Bad Word Edition (May 9)

Worst:
I don't know that the coppertone ad is deep enough in our cultural consciousness to be a sound basis for a joke. I feel like most people my age wouldn't get it, I guess older people would. Since Grimmy is a sentient being, wouldn't the presumed pantsing qualify as sexual assault?

Runners-up: Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Garfield, Red and Rover, Rhymes with Orange

Best:
Agnes dethrones Get Fuzzy. I'm assuming Agnes is trying to swing some sort of excuse, but she's so spacey, I don't think we can rule out the possibility that she wasn't aware that she was in the hallway. I think it's funnier that way.

Runners-up: Dilbert, Family Circus, Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine

Worst Insult Ever Edition (May 8)

Worst:
Pathetic Meow Sack? Not a very compelling insult.

Runners-up: Baldo, Blondie, Curtis, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Non Sequiter, Pooch Cafe, Speed Bump

Best:
Lots of good stuff in this one. Uncool Canadians, Marco Polo, coolishness. Darby Conley just blows away the competition on his good days. Kudos for the threepeat too.

Runners-up: Agnes, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Lio, Pearls Before Swine, Rhymes with Orange, Watch Your Head

Disturbed Edition (May 7)

Worst:
A kind of disturbing drawing backing a rather weird joke. I don't wicking clothing works quite like that anyway.

Runners-up: Blondie, Brevity, Family Circus, Frank and Ernest, Mutts, Pearls Before Swine, Speed Bump

Best:
Is Bucky a psychopath?

Runners-up: Agnes, Dilbert, Frazz, Lio

Tweedle Dumbfounding Edition (May 6)

Worst:
Even Billy seems bored by this lame joke.

Runners-up: Argyle Sweater, Candorville, For Better or For Worse, Frank and Ernest, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Rhymes with Orange, Sally Forth, Speed Bump

Best:
Get Fuzzy is great on so many levels. Great dialog, great art, great characters.

Runners-up: Agnes, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Lio, Pearls Before Swine

Devil in the Details Edition (May 4)

Worst:
Toilet water could more accurately be described as swirled rather than shaken or stirred. What really bothered me was Ralph's water bowl. The water appears to be a dome in the middle of the bowl. Is there any physical way that could happen, at least to that extent? Sometimes we all get caught up in the details I guess.

Runners-up: Blondie, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, For Better or For Worse, Frank and Ernest, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible

Best:
The snake's expressions sealed this one.

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

Bastardization Edition (May 4)

Worst:
One of the problems with Hagar the Horrible, and there are many, is the willingness of Chris Browne to jettison the historical context to make bad jokes. I Got Mine is a 21st century catchphrase which seems jarringly out of place here. What's the point of a Viking strip if the joke would have worked just as poorly in Blondie or Rhymes with Orange or Barney Google and Snuffy Smith?

Runners-up: Argyle Sweater, Baldo, Blondie, Dennis the Menace, Garfield, Opus

Best:
The pidgin English bit for the crocs can get a bit tiresome sometimes, but I think it worked well for their bastardization of things Charlie Brown might say. Me Kick Football is a great line in this context.

Runners-up: Agnes, Candorville, Cul de Sac, Get Fuzzy, Watch Your Head

Craftsmanship Edition (May 3)

Worst:
An absolutely atrocious pun, that is made to work with bizarre art. I'm not sure which offends my comedic taste more.

Runners-up: Close to Home, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, On the Fastrack, Rhymes with Orange

Best:
Not as great as many Get Fuzzy strips, but still the best for the day. Darby Conley is not content to come up with a joke and dedicate a whole strip to it. There is a punchline at the end, but the set-up is more entertaining than most strip's punch lines.

Runners-up: Agnes, Baby Blues, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Candorville, Frazz, Sally Forth, Single and Looking

Mr. Bojangles Edition (May 2)

Worst:
Inserting technology into an anachronistic situation is not inherently funny, as this joke proves.

Runners-up: Blondie, Curtis, Family Circus, Frank and Ernest, Garfield, Non Sequiter, On the Fastrack, Speed Bump

Best:
As always, great details in the art. Hiding a rhino under a lamp shade is brilliant.

