This is a tricky distinction, though, because comics like Snuffy Smith are immediately unreadable. This one is just blank space as far as I'm concerned, so it doesn't offend me nearly as much as, say, Mary Worth or Cathy. Most of the continuity print comics, like Mary Worth, are difficult to get into because you can't read from the beginning of the arc. Also, Mary Worth has been running since before World War I (Mary Worth was quite a dish when the series started), so it would take a lot of back reading to get started. Cathy is just ink vomit on the page; she a stereotype of annoying woman that I wouldn't tolerate in real life and certainly don't want any part of on the comics page. Oddly enough, I don't mind For Better or For Worse, though, even though that one's not funny and it is nominally a continuity comic. It manages to pack a lot of stuff into the four panels, handle the continuity and stand alone. That's the key -- standalone as well.
Family Circus, Ziggy and one called Pluggers all get honorable mention. Family Circus is supposed to be cute, I guess, but it isn't. It's like "Dennis the Menace", another one panel comic, without the "Menace." Who cares? Pluggers is one I don't recall seeing outside of the Greenville paper, but it's MO is describing what a plugger is, and basically it's an old fat person. Great. Just what I always wanted to see in average drawings and writing. I don't know what Ziggy's problem is, but I don't want any part of it.
Undoubtedly, the be all end all of awful comics is Frank and Ernest. If you are unfamiliar with this comic, I have the deepest envy of you. It is a poorly drawn comic that is never funny. Yet somehow, every time I open to the comics page, I end up reading it. I don't have this problem with Snuffy Smith. I don't know why Frank and Ernest fill me with more hate than, say, Nazis. I think that whoever this Thaves character is deserved to be tried for crimes against humanity.
This comic, which I just made up, is better than any Frank and Earnest comic I have ever read.
Who out there thinks that Frank and Ernest is good? If you leave me a comment and say you like it, you better be able to describe to me your favorite strip or I will call you a liar and an accomplice. I cannot believe that this comic continues to run. I suppose newspapers don't really get a lot of complaints about comics, especially inoffensive ones, but I'm thinking about writing some letters.
4 comments:
Your comic strip is very entertaining, Brandon.
It raised a few questions, though.
1. How long did you actually spend on this, opposed to what you should've been doing?
2. Why is the fellow on the left plump in the first frame, and thin on the next?
1. About three minutes, including load time of Paint.
2. There are absolutely no problems with continuity in this comic.
There is one infuriatingly bad "Frank and Ernest" comic posted in the first floor hall of the Biology building. It is posted on the Genetics and Biochemistry bill board and it depicts a scientist in a lab full of very large animals. The scientist has a dismayed look on his face and he says "I wish I had of gotten into MICRO-biology."
I have my Mozilla browser set up to at the touch of one button fetch my favorite comics from their respective sites and loads each in its own t– Oh, never mind. It is just hard once you have seen the light to keep it to yourself. Sorry Brandon!
On a related note, the news paper in Augusta GA which my parents took when I was growing up, did trial runs of a few comics some years ago which they proposed as replacements for others. I don’t remember which were involved, only that the debate in the letters to the editor was quite heated and ugly. I believe that one of the comics in question was Boondocks which, amazingly, they still print but moved to a page by itself since it is so offensive. Basically, the writer’s sole idea of humor is blatant stereotyping of African-Americans. Cathy doesn’t hold a candle to it.
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