Sunday Funnies on Saturday

The comic strip pictured above comes from "the box" (see my 9/11/08). Like most kids, I loved the funny pages before I knew how to read. The words weren't even important to me until FoxTrot came along, and that was a good ten years later. Up to that point, I just liked looking at the various poses for cartoon bodies, buildings, cities, faces, furniture, etc. I used to draw cartoon versions of everything from animals to cars to plants, all to my grandmother's chagrin. She wanted me to draw "real" things in a "natural" way, but I knew all along that the cartooning comes closer to the essence of a thing better than photorealism ever could. Calvin and Hobbes is probably my favorite strip of all time (I've added a top ten list down on the right column) because Bill Watterson switched back and forth between cartoony and very naturalistic (i.e. the daydream entries where Calvin is an adult or an animal).

I've been told I ANALyze things too much. That's just to give you a heads up before continuing with what might appear to be an otherwise funny post. Don't get me wrong, I think I'm a funny guy, but my worst flaw is that I'm too serious. Don't believe me? Then check this out. The San Diego Tribune does an early edition of the Sunday paper and I bought one to determine which comic stips I liked and didn't like, but more importantly, why I liked or disliked them. You see, it's not enough for me to just enjoy something. I have to understand why. I don't simply avoid things I don't like until I've figured out why that's the case. Why do I do this? I don't know, but that is another good question and now I'm going to have to think about that too. In the meantime, try to enjoy my ANALyses of all the 30, current, color, comic strips featured in this weekend's San Diego Tribune, from oldest to youngest (titles in bold were the ones I found funny):

1. Blondie (1930) was the flapper star in the early days; I like her but not the Dagwood character; my pet peeve is strips where the characters just have dots for their whole eyes (in other words, no white circles around the dots which are just pupils); unfortunately the case for 1/3 of the comics listed here

2. Mary Worth (1940) is funny to laugh at just because it's not supposed to be funny; that's a glimpse into my and my brothers' sense of humor

3. Beetle Bailey (1950) has a minimalist look similar to Garfield, but with more colors

4. Peanuts (1950) sucks; it looks like pen scribbles and the characters have stupid, hammer-shaped feet and dots for eyes; I hate Snoopy and Charlie Brown and Linus and especially Lucy; oh how I hate Lucy; the TV show Robot Chicken did an awesome sketch on the Peanuts characters where the Great Pumpkin eats everyone; oh yeah

5. Dennis the Menace (1951) weird color splotches and contrasting thick and thin lines without any apparent reason in the way of emphasis or lighting

6. The Family Circus (1960) something I shouldn't like but do; the dotted line maps could turn a single panel into the equivalent of a page-long treasure hunt

7. Doonesbury (1970) I never appreciated and what's with bags under everyone's eyes?

8. Funky Winkerbean (1972) looks like markers and fancy coloring; detailed backgrounds

9. Hagar the Horrible (1973) has the most atypical faces

10. Garfield (1978) has the thickest, bold lines

11. Sally Forth (1982) has good backgrounds but dots for eyes

12. Adam @ Home (1984) reminds me of Zits

13. Bizarro (1985) is the best thing after The Far Side

14. Luann (1985) had the best dialogue of all the strips this weekend

15. FoxTrot (1988) is a classic

16. Dilbert (1989) has never made me laugh

17. The Fusco Brothers (1989) scare me

18. Baby Blues (1990) uses thin, open-bordered lines which I personally don't like

19. Pickles (1990) is somehow remniscient of Doonesbury

20. Non Sequitur (1992) has lots of lines and cross-
hatching which I prefer

21. The Duplex (1993) juxtaposes cartoony (gotta love those enormous, bulbous noses) people against more realistic-looking backgrounds

22. Mutts (1994) is just scribbles and dots for eyes

23. Zits (1997) is a little jagged for me aesthetically but my mom thinks it's the funniest

24. Get Fuzzy (1999) is the actual funniest and reminds me of Ren & Stimpy

25. Pooch Cafe (2000) is very angular (not my cup of tea)

26. The Other Coast (2001) looks like the animated, Family Guy style

27. Pearls Before Swine (2001) reminds me of Life in Hell

28. La Cucaracha (2002) has the same style as many mini-comic books out now or Groo

29. Family Tree (2008?) looks like The Wizard of Id

30. Knight Life (2008?) had no word balloons and a style somewhere between B.C. and Hagar