Panel Discussion - The ILX Comic Strip Poll Results

i'm unfamiliar with Bristow; don't think it has any american penetration for obvious reasons
i would welcome some better strip examples there? And in general for all these strips if anyone has a favorite or three they'd like to post.

Honestly, Bristow looks pretty dire to me... some kind of walter mitty meets dilbert mashup. i'd love to see something to disabuse me of that notion.

Well it is a very English kind of whimsy that may well not travel well, and a lot of its 'charm' or humour depends on spinning out endless variations on a relatively small number of themes and situations, so in some ways it is closest to a British sitcoms rather than other comic strips. Ronnie Barker would've made the perfect Bristow.

see i have no idea who that is!

Yeah, I'd say Bristow is very, very British with no real American analogue.

Which reminds me that I think I said I would do a UK IPC/DC Thompson poll in the other thread so maybe I should.

James Childress (who committed suicide in 1977, effectively ending the strip)

among other things

very effectively

not to snark, but why unweight the ballots?

No real way to that I saw. Half the ballots weren't ordered that way or were piecemeal or short lists.
This is nobody's definitive list; as with coint and plick I would rather have it as a reference source and for browsing

uh so even if we did weight our ballots they're not being counted like that?

Going based on number of votes only, with a few strips combined

Can't you weight the weighted ballots and make all the others one vote only?

Or maybe count all the unweighted ones as 10 pts each or something? Just trying to help; I'd like my weighted ballot to count as I intended, but I'm okay if it doesn't.

Carol Day looks goooorgeous, that justifies some of these horrible one-votees

Bristow ran in Australia too, as a kid I found it painful and tedious and a horrifying vision of daily life and read it every day

i'm afraid this is gonna have to run unweighted; I ran into the burning building once to get this thing going but I ain't up for twice.
if it's any consolation (to paraphrase lincoln), the world will little note nor long remember how we poll here.

Diesel Sweeties by Richard Stevens – 1 vote
On The Web

Diesel Sweeties is a webcomic and former newspaper comic strip that began in 2000, originally hosted at robotstories.com. From January 2007 until August 2008 it was syndicated to over 20 United States newspapers, including major daily newspapers like The Detroit News and Houston Chronicle. Stevens is a co-founder of the Dumbrella alliance of webcomic artists. Since 2002, Stevens has supported himself through online sales of merchandise related to his comics.

I didn't vote, but these excerpts of obscure comics are really fascinating

but not that one

Donald Duck by Al Talliaferro and Bob Karp – 1 vote
On The Web

Charles Alfred Taliaferro, known simply as Al Taliaferro, was a Disney comics artist who used to produce Disney comic strips for King Features Syndicate. Many of his strips were written by Bob Karp.
He is best known for his work on the Donald Duck comic strip, but he started his career lettering the Mickey Mouse strips (March 1931 – July 1932), and drew the Bucky Bug comics in 1932 as well as Silly Symphonies pages from 1932 to 1939. Taliaferro co-created a number of characters, including Huey, Dewey and Louie, Bolivar, Grandma Duck, and arguably Daisy Duck. He drew Donald Duck comic strips from 1938 until his death in 1969 in Glendale, California.

Dry Bones by Yaakov Kirschen – 1 vote
On The Web

Dry Bones is an Israeli political cartoon strip published in the English-language newspaper The Jerusalem Post since 1973. The name of the comic strip refers to the vision of the "Valley of Bones" in the Book of Ezekiel (37:1-14). Dry Bones has been reprinted and quoted by the New York Times, Time Magazine, LA Times, CBS, AP and Forbes. It offers a pictorial commentary on current events in Israel and the Jewish world. Kirschen says his cartoons are designed to make people laugh, which makes them drop their guard and see things the way he does. In an interview, he defined his objective as a cartoonist as an attempt to "seduce rather than to offend.”

Carol Day looks goooorgeous, that justifies some of these horrible one-votees

god yes. had never heard of carol day or david wright, but that's an incredible strip. nice archive of original art and sketches at the carol-day.com site linked above.

Edge City by Terry and Patty LaBan – 1 vote
On The Web

Meet the Ardins! They’re the stars of Edge City, a groundbreaking comic strip that follows a hip Jewish-American family juggling relationships, careers and tradition at the fast pace of modern life. Len owns a delivery service, and Abby is a psychologist. Fueled by caffeine and gasoline, they and their kids, Colin and Carly, power their way through self-employment, after-school activities, pursuing their dreams and lining up for carpool. Len and Abby take stress for granted—but not each other. Modern marriage isn’t easy, but the Ardins make it work, facing what life throws at them with intelligence, humor and an occasional hissy fit. It also helps to have friends and family, the latest self-help book, weekend rock-and-roll sessions and decent carryout. So, pack the kids off to school, grab a latte and try to beat rush hour on I-25—it’s life on the edge every day in Edge City!
(via comics kingdom, one of the syndicates of the strip on the web)

kudos to these troll ballots

definitely a lot of interesting variety here -- lots of these i've never heard of. i've read lots of the taliaferro donald duck strips, gladstone used to run them as filler in between barks and rosa stories. they're inoffensive and well drawn but i'd be interested to hear why someone thought they deserved to be ranked among the all-time best comic strips.

