Poorly Political Edition (Apr. 29)

Several weeks ago, Scott Stantis published some bold strips condemning torture. Here, Mike Peters' demonstrates the wrong way to approach torture. Comparing a bath to waterboarding trivializes the impact of torture. If you're going to send the wrong message, at least make it funny.

Runners-up: Baldo, Beetle Bailey, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Pickles, Red and Rover

Best:

Runners-up: Baby Blues, Big Nate, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Frank and Ernest, Frazz, Pooch Cafe, Speed Bump, Watch Your Head, Zits

Comics Note:
The bargain that Dolly has made isn't that different than that made by a housewife. In return for the validation of having a boyfriend, she is doing his work for him. A housewife, in return for the validation and support of a husband, does his work for him. Hopefully Thel will sit Dolly down tonight and read the Feminine Mystique to her, but I wouldn't count on it.

Metanote: For the first time in a month I am caught up. If you're lazy and intermittently committed, I would recommend not starting a blog that needs to be updated every day. Hopefully I will do a better job of keeping up, although I have a vacation in June that will set me back about a week and a half.

Not Sure What to Make of this One Edition (Apr. 4)

Worst:
As is all too common with Brevity, this makes no sense. Guy and Rodd take a random situation and assume it's funny.

Runners-up: Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Speed Bump

Best:
Poncho is a great character, and that is what drives this strip.

Runners-up: Frazz, Lio, Mother Goose and Grimm, Piranha Club, Sally Forth (cynical and charming, I enjoyed it)

Comics Note:
I enjoyed Mother Goose and Grimm today, despite the outdated boom-box reference. Pop culture references by adults usually fall flat, but the image of Castro dancing with his boxers hanging out was so absurd I enjoyed it.

Metanote: I have a lot of catching up to do, so I decided to just keep going with the current strips rather than getting bogged down in the backlog. I will do catch up posts for all the days I missed, but it's not going to get done until my weekend (Sunday-Tuesday).

Black & White Edition (Mar. 23)

Worst:
This was an easy choice for two reasons. First, Dolly's pun is as bad as a pun can be. Second, I can not envision any scenario that would cause someone to be upset because the moon change phases. Unless Grandma is some sort of reverse werewolf, which could be a great spin-off strip.

Runners-up: Daddy's Home, Dennis the Menace, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Mutts, Rhymes with Orange, Tank McNamara

Best:
This was a more difficult choice; I almost went with Agnes. What sold me on this at the end was Rob. Without him, it's just a bizarre interaction between Satchel and Bucky.

Runners-up: Agnes, Baby Blues (I'm not sure that love comes before lust, love the music in the lust panel though), Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Cul de Sac, Pearls Before Swine

Comics Note: Garry Trudeau is going on vacation, so Doonesbury will disappear from my lists for a while. While Doonesbury will be missed, it's always nice to get a chance to try out some new strips. Last time, we got Agnes and Watch Your Head out of the deal. Daddy's Home is off to a slow start, leading off its run with a typical poor joke. The Matt Groening homage offers some promise though.

So much wasted potential (Feb. 22)

Worst:
This does not make sense unless the speaker is an epic idiot. Anyone who puts an unwrapped piece of candy in with their ipod would need to be. The living isn't as much healthy, as it is stupid. The art is bad, which is typical of Rhymes with Orange. In the second panel, it looks like the woman has a tennis ball in her back pocket instead of a butt.

Runners-up: Brevity, Family Circus, Mother Goose and Grimm

Best:
I love Bucky's line in the last panel, it's the best insult I've heard in a long time.

Runners-up: Doonesbury, Garfield, Pearls Before Swine, Pooch Cafe, Watch Your Head

Bonus Comics Note:I have an intense dislike for Red and Rover. It's generally a mix of trying to be cute and bad jokes. Unlike the legacy strips, it has no glory days to look back on, which might serve as some justification for it's presence in the paper. Today's strip, however, filled me with a sense of hope. The strip, for once, had a chance to transcend it's position as a (very) poor man's Mutts. We could have had a story involving Red and Rover wandering around in a rough neighborhood, which would be rife with potential, both comic and profound. Instead, the next day brought us...
...another dumb joke. Brian Bassett could have run with this story for a week and actually made something worthwhile with it, but he stuck to the formula.

Comics of the Day

Worst: Celebrity jokes are rarely funny. At least this time it's a celebrity who's been relevant in the last thirty years.

Runners-up: Beetle Bailey (shouldn't a cartoonist be able to draw better caricatures?), Clost to Home, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, Frank and Ernest, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Rhymes with Orange, Single and Looking

Best:

It's a dumb joke, but I could not help but enjoy the expression on the wacko's face.

Runners-up: Frazz, Get Fuzzy, Lio, Pearls Before Swine, Pooch Cafe, Prickly City, Watch Your Head

Bonus Comics Note:Thirty years ago this would have been a very relevant joke. In the 50's and 60's, housewives were simultaneously put on a pedestal and demeaned. Being a housewife was not considered a real job that added value to the household. At the same time, housewifery was idealized in a way that discouraged women from having any other ambitions. This joke seems oddly out of place today.

Comics of the Day

Worst: I didn't get this joke the first time around. I figured it out as I was choosing it as worst strip. A joke that takes two tries to figure out, and isn't funny once you do is a good bet to win worst.

Runners-up: Baldo (for the visual in the last panel), Close to Home, Dennis the Menace, For Better or For Worse, Garfield, Red and Rover, Rhymes with Orange

Note what isn't present in the runners-up.

Best:

Cute.

Runners-up: Frank and Ernest, Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine, Tank McNamara, Watch Your Head, Zits

Comics Note: Self-indulgent crap like this is exactly why I dislike For Better or For Worse. Ellie and Connie chose to have kids and they act like they deserve a medal. Yes it's hard work raising kids, but it's hard work being a major league baseball player, or a UN delegate, or a trash collector, or any job really. So why do we privilege motherhood and family so highly? Perpetuation of the status quo, problems included, is not a heroic act.