Peanuts: Search and Destroy

They are great because they are lame! They make the other ones seem funny.

Am I missing something?

(+ I thought old C&Hs were being reprinted in newspapers, but maybe I'm wrong.)

I sincerely doubt it...newspaper publishers don't like the comic strips in the first place because they take up valuable space that could be used on ad pages. This is why the size of the comics has been shrunken down so much over the past 15 years or so. If the current comic strips were done away with they would not be replaced. Esp. since the readership for newspapers in general has aged so much.

Gil Thorp has REALLY gone in the shitter. It's barely literate! (And no points for the Orel Hershiser guest appearance!)

Zippy is godawful. Sorry.

The same goes for Funky Winkerbean's transmogrification into a Melrose-Place-for-geeks cesspool. And regardless of FBOFW's past, turning into a hybrid of Mary Worth and Hi & Lois didn't do a damn thing for me. There's the "funny" page, and there's the "serious" page - STAY ON THE FUNNY PAGE DAMN IT.

Example of newer Peanuts (as seen on my bathroom wall): Lucy & Charlie on the pitchers mound. Lucy sez, "Here's the roster for the other team: Francis, Horatio, Ludwig, Chandler, Francisco, etc etc etc" - all these "unique" male names. Fourth panel - close-up of Charlie, wistful expression (akin to the "rapturous contemplation" look found in every damn FBOFW strip, but, y'know, Peanuts style), and he says, "No one's named Bill anymore." Um. Five cents, please?

Add to my list: Zits, Monty (PKA Robotman), Liberty Meadows, Soup to Nutz, and Rex Morgan MD (as long as Graham Nolan is the artiste).

Aw yeah, Mutts is nice.

Let me specify -- when humor was attempted, it was of the cheese variety. When soppiness was attempted, it made me want to pound walls down. When prompted to appreciate how wossname knows his comic artists of the past, I reflect on how The Boondocks looks like the first honestly modern strip in years. Etc.

One panel. Linus, Charlie, and Snoopy are lounging in A Forest. Linus & Charlie lean against a tree, Snoopy against a rock.

Linus: "I hear you've decided no to go to summer camp after all..."

Charlie: "When you have a dog, you should stay home, and make your dog happy ... that's what you should do ... you should stay home..."

Snoopy: "Except for those obviously necessary short trips in to buy dog food..."

http://www.citypaper.com/archives/funny.html

As for y'all's Zippy bashing: Interweb mentalists! Interweb mentalists! Interweb mentalists!

http://www.deeptrancenow.com/images/marmaduke.jpg

Martin S - I'd say that the first ten years or so of Johnny Hart's BC are v. underrated; Mort Walker sustained a pretty gd standard on 'Beetle Bailey' for many years; and I love the drawing style of Dik Browne on 'Hagar' and 'Hi and Lois' - crosshatching to rival Crumb's. These are just off the top of my head, but my point is that 'Peanuts' is obv. a work of genius, but it wasn't THAT much better than many of its peers in the post-war gag strip stakes, at least for the first ten or so years of its run...

Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy is indeed a rare and beautiful thing. As is 'Barnaby' by Crockett Johnson, Bill Watterson's main source for 'Calvin and Hobbes'.

http://home.att.net/~k-doyle/Cats/mutts.jpg

besides anything, I mean. but it's so cute!

There. Now even Marmaduke seems hilarious.

Felicity, your cartoon is awesome.

Is that a Bushmiller Nancy? He died in '82, but he was only "supervising" the strip from about '78 or '79. Willie Johnson did the dailies and ex-Superman artist Al Plastino did the Sundays. I really like EB's late Nancy strips, when it was so stunningly codified that there were rumours he used rubber stamps to produce the strip.

good question, Martin. I thought so, although I can't read the date there. It's from here.

https://i.imgur.com/WS8DBtI.jpg

they look legit - pasting on the header and copyright is totally standard practice, and the only other Peanuts original I've seen was also startlingly large.

Also, of those I've seen, when gifting strips it was standard for Schulz to sign them like that.

so my sister and I have decided to sell these, they are prob gonna go for like $30K each. wild. my mom is in shock lol. we are using Heritage, thanks dinnerboat for that tip!

my mom with the winning quote: "do you even want something that valuable in your house?"

Ha! Mommest thing I've heard in a while....

wow those are amazing!!

That’s amazing

All for selling the expensives btw, let upkeep be somebody else’s problem

Awesome stuff, hope the fetch you that pretty penny!

yer ma has a point! hope you guys make $$$$s

Good luck! And thanks for sharing — your story’s like a prime Antiques Roadshow episode.