Panel Discussion - The ILX Comic Strip Poll Results

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.

I have no idea who/what that is so you must be thinking of someone else

I've never quite gotten the appeal of Achewood either. I'm assuming you have to read more than 50 strips to "get" the characters and it looks like it was drawn inside MS Word.

unless I posted something like that in response to seeing a single strip or something...? I just googled it and idk he doesn't have the greatest style but it's better than pseudo-clipart.

xxp

I have no idea who/what that is so you must be thinking of someone else

#19 in this poll

http://i.imgur.com/XZ4UG.gif

http://achewood.com/comic.php?date=05232003

http://achewood.com/comic.php?date=02182004

shakey, i too recall you dismissing richard thompson's artwork as scratchy garbage, somewhere on ilx

it's possible! not something I've thought a lot about obviously

Shakey... Shakey... free your ass and your mind will follow...

if we're done arguing about cartoonists who have limited drawing ability and mechanically recycle elements of the art to cover for this

6: DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau (258 points, 12 votes)
doonesburydotwapodotcom

Sure, now you might go “Is Doonesbury still running? Huh! Good for him,” but for decades it was the chronicle of record of American politics, running in sections other than the comics pages across the world. This belies the broad range of original characters that are the backbone of the strip, carrying it through the 45-year run that has outlived the public life of most of its public-figures-turned-icons. Trudeau was the first daily cartoonist to have enough clout to take months-long sabbaticals; perhaps this level of authorial attachment is what leads periodical exposes, unfamiliar with the business of newspaper strips, to gaspingly reveal that this syndicated cartoonist has an inker.

http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/wp-content/uploads/trump_uncle_duke.jpg

http://www.marijuanalibrary.org/images/980629_doonesbury.gif
http://www.marijuanalibrary.org/images/980704_doonesbury.gif

half of the achewood examples posted here rely at some point upon an expression of physical action or body language which onsted fails to successfully convey.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UzCCDiARRi4/UR-Mfkto3nI/AAAAAAAAOcQ/jhbc_Uciank/s1600/doonesbury2005.jpg

http://x-traonline.org/build/wp-content/uploads/old/2012/08/1_Doonesbury_GH_152.jpg

obviously a classic. at the same time I'm kind of mystified that it's still going.

someone once made the mistake of asking charles schulz why he didn't tackle deep social or political issues "like trudeau does," to which schulz replied somewhat icily, "i deal with issues that are more important than drawing four pictures of the white house."

lol what a dick move that question is. Schulz did address sociopolitical things, in his way.

Schulz otm

I like how Shakey keeps illustrating the first line of my blurbs

I'm just here to help!

I'll say this for Doonesbury, it introduced pre-teen me to the details of Watergate in a very entertaining way

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

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, December 8, 2015 8:37 AM (2 hours ago)

5: THE PERRY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP by Nicholas Gurewitch (274 points, 12 votes)
did this used to be called ThePBF.com?

One of the only strips to make a transfer from web to mainstream newspapers (David Rees and this?), just in time for the author's waning muse to make it drift away again. That a new batch of whimsy, new art style, or new black comedy in three panels still occurs to Gurewitch a few times a year can prompt a dive into the lavishly painted, darkly conceived archives. If the twist in the joke reminds itself to you before you reach it, slow down and enjoy the economy of construction, or the degree of one-off design in any given strip.

http://assets.itsnicethat.com/system/files/022013/5124be405c3e3c044600070c/images_slice_large/PBF253-The_Last_Unicorns.jpg

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3962/770/1600/Scorpy%20The%20Forest%20Friend.jpg

http://assets.itsnicethat.com/system/files/022013/5124be715c3e3c7e8e000b58/images_slice_large/PBF131-Lord_Gloom.jpg

http://assets.itsnicethat.com/system/files/022013/5124bedc5c3e3c0446000b0c/images_slice_large/PBF257-One_Time_Thing.jpeg

lol

not that there aren't some good webcomics! PBF is very funny though i wouldn't have rated it this high personally

#1 overall questionable content

PBF is brilliant, though it always feels like there's exactly the right amount of it.