Runners-up: Agnes, Pearls Before Swine, Watch Your Head

Horrible Poetry Edition (May 1)

Worst:

Runners-up: Argyle Sweater, Baldo, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Close to Home, Curtis, Family Circus, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose and Grimm, Non Sequiter, Rhymes with Orange

Best:
That's how you tell a joke.

Runners-up: Agnes, Baby Blues, Pearls Before Swine, Pickles, Single and Looking, Speed Bump

Hello Kumquat Edition (Apr. 30)

Worst:
Is a fart joke really the best we can do?

Runners-up: Argyle Sweater, Baldo, Blondie, Candorville, Curtis, Family Circus, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose and Grimm, Red and Rover, Sally Forth

Best:
I enjoyed the dialog here.

Runners-up: Agnes, Big Nate, Dilbert, Frazz, Prickly City

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.

Welcome to the Club Edition (Apr. 28)

Worst:
I threw up a bit when I read this one.

Runners-up: Family Circus, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Non Sequiter,

Best:
Sherman's Lagoon falls into the category of solid strips in my opinion. Every once in a while I think it's really good, and Jim Toomey rarely puts out any really bad strips. The characters all have interesting points, although they sometimes get a little repetitive. Rarely brilliant, rarely bad, which makes it better than most strips in the paper.

Runners-up: Agnes, Candorville, Lio, Watch Your Head

Pathos Edition (Apr. 27)

Worst:
Dagwood is from a rich family and has a white-collar job. Does anyone like that actually bowl? Maybe in the 1950's, but it seems pretty unlikely here in 2008. It's an awful lot of set-up for a bowling joke.

Runners-up: Argyle Sweater, Family Circus, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Prickly City, Rhymes with Orange, Sherman's Lagoon, Zits

Best:
Andy exists purely to create pathos, I enjoy it.

Runners-up: Agnes, Baldo, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Cul de Sac (based on Dil's line in the last panel), Dilbert, Get Fuzzy

Visceral Reaction Edition (Apr. 26)

Worst:
This image just bothered me. Combine that with the illogical situation and we have a winner.

Runners-up: Baby Blues, Blondie, Close to Home, Curtis, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, Frank and Ernest, Garfield, Mother Goose and Grimm, Non Sequiter, Red and Rover, Rhymes with Orange, Zits

Best:
Darrin Bell wins for the third day in a row. Like Darby Conley, Bell gets a lot of mileage out of a small set of characters.

Runners-up: Dilbert, For Better or For Worse, Get Fuzzy, Lio

I Read a Week of Lousy Set-up and All I Got Was This Lousy Strip Edition (Apr. 25)

Worst:
We finally have the denouement in Curtis after a week of very awkward set-up. Ray Billngsley has been setting us up to think that Curtis has been dealing drugs, but since this is Curtis, we know it won't touch on anything remotely threatening. Instead of a series that touches on the seamier side of urban life, we're left with penny ante capitalism. This could have been great, and it's mediocre.

Runners-up: Blondie, Brevity, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, For Better or For Worse, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose and Grimm, Prickly City, Speed Bump

Best:
I really enjoyed how Darrin Bell rendered the glow of the torch. The joke was good too.

Runners-up: Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Dilbert, Lio, Sherman's Lagoon

Racist Edition (Apr. 24)

Worst:
Grimmy is apparently racist, but I'm more concerned with the horribleness of this pun.

Runners-up: Argyle Sweater, Baldo, Curtis, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Non Sequiter, Piranha Club, Red and Rover, Rhymes with Orange


Candorville is one of the better strips in the paper, and is well worth reading on a daily basis. Darrin Bell uses his character's personalities to set-up his jokes, and he does it well.

Runners-up: Dilbert, Frank and Ernest, Zits

Family Dynamics Edition (Apr. 23)

Worst:
A beautiful woman marries a clown, this could be fertile ground for a therapist in a few years. This play on words hurts my brain.

