Panel Discussion - The ILX Comic Strip Poll Results

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.

8: THIMBLE THEATRE by E. C. Segar (242 points, 12 votes)
The last ten years of the strip are in print here; the first ten might still be in a yahoo groups archive from the '00s. You can read the whole first story with Popeye in it here – he doesn't even turn up until halfway through that!

Evolving gradually from vaudeville blackouts through family humour to comedy adventure, the strip settled into a confirmed version of the latter almost a decade into its run. The pugnacious one-eyed sailor could have been just another of Segar's splendid supporting characters, but for whatever spark made him bring Popeye back within a month or two, and he quickly took over as protagonist by sheer force of personality. Not only did the popularity of the strip explode, but Segar was also creatively emboldened to create ever-more vibrant guest characters for Popeye's serialised adventures, and expanding the lineup of regulars. Is there a more reliably funny character in all of comics than J. Wellington Wimpy?

Segar was also eminently suited for the newspaper environment of the 1920s by creating compelling serialised adventures that barrel on from day to day, rather than always focusing on jokes or character humour; and also lashing out on comic set pieces for the Sundays. The entire essence of sports cartooning can be found in any one panel of a boxing-related Sunday, a sea of gawping faces pressed bald head to bulbous nose from every edge of the ring.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/paramountcartoons/images/0/0b/Popeyfirst-1-.png

http://media.ideaanddesignworks.com/library_ameri_comics/covers/blog_art/P4_THIMBLE.jpg

http://cdn.coollinesartwork.com/Images/Category_2/subcat_42939/Thumbs/sddSegarPopeyepapDaily10301936pappy.jpg

shame that fanta have let that first volume go out of print - their six-book set is defintive, and this stuff reads surprisingly well in big delicious bites - then you really get a sense of how freewheeling someone like segar could be making comics in the 1920s - similar to silent cinema in that way. so the stories could range all over genres and settings, could take in the supernatural, exotic adventure, etc - and so funny so often still!

yeah the humor is surprisingly durable, sic otm that Wimpy is always funny

Sorry for linkrot.

It’s really hard to find decent Segar dailies online! Here’s a week, from one of the latest Fanta series:
http://www.heroesonline.com/images/blog/interior-pages/popeye_hc_04-082_1000px.jpg

Female sex is jus as strong as male sex.

thimble theatre is definitely the old comic strip i'm most likely to recommend to ppl, the tone and the humor have aged really well. the atmosphere is so unique, and some of segar's narratives -- like the first sea hag story -- seem genuinely creepy even today.

plus all of wimpy's catchphrases -- "jones is the name, i'm one of the jones boys!"

His boxing Sundays have the best crowd scenes in all of comics, when the fights get going: whet your appetite
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Thimble-02.jpg

Here are (hopefully) the original art and coloured versions of Segar’s favourite strip ever:
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/wimpy.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rMpVYDZSpRg/UlkWQaJyzVI/AAAAAAAAX3A/vfJ-EwBICwI/s1600/scan0119.jpg

mmmmm...

mmmm?

mmm.

7: ACHEWOOD by Chris Onstad (250 points, 10 votes)
Achewood

Achewood is weird. Not in content, yawn, that can eat a dick, just read a bunch of it. But it is the pinnacle of a certain era of web-cartooning – we have different eras of web cartooning now, guys! - but without having any of the traits of its era. It published on its own schedule, didn't team up with ad-sharing sites, the author didn't engage with readers, he published and shipped the book collections himself, thousands and thousands of words of the characters and storylines were spilled out on scattered blogspot pages, not integrated into the story – and unlike so many of the successful round of the second wave of webcomics, petered out painfully over several years just as the collections were moving from tape-bound self-published galleys to best-selling hardcovers from Dark Horse. That Onstad acknowledged personal issues led to the tailing off can inform our re-readings of six-month stretches of the strip on slow Thursday afternoons; that he drifted away from efforts to revive it into food writing and founding an artisinal soda company should leave us happy that he found another outlet for fulfilling creativity. Maybe the last abandoned storyline will conclude one day. In the meantime, we still have the t-shirts.

