing artist, let alone a multimillionaire. In the end, the concatenation of America's alt-weeklies into chain-owned replicas of each other led him to retire ruefully from the field in 2012.

https://craycraylife.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/8-hours-to-kill.png
http://40.media.tumblr.com/fca4f3edcf02e7d514b4eb9be97efae4/tumblr_naoxw4mK751tzgg1ao1_1280.jpg

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal05/2012/6/24/12/enhanced-buzz-21687-1340555228-12.jpg

http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls7b1kPEIg1qa8o5mo1_1280.jpg
http://wherethelongtailends.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/184366_1770011043712_1042300451_1916389_2133389_n.jpg
http://spb.fotolog.com/photo/59/10/9/warning_minority/1220540078315_f.jpg

http://kevinczap.com/dropbox/may2011/lifeinhell2.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RM-x503dIuc/Tw1LAu3jMCI/AAAAAAAABfQ/jh3CNuIGLV4/s1600/2734653510_88ac94b54f.jpg

http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com.au/Life%20in%20Hell.gif
http://walrusmagazine.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/christmas_large.jpg

the LIH Abe/"questions about death" strip is all time

10: BLOOM COUNTY by Berke Breathed (224 points, 11 votes)
even the repeats are up to the sequel

I went to open this blurb with “the most 1980s comic strip ever,” even before checking and finding it ran from 1980 to 1989. For whatever reason, none of Berke Breathed's regular attempts to relaunch or revamp the strip have worked (despite running for longer than you'd bet), and looking at that 1989 closing date, it's as if Bloom County is a rare succulent that requires a specific environment in which to survive. Outland, Opus, Facebook Bloom Country 2015 – these are all hothouses. But dip into any of the collections from the '80s, and you can enter a world where new Apple products dominate people's home lives with anthropmorphic ferocity, Donald Trump's hooting self-regard is seen as entertainment, and the US electoral process is a torturous clownshow striking alarm and bemusement into foreign readers.

http://offthekuff.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/LEFTWING.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6674/1214/1600/BloomCountyLooseTailsHoffapg25top.jpg
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Dyl4i.jpg

http://www.platypuscomix.net/otherpeople/blmd820908.gif
http://i37.tinypic.com/30ura04.jpg
http://chug.org/bloom-county/transcribe-comic/bloomcounty.gif

http://www.muckypup.com/images/BloomCounty_strip.gif
http://www.atomicmoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/BreathedSteveDallasOpusBilltheCatHodgePodge19871.jpg
https://bmj2k.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/2009-02-06_203321_bloomcounty-eatlessexercisemore-1.jpg

Nancy should be top ten, cmon

it had more voters than the next one

9: LITTLE NEMO by Winsor McCay (229 points, 10 votes)
The best available version in a century. Here's a lot of it scanned.

The largest, prettiest, show-offiest strip in history. But lets also note what a remarkable job McCay does of building an internal visual language for a series that by design changes setting, style, layout and content every single episode. The methodical playing out of each strip's premise adds to the dreamlike feel, in the way that a dream can keep you stuck in its narrative, defying attempts to wake or direct the story. Plus: if you hate the lettering, you don't deserve the drawings.

http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/little-nemo/little-nemo-19100320-l.jpeg

http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/little-nemo/little-nemo-19051112-l.jpeg

http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/little-nemo/little-nemo-19060218-l.jpeg

http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/little-nemo/little-nemo-19110409-l.jpeg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Little_Nemo_1908-07-19b.jpg

http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/little-nemo/little-nemo-19051203-l.jpeg

http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/little-nemo/little-nemo-19060506-l.jpeg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Little_Nemo_1909-02-14.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Little_Nemo_1908-11-22.jpg

Something in me always glazes over any individual Little Nemo strip I've ever seen, partly because of the tiny letting but also because of the sense that I'm still 'saving' it for sometime when I can really sit down with some collections and just slow myself down and savor every panel. Obviously, part of the trouble is that the strips are enormous and in color so the only way to do them right is with big, very expensive books of the sort I've never been inclined to invest in. Why I didn't make a point of just abusing the comics library at OSU while I was there, I have no idea.

you went to OSU and you didn't spend every spare hour in the Billy Ireland library?

Architecture school was a cruel, cruel force, as I was just grumping over in another thread today. To be fair, that library is in a deep interior space of a windowless basement - it was pretty easy to not be in there, sad to say.

I spent two days on a bus just to spend two joyous afternoons in that windowless basement (the week before they closed to move to an enormous well-lit space)

i didn't read bloom county until somewhat recently but i've since gone back and started reading it in order from the beginning and it is v wonderful + deserves being in the top 10 of this poll

nemo is def the most awe-inspiring comic of any sort i know, to the point where it's almost hard to imagine a real human sitting down and drawing it every week

I think I admire Nemo more as a work of art than as a narrative to be read as panel to panel continuity, so sometimes feel a little...distanced...from it. Those examples above are just exquisite - the colour alone is magnificent (have never seen a nemo original, i wonder how many of them survive) - and they seem so 'advanced', as in, ahead of the pack - surrealism years before there was a name for it. The near-identical structure of each strip - asleep>dream>awake - seems like McCay providing future cartoonists with a model of how to sustain, or simply crank out, a weekly/daily comic strip.

agree as a narrative it's lacking but as a visual spectacle I don't think any comic has ever surpassed it

i got one of the many giant size books of nemo as a kid and it mesmerized me. in my book, mccay IS comic strips.

my first exposure to it was the strips included in the Smithsonian collection, which my grandfather had. I was flabbergasted something that wild was 80 years old. Snapped up a couple of the Fantagraphics giant-sized reprints when those first came out, still have them.