Comic strips that haven't been funny in decades, yet still continue to appear in the newspapers, and probably will do so forever.

Well who doesn't enjoy that? Not me!

I remember Batiuk's other, other strip "John Darling", mainly because of the shock-ending where the hero was gunned down by an unseen assassin - all of this done in the usual 3-panel format.

Looking at Wikipedia now it seems that JD's demise was eventually worked into the Funky W. strip, as a subplot with Darling's daughter!

is Dilbert even older than half the strips in the comic section these days? I know it's been around for 30 years, but none of these people ever fucking retire (besides Cathy!)

it's a weird one, because unlike the others I think it actually was funny back in the day, and what's happening to it now is not exactly laziness but almost a fundamental misunderstanding of what humor is. he still seems good at identifying funny set ups (no doubt mostly provided by his readers) but every punchline is a smug remark or "uhhh, so, that just happened??". like he's not finishing the joke.

There is like a whole venn diagram thing where Crock (Bill Rechin and Brant Parker) is distinct from Wizard of Id (Brant Parker and Johnny Hart) which is itself distinct from B.C. (Johnny Hart). Then there is Hi and Lois (Mort Walker and Dik Browne) which is distinct from Beetle Bailey (Mort Walker).

It is completely false that there were only these five dudes capable of making comics in the 20th century, and yet it seems like this very small set of dudes made a ridiculously large number of the comics.

Oops, forgot to add Hagar the Horrible (Dik Browne). It was a tiny incestuous world and there was no reason for it to be so - there was not a shortage of artists and writers in the world at that time. Those dudes could have spread out the work a bit and been fine.

Excellent work, YMP!

Looking at Wikipedia now it seems that JD's demise was eventually worked into the Funky W. strip, as a subplot with Darling's daughter!

I fell into a bit of a black hole on https://sonofstuckfunky.com looking up this subplot. Most recently: https://sonofstuckfunky.com/2022/09/20/die-die-john-darling/

I was cool with that gang for a while, and of course I loved the slightly more transgressive turn taken by Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes, Bloom County, etc.

Subsequently we had the even more edgy moves in a subsequent generation that worked well with the advent of alternative weeklies. Tom Tomorrow, Life in Hell, Red Meat, Emily Flake, Lynda Barry, .

I cannot possibly express to you how delighted I was when I was able to publish Lulu Eightball and Tom the Dancing Bug alongside the Straight Dope and Dan Savage for a glorious shining moment. And then... well. You know what happened.

I mean, really. I do not knof if this will work but it is from Emily Flake's Lulu Eightball and it remains among my favorite things:

https://i.imgur.com/EUkzr0n_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

that is awesome

I loathed "Nancy" back in the day, but it's actually pretty funny now.

While "Funky Winkerbean" finally, finally emits its last groan, I can think of so many more deserving strips that died premature deaths. Two that immediately leap to mind are "Liberty Meadows" and "Rudy."

gocomics is back up (from what I assume was a ransomware attack)

I used to read "Pibgorn" and "9 Chickweed Lane" on gocomics.

I once saw a Wizard of Id original where they'd simply pasted new word balloons over old ones, hey presto a brand new strip! Think Hart et al did this quite a lot.

hey when dinosaur comic did that (for every strip) it was postmodern and edgy

my family lived in Boston for a year and that’s how i learned about Zippy The Pinhead. when we went back to Tennessee i wrote a letter to the editor of the Knoxville News-Sentinel asking for them to run it. to his credit he replied to me, but said that its humor only appeals to a small audience so he wouldn’t be running it. which like… is true, but so lame.

As opposed to all those other universally hilarious newspaper strips...

I feel like Zippy got plenty of exposure for something so resolutely odd. Seems like every comic strip has a hard core of ardent fans who will howl in protest if it isn't printed, which was harder to manage when newsprint real estate was actually scarce. For good or for ill, editors had to make choices.

Nowadays there is essentially infinite room, which means no choices need to be made, and I don't know if that's made comics better or worse.

What was the one where they all had big round noses and giant lower lips, and you couldn't see their eyes?
Maybe they were medieval knights or something.... same artist might have done a caveman one as well... (it's not bc though...)

Are you thinking of Wizard of Id?

Nope, the characters had big heads/small bodies, maybe he did one with cowboys?

Tumbleweeds. Where Jim Davis got his start.

Description makes me think of Overboard.

Yes! Thank you, that was driving me nuts...

Not to get too off-topic, but much love for "Lulu Eightball"/Emily Flake! I loved her *Maybe my argument will make more sense if I run it through some of these sick effects pedals* comic so much I put it in a frame!
You can still buy "Lulu Eightball Vol. 2" direct from the publisher: https://atomicbooks.com/products/lulu-eightball-volume-2
Tons of comics here to enjoy on your holiday break: https://thenib.com/author/emily-flake/

I loathed "Nancy" back in the day, but it's actually pretty funny now.

Clever but not funny for me. Still a daily read, sometimes a hate-read. Bold move by Jaimes to make Nancy a self-absorbed asshole.

modern Nancy has had some really good strips but a lot of it seems too clever for its own good. I really liked the dadaist vibe of the Bushmiller strips.

one I used to like a lot was Get Fuzzy, it's wordy but generally funny

is that Comics Curmudgeon guy still going? I enjoyed that, not only because the guy really is keeping up with all these endless soap opera comic strips but also because it's kind of a remnant of the way the internet used to be

literally clowning Funky Winkerbean in a post today!

http://www.joshreads.com

Comics Curmudgeon is still going, yeah. I wouldn't have heard of most of these if not for him! Got to say that Funky Winkerbean is one of the least appealing strips he covers regularly. I'd be sad if Mary Worth folded, I love following his commentary on it.

xp

His commentary is the only reason to have any interest at all in the "Mary Worth," "Judge Parker" and "Gil Thorp" universes.

Bold move by Jaimes to make Nancy a self-absorbed asshole.

She was like this in a lot of Bushmiller's best too!

Absolutely

self-absorbed but not an asshole imo, a big difference in degree then to now

I see her a little bit like Mattie Ross - convinced of her own certitude despite being constantly bamboozled

I wonder if Pete Bagge is a Tumbleweeds fan....

One of Funky Winkerbean's lasting legacies:

https://frinkiac.com/video/S12E05/t8jUHH0rgJ9IUSDsaSC5vhcP1hM=.gif

Nancy Panel By Ernie Bushmiller pic.twitter.com/pqNw4IVJfz

— Nancy Comics by Ernie Bushmiller (@JohnnyCallicutt) November 25, 2022