I've gone on at length on other threads about my love for Doonesbury, so I'll keep it to a minimum here. I just really love how with twenty, thirty, forty years going, you actually do come to know these characters, and love nearly all of them, despite how deeply flawed they are and how much their 'voices' do overlap - the things that are distinct really sink in. Plus you know, there's something inherently poignant about things like how damned happy B.D. is to see Phred when they're reunited in the 1990s, that you can't get when you actually haven't watched these characters go about twenty years of their lives in between.

Trudeau's Reagan/Bush era is probably the most observant chronicle of boomer middle age angst and loss of purpose, but kept from being totally insufferable about that because the strip remained totally committed to the values its characters were struggling to maintain (or actively giving up on). Plus the next strip or the next storyline would swing around to absurdism again - it never had the leadenness of making a Generational Statement. He struggled much more for relevancy by the 2000s IMHO; I don't know whether that was because the muse had faded or because his attempts to write the original cast's children always felt like an outsider looking in. The exception might be Alex, with whom the strip stayed close enough that she, too, always felt like a person.

Thanks for all your thoughtful posts in the last stretch of the poll, Doctor Cas.

Don't ever change, Boopsie.

aw, thanks sic! it's a really cool poll; i can't remember whether i just missed the balloting or felt like i didn't know enough of the strips to really do it right. the blurbs have been great, too.

This poll rollout has
1) reminded me of so many classic strips I knew, some well some vaguely
2) showed me quite a few I'd seen bits of, around, that I never really knew what they were
3) loads I'd never seen before

This thread should go in as one of the BEST THREAD EVER hall of fame, btw.

PBF is the most puzzling overrated webcomic ever. I get that the bar is pretty low, but despite the (occasionally) nice art, it's never raised more than a smirk from me

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.
― Doctor Casino

I have the two giant-sized, ultimate editions and I've put off finishing the first and starting the second.
I like how Nemo gets closer and closer to meeting the princess every night and it seems like it will never happen; yet eventually he does get in the kingdom and is privy to whole new adventures with fully realized characters. He gains the ability to continue where he left off.

The 2000s did good work with the war strips I think - BD, Ray and Toggle - it's kind of cheating, but the effect of BD's helmet eventually coming off after 40 years is something.

Hard to think of anyone who's made a worse bet that the internet would be a fad, when giving Mike and Kim something to bond over - there's a howling void whenever he mentions their company because he clearly has no idea what a dotcom startup is or does.

I share Οὖτις's mystification at Achewood - I dig that it's something that's funnier when you get to know the characters, but that's a bad alley to go down.

I dig that it's something that's funnier when you get to know the characters, but that's a bad alley to go down.

OK, I don't comprehend this at all.

Achewood always struck me as basic bitch HAHA CARL FROM AQUA TEEN MUSTACHES AND .38 SPECIAL BRUH HAHAHA RITE jokes x 1000

these results are officially bullshit btw

xxp

xxp In that familiarity with the characters will raise people's comfort with strips (or, anything) past where their critical faculties might kick in - "I know it's terrible but I've been watching it for 30 years!"

Annoyingly being cut back to one strip a week hasn't made Doonesbury any funnier - if there was ever a cartoonist to do a Lehrer over Donald Trump as the Republican Front-Runner...

I mean, I'll mention the Simpsons if I have to..

yeah I am also generally skeptical of the "you just have to digest x amount of y before it starts to taste good" argument

I thought the bad alley to go down was possibly sic's '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', but I found I couldn't really dispute the idea that we read and experience things very differently these days - there's no longer the time, inclination or cultural competency to savour something as linguistically rich as Krazy Kat.

there's no longer the time, inclination or cultural competency to savour something as linguistically rich as Penny Arcade.