NAME a newspaper comic strip that's not funny NOW, never WAS funny, never WILL BE funny...

First one that comes to mind is "Family Circus." I can't imagine spitting up milk through my nose (or any other liquid) after reading one of THESE;

:rofl:

:toast:

http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=36&q=172

Mom should be checking his pockets for Promise Keeper literature and strip club receipts.

http://dfc.furr.org/

This one in particular has some great captions:
http://dfc.furr.org/archive/10.html

It probably isn't intended to be funny; it's an "adventure" strip. But it ends up lamely funny in an unfunny, cringeworthy way because it's so dumb and poorly drawn.

Mallard Fillmore sucks AND blows in all ways.

Cathy is lame and poorly drawn.

...but if it's half as bad as you say it is, you know it has become my mission in life to check it out.

:rofl:

:toast:

IT REALLY STINKS

Humor requires a) a sense of irony, b) the ability to understand all sides of an issue, and, most importantly, c) the ability to speak truth to power. None of these are components of Mallard Fillmore.

on the door of his college dorm room. Everyone else on the floor had posted genuinely funny comics on their doors.

It amused him, because he knew they weren't funny.

We clipped Mark Trail strips and pinned them to the outside of the prime instigator's cube, and then we'd speculate about the outcome of the story. And we were almost always right, because the stories were so stupid and predicable.

right-wing wannabe anti-Doonesbury. Bleccchhhh. :puke:

I knew I wouldn't be the only one to think of this one.

:thumbsup:

"Let's make Snoopy a cat"...

...except for the fact that I can still bust a gut over Charles Schulz.

:toast:

Go here: http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

:rofl:

Garfield minus garfield perfectly encapsulates my meaningless life..... oh well.

When I see Garfield Without Garfield, I am at peace with my inner self.

I grew up with that cat--got his comic strip books, watched his saturday morning cartoon show. It was a part of my youth. And as a kid, I found it very funny. Do I still find it all that funny? Not really. But I'm not going to deny that at some time in my life, Garfield was great as I saw it.

Plus Garfield without Garfield is genius, and what is even greater is how Jim Davis accepted it all in good humor (and even sanctioned a compilation of G w/o G strips). Which says a good deal about Davis' own sense of humor even if his strip itself has gotten a bit stale. And it shows how much a self-righteous humorless prick Bill Watterson was for gratitiously bashing Davis in an interview. Which by the way, Calvin and Hobbes was a great strip no doubt, but it wasn't nearly as great as Watterson made it out to be. I mean, in the end, it was a still just strip about a kid and his stuffed tiger, with some good wit to it, but it ain't necessarily Da Vinci by any means. That's all I'm saying about that.

I mean, the thing is certain strips appeal to certain people. When I was a little kid, did I find Doonesbury to be funny? Absolutely not. Now it is probably the strip I look forward most to reading in the morning. On the other hand, I'm not ashamed to say as a 5 or 6 year old I enjoyed Family Circus, with the "Not me" and the whole "Billy does the dotted line wandering" thing. I genuinely enjoyed it as a little kid. Do I still find Family Circus to be any degree of funny anymore? Hell to the no, of course not. But I'm not going to lie and said it was never funny to me.

That all being said, there are of course some strips never designed to be funny (i.e. Mark Trail). There are other strips that are not designed to be funny but come off unintentionally funny due to its ludicrious premises (i.e. Prince Valliant--I believe they are still fighting some sort of giant Komodo Dragon as we speak). And then there's Cathy. Cathy is just such a ball of neurotic nervousness and fad materialism that no, I never found it funny as a kid, nor do I find it funny now. So I guess that's my answer to the OP.

One's very old, and one very new.

I'm still reading Prince Valiant, though, for some reason I cannot identify. I only see it on Sundays, though.

I don't remember anything funny in that one.





:P

if it's funny, it's funny. If it sucks, read Comics Curmudgeon (http://joshreads.com/), and it'll be funny again :D

It's how I appreciate Mark Trail, Judge Parker, and Mary Worth.

I think The Far Side even made fun of them once.

they did a "soap strip" of Calvin and Susie playing house

but only if you're stoned.

That's good stuff. :thumbsup:

:shrug:

meanspirited, one day to the next.. I would counsel an immediate divorce.

"I'm not pouting... I'm taking umbrage."

Family Circus is not funny. However, Jeffy is 'Bag:

http://www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com/2007/11/family-circus-why-jeffy-is-bag.html

Jeffy sees his mama-hott paying attention to someone else.

Unafraid, he interrupts and demands he been seen. Not only that, he makes the horribly crude double entendre about her open mouth.

He is busting classic aggressive douchal masculinity in the presence of a curvy hott.

Now I know what you're thinking: That's his mom, dude.

And yes, for the purposes of this example, it is.

But in the larger context of Jeffy's powerful douche maneuvers, it illuminates.

Note also Jeffy's clenched fist. He will not be denied the affections of the hott. Even if he has to interrupt and point to get it. A hallmark of any hyper-aggressive 'bag.



:rofl:

:toast:

Hot Chiicks with Douchebags :rofl:

of town, I'd send care packages that included sealed envelopes marked "Do not open - you'll be sorry". Sometimes the contents were "Family Circus" comics.

He could never resist opening them and was always sorry when he did.

I told him so.

n/t

My first strip read everyday.

you must suffer from crippling, suicidal depression. ;)

The original FW, with Harry L. Dinkle et al, was great. The newer "post time jump" ones are... uh... dark, to say the least. Not that that's BAD, but yeesh, it gets ridiculous sometimes.

I still read it, though

x(

Funny and sad and beautiful.

It had a beating heart and a brilliant mind behind it.

Both are profoundly lame yet they are so simple one is compelled to look at them.

it's like he was training us to expect life to suck.

When I was little, my uncle would read it and laugh and hand it to me to read and I'd look at him like he needed help or something.

:wtf:

I am forced to pity you. :(

;)

I used to be a syndicated cartoonist with a strip in a few papers.

Not many people know this but Bill Keane is nothing like the "Family Circus" that he creates. In his acceptance speech for the Reuben Award (Cartoonist version of the Oscars), he gave about a twenty minute diatribe (and stand up routine) that was about as "dirty" as it gets. Go figure.

-P

the strip would have been better if Snoopy drew it.

Frankly, some of it is cute but cute is different than "funny"

It's the "Lost" or "24" of comic strips - you have to have read every strip since the beginning of time to get what's going on in the current strip. And no, it's not funny.

Sort of a soap opera for comic strips.
I think it has a good place.
I DO read it every week and i HAVE read it for literally years.

:puke:

...then it just became apolitically mediocre by whoever took over.

the worst currently available