TBF the taliaferro strips are somewhat better than say, diesel sweeties by a factor of roughly infinity

Dude drew 31 years of duck strips!

why does everyone always have to hate on diesel sweeties

because it is terrible. between that & death to the extremist, someone's got some splaining to do.

i'm afraid this is gonna have to run unweighted; I ran into the burning building once to get this thing going but I ain't up for twice.

send me the ballots, I'll re-run the numbers

tell you what sic, let me get all the nominees up and then I'll mail you all the ballots and you can collate and post a final definitive tally in any fashion that works for you. Fair enough?

ilxmail me your email again plz?

This keeps getting better.

Does this mean we get to hear about the Conchy guy killing himself again? Because he's starting to get my sympathy.

this is definitely the funniest thing about this thread so far

POW! ZAP! BANG! Comics: they're not just for laffs anymore

this next one is specially for you whiney

Ettamogah Pub by Ken Maynard – 1 vote
On The Web

The Ettamogah Pub is a cartoon pub that was featured in the now defunct Australasian Post magazine. The cartoonist Ken Maynard, loving empty spaces and having nothing around him, enjoyed an area just outside of Albury at Table Top, named Ettamogah, thus christening the name of his now famous pub the "Ettamogah Pub".

Ooh, when's Snake Tales going to show up?

prob my favorite wikipedia description yet coming up here

Frank and Ernest by Bob Thaves – 1 vote
On The Web

In a non-sequential story, the main characters are seen not just as humans but as animals, vegetables, minerals and more. A constant element has been word play, including the characters' names. Frank is both a name and a synonym for honest. The name Ernest is a homophone of the word earnest, which is a synonym for serious.
Weekday strips are laid out in one long panel with one joke or pun; the Sunday strip is similarly in one large block, with a series of rapid-fire puns pertaining to the characters (usually in character as various characters including, but not limited to, the planets, "Robotics Department," or "Malaprop Man"). Example: U.S. Postal Dept. Stamp Design Office: "The department decided to have a religious message on our next stamp. How about: 'Lord, deliver us'?"
Unlike most syndicated comic strip cartoonists, Bob Thaves did not write all of the gags for the strip (nor maintain a pretense that he did) and openly solicited for gags in publications such as Writer's Market. Thaves won the National Cartoonists Society's Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for 1983, 1984, and 1986, as well as The Mencken Award for Free Speech and designation as a Champion of Creativity by the American Creativity Association in 2006.

here have another:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_W4NUG6cq1vM/TRATYR_0AUI/AAAAAAAACdA/Pyu0dsEy1AE/s1600/347522_full.gif

if you can't laugh at "Wiki Leeks" what can you laugh at

Funky Winkerbean by Tom Batiuk – 1 vote
On The Web

Distributed by North America Syndicate, a division of King Features Syndicate, Funky Winkerbean appears in more than 400 newspapers worldwide. Since its inception on March 27, 1972, the strip has gone through several format changes. For the first 20 years of its run, the characters did not age, and the strip was nominally episodic as opposed to a serial, with humor derived from visual gags and the eccentricity of the characters. In 1992, Batiuk rebooted the strip, establishing that the characters had graduated from high-school in 1988, and the series began progressing in real time. In 2007, a second "time warp" occurred, this time taking the strip ten years into the future, ostensibly to 2017, although the events of the strip still reflect a contemporary setting. Since the 1992 reboot and especially since the 2007 time jump, the strip has been recast as a drama, featuring story arcs revolving around such topics as terminal cancer, adoption, prisoners of war, drug abuse, post traumatic stress, same sex couples attending the senior prom, and interracial marriage.

FUCK WEIGHTED RESULTS. JUST ROLL THIS SHIT OUT.

um, perhaps you've noticed that's what's happening? or did funky winkerbean break yr brain?

yeah no i no. it is just an opiniom.

plus lol @ "suit yourself, creepy."

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/828/funkywinkerbean1mw5.gif

This could be the ilx thread of 2014. I can't wait for xkcd to place.

(The two Aussie entries that have been listed so far were me btw.)

I had no idea under this very morning that the Funky Winkerbean strip had gone that insane. Been reading it all morning.

the transformation of Funky Winkerbean is one of the most amazing things

also that second Death to the Extremist strip cracked me the fuck up, I may need help

RIP New Zealand's David Sim.