Stopped Clock

[filkertom]

There are a few comics that I peruse not because I necessarily find them funny all the time, but for various, personal reasons. I remember with great fondness the one funny Lockhorns cartoon ever: Xena, Warrior Princess, is at the door, with some books under her arm, and Loretta turns to Leroy and asks, "Did you order anything from Amazon.com?"

Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy is one of the least funny strips of all time... but my dad had a Big Little Book of a lot of strips (that in itself should tell you how antideluvian it is), and I got it stuck in my head when I was a kid.

The last umpety-ump years, the strip has been done by Guy and Brad Gilchrist, and they have brought it up-to-date. And, while no one will mistake it for comic genius, every once in awhile they even beat everyone else to the punch line:



Any underrated, underexposed, or surprising-that-you-find-them-funny comics out there that we should know about?

Comments

[controuble.livejournal.com]

The one I follow the most these days is Working Daze - It speaks to me as I work in the same field. See today's here (http://news.yahoo.com/comics/workingdaze;_ylt=AuO7QsvithNqHs4H3tSZvWIDwLAF)

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

That's not being a geek! There are just too many places offering free connections to be worthwhile paying for it any more. It would be like a hotel trying to charge extra for a telephone in the room.

[controuble.livejournal.com]

True, but you need to follow the strip to get the whole feeling behind it. I remember back in July they had one where one of the women is saying that in two weeks they would be going to the most romantic place ever; the other woman asks Paris, Bahamas, where? She replies, No, silly ComicCon.
Ah - geeks in love.

[wormquartet.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke, perchance?

-=ShoEboX=-

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I have noticed (and I remember one of the tech blogs I read mentioning the same thing) that the more expensive the hotel, the more likely they are to charge extra for the Internet connection. The primary convention hotel for the IAAP International Conference last month, for example, was $187/night for the room -- and $15/day for wired Internet access in the room, or $5/hour for wireless access in the lobby. There was free wireless access at the bus stop across the street, but it was too fleeping hot and humid to stay outside and use it.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

For me, it's Ballard Street. I like it a lot. Often the image and caption will put a surprisimng twist on each other, or add a dimension that's more than the whole. However, it's still obscure, I've never met anyone else who reads it, and several people I know will look at it with one of those "How could anyone find this amusing?" expressions, much like they did with Far Side when it first started out.

http://www.comics.com/creators/ballardst/archive/ballardst-20070906.html

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

One of the most overlooked bastions of subversive wit on the comics page is Sally Forth.

No, really. For years this bland family strip was largely ignorable, but in recent years the writing tasks have fallen to Francesco Marciuliano, and he's introduced a very subtle edginess to the strip that has made it one of my must-reads.

It's not the kind of edgy that hits you over the head, but read it for a while and you'll start to see what I mean.

[kinsfire.livejournal.com]

Jerry VanAmerongen (I think I managed to spell that right) did a single panel thing called "The Neighborhood" for a few years, and ... well, that man's sense of humor is so twisted that I found "The Far Side" to be pedestrian afterward.

I really wish that "Ballard Street" was in my local paper - I LOVED reading "THe Neighbohood".

[kinsfire.livejournal.com]

I'll agree with this. I never used to read it - it simply wasn't interesting to me.

THen something changed, and I found myself looking at it differently. It's not a 'fall down laughing' sort of funny, but it is good.

[kinsfire.livejournal.com]

Something my wife and I noticed about a year ago - Andy Capp is in our newspaper, and one day she started laughing as she read the paper. "Andy Capp was actually funny today!" she exclaimed.

The writing has changed, and it's started to gain some amusement factor back to it. Before about a year ago, I think it had been fifteen years since I'd laughed or even chuckled at an Andy Capp strip. I at least smile at a lot of them since 2007 started, and have laughed several times.

[kshandra]

*nods* Ballard Street started out as an actual three-panel comic, when VanAmerongen grew frustrated with the limitations of the single-panel format of The Neighborhood...I think it lasted about six months in that format, before he changed (back?) to an elongated single-panel.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Wow, I hadn't realized that an art style that twenty years out of date when I was a kid approaches underground and subversive in 2007.

Amazing.

Right now I'm not a regular reader of newspaper comics--I get a paper on average once a week when I have an itch to work some puzzles and read some comics. Mosty I read a few of them hip, newfangled web comics the kids these days are always reading.

I want a hard-copy newspaper that carries Nancy between Sluggy and Questionable Content.

Yeah, a Sluggo-Sluggy slugfest!

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

It's kind of disturbing, really. The style leads me to expect bland observational or wordplay humor from the 1950s, not six-month-old topical references.

[robgonzo.livejournal.com]

You need to play you some 5-card Nancy.
http://www.scottmccloud.com/inventions/nancy/nancy.html

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

If you really mean "old as all that," you mean "antediluvian." :)

I haven't actually read any real newspaper comics in years, since I no longer read paper newspapers...

