Which comic strip is the worst of all time?

I particularly hate Family Circus, because:

1. It isn't funny

2. It has no plot

3. It isn't drawn particularly well

4. It features only recycled material drawn differently, the same four themes over and over,

I. The kids explaining things in "cutesy" words/ways,
II. Death, church, praying, etc,
III. Billy's dotted-line adventures,
IV. "Not Me" and "Ida Know" characters,

5. It has never once made me laugh, smile, or even think about how wonderful families and children are. Not even close.

6. It puts homocidal thoughts in my head and I consider myself a peace loving man.

...But if you can name a worse comic strip, please do so and explain why.

Before I read your post, I was thinking Garfield (very little artistry/changes between strips, ridiculously recycled themes, Jim Davis's merchandising) but now I'm not so sure.

Check out the new poll question. (See above)

Which comic strip is the absolute worst?

Peanuts (don't kick the football, Charlie Brown. Oh he missed. How funny)
Garfield (used to be funny back in 1983. Leave the table and he eats your food.)
Marmaduke (The dog is big. The dog is big. Funny.)
Cathy (ACKKKKK!!!! I have to lose five pounds!!!!!! Wait.... was there supposed to be a punchline?)
Curtis (token minority strip with appallingly bad writing)
Family Circus (see rant in OP)
Beetle Bailey (look! Incompetent people in the 1950s US army... how funny)
Mallard Fillmore (mmm... Right-wing BS. Where's the humor?)
Doonesbury (mmm... Left-wing BS. Where's the humor?)
Rose is Rose (is Boring. What the heck kind of name is Pasquale Gumbo?)
Heathcliff (the Garfield clone)
Ziggy (Like Charlie Brown... can't ever win. Gotcha)

And some other wastes of space:

Zippy the Pinhead (who?)
Fred Basset (who?)
Frank and Earnest (who?)
Bazooka Joe (wait... I've heard of that)
That's Life (what?)
Judge Parker (huh?)

I voted Garfield, before I saw you had Rose is Rose (is Stupid). I'm torn between them as worst.

CR

Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit:
I voted Garfield, before I saw you had Rose is Rose (is Stupid). I'm torn between them as worst.

CR

I used to like Garfield. I even had like the first fifteen books or so as a kid.

But the cat is 30 years old now, so that means he's at least 10 years decomposed, and the jokes are even less fresh.

One appalling Dutch one I can think of is Swamp Thing.

It has to be "Five go mad on Mescalin" , definately the worst comic strip

Originally Posted by askthepizzaguy:

Ziggy (Like Charlie Brown... can't ever win. Gotcha)

Y'all best be treatin' ma friend Ziggy with a cupfull o' niceness lest I be tempted to' buse ma o-tho-ri-tie.

Umm, Family Circus is awful, but it inspired the Dysfunctional Family Circus parody, so it's now a priceless classic. Actually I think they might have sued the DFC out of existence, but just the memory of it makes the real Family Circus worthwhile to me.

If you never heard of the DFC, it was the most crass, black sort of humor you can imagine, which fit perfectly with the cheesy, cheery, absurdly perfect drawings.

I voted for Doonesbury, because there's nothing funny about milking the same political in joke for months on end.

Oh God, so many difficult choices...

I thought I had it pretty much down to Family Circus and Garfield, but then Peanuts pops into consideration.

Now, I have nothing against the strip. It was very excellent, broke a lot of ground, today's cartoonists swear by Schulz as their idol, etc. But it all happened already.

What cheeses me off is that my newspaper, and probably a lot of others, insist on re-running the strip going on nearly a decade after Schulz has passed. Never mind that there are lots of good, more modern strips that are struggling to gain an audience for this exact reason, there are strips from 40 years ago that need to be re-printed. Yaaaaaay nostalgia!

*takes meds, has a nap*

I hate family circus because its the most unlikeable cartoon there...I like Garfield he's just a fatty who wants some love (and lazgonia)

Marmaduke. Now certainly there are some bad ones on that list, but Marmaduke has absolutely no humor. Literally. Even bad humor is better than none, it at least shows the writer actually tried to do something. Marmaduke is absolutely terrible.

What, "Rose is Rose" has humour?

I voted for all of them, because i hate all of those comic strips with a passion. They're about as funny as spondylitis and brain cancer combined.

Except Fred Basset. I've always had fond memories of Fred Basset due to the videotape i had of some of the animated shows when i was young. It made me laugh. Until it wore out from being played too much.

I agree that Family Circus has always sucked. Never understood why it was widely-circulated. Beetle Bailey has been lame for ages too.

Cathy often irritates me, but every now and then a strip will make me chuckle.

Never understood the appeal of Peanuts either, particularly in Schulz' later years. The entire strip seemed random and....schizophrenic, somehow.