http://achewood.com/comic.php?date=08042003
http://achewood.com/comic.php?date=01272005
http://i.imgur.com/iwKOr.png

Lol wut

http://achewood.com/comic.php?date=12272007
http://achewood.com/comic.php?date=02062004
http://achewood.com/comic.php?date=02022007

idg the appeal anyone wanna explain it

it doesn't really work with one strip out of context at a time. it's worth sitting down and reading some of the longer storylines -- the great outdoor fight, e.g.

the plotlines get delightfully weird and take unexpected/interesting turns, all while maintaining a super-tight concept of each of the many characters' voices; once you do a full story, and you start to get the characters, even the one-shots become great. i was looking at the one above where ray gets high (45 degrees... i wonder if my mom knows... etc.) and laughing again, but it is really easy for me to look at and completely get why it wouldn't be funny to anyone else

huh

naturally I've seen isolated strips floating around the internet for years but I would never have guessed from their apparently random nature that there was anything like character development or storylines involved

I'm not much of a fan either, Shakey, but I can understand its appeal - it can be funny once in a while (especially if you know the characters a little), and as sic sez in his blue box, it is quite singular in its way - it has an atmosphere and approach to storytelling that's pretty unique. I like its feeling of enervation, of something quite terminal in a way.

I'm not sure it would work any better if it was drawn well - and the ugliness is probably part of the point - but it is a real eyesore to look at (especially when it sits next to McCay and Segar.)

it is def ugly

Will M and Ward otm. It made my ballot.

I liked the occasional forays into a more hallucinatory art style. No way it should be this high though.

ugh half of those aren't even understandable.

i didn't really expect any webcomics to make it this high tbh

speaking of comics that demonstrate zero artistic ability whatsoever, xkcd hasn't placed yet

I would never have guessed from their apparently random nature that there was anything like character development or storylines involved

It's really, really heavy on character development, and would sometimes do storylines that ran for months and months (with the freewheeling making-it-up-as-he-goes-along feel of the classic pre-1950s adventure/comedy strips). One of the mightiest strengths of it, especially as a web-native strip, is that individual episodes could be weird or funny and be shared on that basis, but the underlying character material was so strong and compelling that it encouraged dedicated daily-ish reading. And once years had accreted, you could see a single strip shared, and just keep clicking along to the next one and get caught up in a favourite or forgotten long story.

It's entirely possible it would have been much better if Onstad was a visually lush cartoonist, but as it is, it stands as a testament to the value of the single cartoonist as author. Onstad draws (& letters) in vector art because he can't draw any better with traditional tools, but this becomes part of the voice of the strip. The slightly distanced nature of the drawing fits the distanced nature of the characters, all these people/animals failing to express themselves fully while trying to connect with and support each other.

(For all that, Onstad gets pretty skilled at showing a huge range of nuanced emotion in the limited designs of Beef and Ray, especially.)

Also, it was probably appealing prima facie to office workers with no interest in illustrative art but who stare at computers all day. Lavish brush illustration would never have worked on glowing CRTs when you click over for five minutes at 11am while waiting for someone to reply to an email.

it doesn't really work with one strip out of context at a time

I think this is correct, I remember seeing individual strips that people posted on ilx and other places and having no idea why people thought it was good, but then I went to the website and read it from the start and now I love it!

(though I'm going to post this individual strip out of context anyway)

http://www.achewood.com/comic.php?date=06042002

count me among those who waved off achewood on first contact and then was floored to realize how complex the storylines were.
getting one of the books is a good way to start.
http://www.amazon.com/Achewood-The-Great-Outdoor-Fight/dp/1593079974

I just don't think I can bare to look at anything that ugly for that long

bear

ugh half of those aren't even understandable.

― new noise, Tuesday, December 8, 2015 8:36 AM (10 minutes ago)

http://i.imgur.com/t4dH91d.gif

Οὖτις, aren't you the ilxor who also hates Richard Thompson's scratchy pen work in Cul de Sac? Maybe I'm thinking of someone else.