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Yes, the fact that Nancy and Aunt What's-Her-Name are actually more hip than I am is yet another sure sign that I'm getting old.

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

I like Holbrook's On the Fastrack myself. Also Tumbleweeds (although Limpid Lizard and Lotsa Luck get very old very quickly), and the late, lamented World of Lily Wong from Hong Kong. Having been to Hong Kong myself, I get a lot of the jokes in Lily Wong that an ordinary American might not.

I also like Footrot Flats, which couldn't ever be published in the US thanks to our Nice-Nelly ideas about what could be shown on the funny pages, and Modesty Blaise uncut, ditto.

[danceswithlife]

I *really* like Ballard Street as well--many of the comics I've saved over the years have come from him. Today's strip was amazing--thank you. My graduate work is in Integral Studies is a combination of spirituality, philosophy and psychology, so I hear and read a lot about "inquiry" processes. Ballard Street (like today's strip) seems to have this amazing ability to take concepts bandied about in these fields take them to a natural conclusion. Loved it, saved it. Thanks.

[nightmarewriter.livejournal.com]

Hehehe. My 25th wedding anniversary is comming up this month, and hubby had planned to take us to the Silver Legacy resort in nearby Tahoe (cuz of that whole silver anniversary thing). I agreed it was a romantic gesture, but after a while I told him, that honestly, I was a nerd/geek... and that while it would be an okay thing to do and we might have a good time, I'd much rather spend the money on a new computer so we could MMORG together, instead of taking turns. Now THAT would be fun!

(Of course it didn't help that the last time we spent overnight in Nevada our poor abused car died in a mountain pass on the way back and we loitered for like 6 hours in a gas station waiting for a tow truck...)

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

"The Neighborhood" was where I first became a fan of his, got all his books. Now he's finally coming out with a new book, after nine years! I'll be in the bookstore the day they get it.

The fact that the local papers don't carry Ballard Street is one of the top three reasons I don't get the paper. I like to peruse a long list of comic web sites over breakfast, then I can be sure to get the ones I like. Now if only they'd start posting them in larger sizes so they're easier to read. While I can understand how syndicated comics get stuck at that small size (understand, yes, but that's no excuse for not enlarging) what gets me are the web comics that are tiny and illegible.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Another vote for Footrot Flats here. I never thought New Zealand farm humor would make me laugh, but this strip proved otherwise.

[figmentatious.livejournal.com]

So many to choose from....

I picked up a book of the best of PartiallyClips from Rob Balder at Dragoncon and then read through all the archives in 2 days. He had me laughing out loud a lot. http://www.partiallyclips.com/

I've also recently found Basic Instructions, which is similarly warped in a good way. (http://www.basicinstructions.net/)

I don't know if this one is underappreciated, but I've always loved Sherman's Lagoon. I think it quite possibly has the highest body count in a strip shown in major newspapers. (http://www.slagoon.com/)

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

What changed is that it started being written by comic genius Francesco Marciuliano.

His webcomic "Medium Large" was one of the most hysterically subversive strips ever drawn. Unfortunately he stopped updating it and now the site is gone. Some examples, though:

http://www.medium-large.com/?m=200504

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

You may remember a Twilight Zone episode--a little googling receals it was called The Eye of the Beholder in which Donna Douglass (Ellie Mae Clampet) plays a beautiful woman who's cosmetic surgery fails to make her as ugly and deformed as the normal humans who run the world:


http://fusionanomaly.net/twilightzoneeyeofthebeholdermedicalstaff.jpg

What I find most disconcerting about "Marmaduke" is that the humans in marmaduke are drawn just like the "normal" humans in that Twilight zone.

[moquif.livejournal.com]

Have you heard of The New Adventures of Queen Victoria http://www.gocomics.com/thenewadventuresofqueenvictoria/? It's a cross between your strip and Monty Python cartoons.

For those who liked Farside, I like Argyle Sweater and Off the Mark. They're Larson-esque without being a Larson-wannabe.

[fuuberry.livejournal.com]

I don't read syndicated strips much, lacking a newspaper subscription and all, but I'm going to post shameless plugs for the four best little-known webcomics I'm hooked on. The only drawback with the first three is that they're somewhat heavy continuity, so setting aside a few hours and reading through them is highly recommended.

Sam and Fuzzy
http://samandfuzzy.com/

Gunnerkrigg Court
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/index2.php

Wapsy Square
http://www.wapsisquare.com/index.html

Ugly Hill
http://uglyhill.com/

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

Yep, that comic's LJ feed is on my friends page so I read it every day.

[wormquartet.livejournal.com]

You have officially amused me. :)

-=ShoEboX=-