Originally Posted by Martok:

Never understood the appeal of Peanuts either, particularly in Schulz' later years. The entire strip seemed random and....schizophrenic, somehow.

Aw c'mon, Peanuts is fantastic. A boy and his dog and his friends. Of course the strip seemed random, life is random. And there were lots of great insights in Peanuts.

Also, you have to see it for what it was. It wasn't an exercise in existentialist French thought, or neo-colonial post-modern vision of Liberace's inner struggle, it was a comic strip you could read to a five year-old.

How come Garfield gets hate? He's really funny, except for the fact that now he's a bit over the top with the jokes, some are far from funny.

But still, I like em.

For obvious reasons I can't link to any of the DFC archives, but for the Garfield haters there's an alternative that is, as far as I'm aware, entirely clean. Behold, one forum archive from the now defunct Garfield Randomizer, which was ungodly hilarious at times:

http://www.truthandbeautybombs.com/b...pic.php?t=4950

The idea being that it cut each panel up individually and then remixed them at random, forcing your mind to try to find the connection.

There was a Fred Basset parody floating around out there too, which I couldn't link to here, but I never found it all that funny.

Quite frankly all comic strips suck if you consider just how good some of their parodies are, and it's because of what's required to be a successful comic strip. You have to be bland enough that every single English reading human being could crawl out of bed on a Monday, drag themselves to the coffee pot, rub the sand out of their eyes and still not only not be offended by what you drew and wrote, but also understand it. I mean, let's face it, Scott Adams is much funnier as a pocket philospher on his blog than in all the comic strips he ever wrote.

Pah! All Garfield needs is a little remastering and it's hilarious again. That, or some Photoshop editing...

The problem with many of these strips is that they have gone on way too long. There is only so much story a cartoonist can come up with, and only so far you can take the characters. This is why you have to admire guys like Larson (Far Side) and Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes), who quit before their strips got stale.

Berke Breathed has kept fresh by going Sunday-only with first Outland and now Opus. Gary Trudeau has been going for almost 40 years with Doonesbury, but it's political/current events, so new material is fairly easy to go with. Yes, a lot of it is heavily slanted left, but that's why many papers put it in the editorial pages, not the regular comics. And while Trudeau gets slammed by right-wingers, he does a lot of work with injured vets (especially amputees), and gives to Fisher House.

And then there is just plain garbage, like Cathy, Mary Worth, and Judge Parker.

Good to know the randomiser is still alive out there, I should've done a little searching before I posted.

Originally Posted by askthepizzaguy:
But the cat is 30 years old now, so that means he's at least 10 years decomposed, and the jokes are even less fresh.

Jokes?

I do not enjoy beetle bailey. Every time, beetle just gets beaten up. It incites to violence. shame

Most of them are terrible. Some of those Dutch ones are terrible too, especially the cheap ones that look really bad. There were a few people who thought a stupid comic like Scribbly (or whatever it's called) is funny...... take a good look at the word 'were' I used: it is the past as they are no more; they mysteriously perished

Anyway, I don't get how people still like these bad comics made by some schmuck. I mean... sure, sure, if you're the creator and it brings you some money, alright, but at least get better at what you do and make it really WORTH something. Those very small strips with a few simple lines drawn here and there and a terrible short plot are the worst. At the moment the only Dutch one I know of that was decent is De Stamgasten. I don't know if it's still okay today.

omgwtfwhatuon what about Fokke en Sukke?

There are comic strips I find very unfunny, but some of it has to do with being able to relate with the target audience. Strips like Family Circus and Cathy have definite audiences. Single folks aren't going to get Family Circus and men will have a harder time with Cathy. I find Dilbert hysterical, but I wonder how funny it is to someone who hasn't worked in Cubicleland or in a technology field.

Another point in defense of unfunny comics, is that I suspect it is harder than it looks. Sit down and try to write a funny, 3 panel joke or story...six or seven days a week...on a deadline...for years on end. I don't think I'd want to do that.

As for specific dislikes in comics, I hate cats, so I don't get Garfield. My all time least favourite comic used to be a strip called Nancy. Fortunately, I don't think it is made anymore. Nancy reminds me of what I'll call Gregoshi's Law of Comic Strips, but I've got to run right now, so you'll have to wait.

Nancy still exists. Assuming you still live in the Philly area Gregoshi, the Daily News carries the strip.

Sorry for the double post, but I've been playing with the Garfield Randomizer all day and I have to share this one:

Don't think I know these, except for Garfield. Don't like it too much.

Why is Snoopy not in the poll? That would get my vote for sure.
Dogbert is fun though.

I like Stan Sakais Usagi Yoyimbo: http://www.usagiyojimbo.com/index.html

Casper & Hobbes is nice.

I don't think Fokke & Sukke are known.