Runners-up: Baldo, Blondie, Curtis, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose and Grimm, Red and Rover, Rhymes with Orange

Best:
Gotta love the detailed knowledge of Star Wars minutiae. It's interesting that you can watch a movie dozens of times without thinking about questions like this.

Runners-up: Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Frazz, Get Fuzzy

Earth Day Edition (Apr. 22)

Worst:
Learning Place? Schoolhouse Earth? This could have been better if the kids were pictured near a big rock, and the caption read "This is my favorite place to learn, Schoolhouse Rock." Then it would be mildly humorous in addition to the intended goal of sickeningly sweet.

Runners-up: Argyle Sweater, Dilbert, Frank and Ernest, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible (everyone looks horrified by the giant except Honi who looks on adoringly, there's a story here...), Mother Goose and Grimm, Red and Rover

Best:
Lots of Earth Day cartoons, some good, some bad, some bizarre. I liked this one best, as it was fairly clever. Scott Stantis does a good job using setting in his strip.

Runners-up: Big Nate, Get Fuzzy, Zits

And You Thought Pearls Before Swine had Dark Humor Edition (Apr. 19)

Worst:
So we have a nagging mother-in-law who attacks through he daughter, a wife who takes her mother's criticism and uses it as a reason to nag her husband, an alcoholic husband who would rather drink than be with his family, and a relationship with no healthy, viable communication. What fun.

Runners-up: Baldo, Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Close to Home, Daddy's Home, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, For Better or For Worse, Frank and Ernest, Garfield, Mother Goose and Grimm, Prickly City, Red and Rover, Rhymes with Orange, Speed Bump

Best:
Agnes' bizarreness was enough to win on a fairly weak day.

Runners-up: Lio, Mutts, Pooch Cafe, Single and Looking

My Eyes Edition (Apr. 16)

Worst:
This is unspeakably awful.

Runners-up: Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Frank and Ernest, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose and Grimm, Mutts, Prickly City, Rhymes with Orange, Speed Bump

Best:
As someone who works with kids for a living, I enjoyed this interplay between Frazz and the students.

Runners-up: Daddy's Home, Dilbert, Get Fuzzy, Piranha Club, Pooch Cafe

Lazy Edition (Apr. 21)

Worst:
Jim Davis' writers obviously ran out of ideas. It's not cool when you reference your own strip in a joke.

Runners-up: Argyle Sweater, Baby Blues, Blondie, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, Frank and Ernest, Mother Goose and Grimm, Non Sequiter, Pickles, Red and Rover, Rhymes with Orange, Sally Forth, Speed Bump

Best:
Not a really strong day. Imagining the sound effects was kind of fun.

Runners-up: Pearls Before Swine, Single and Looking

Is Cul de Sac the Second Best Strip in the Post? Edition (Apr. 20)

Worst:
Sigh.

Runners-up: Argyle Sweater, Baldo, Blondie, Foxtrot, Garfield, Prickly City, Zits

Best:
The characters and writing of Cul de Sac compare favorably to any other strip. Alice and Petey are never dull. I think the Post should add Cul de Sac to its every day line-up.

Runners-up: Agnes, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Dilbert, Frazz, Get Fuzzy, Mutts, Opus, Sherman's Lagoon, Single and Looking

Historical Innacuracy Edition (Apr. 9)

Worst:
What really bothered me about this joke is that Native Americans were usually either hunter/gatherers or farmers, so they didn't have a pay day. Even if they did, it's a really bad pun.

Runners-up: Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Close to Home, Daddy's Home, Family Circus, For Better or For Worse, Frank and Ernest, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Red and Rover, Rhymes with Orange, Zits

Best:
I have thoroughly enjoyed the Darby Conley's rendering of old comic scripts. Conley uses language as well as any artist in the paper.

Runners-up: Agnes, Dennis the Menace, Pearls Before Swine, Piranha Club, Pooch Cafe

Torturous Edition (Apr. 6)

Worst:
I think this might be the worst strip so far this year. All it is is horrible puns of celebrity names combined with bad art.

Runners-up: Blondie, Daddy's Home, Garfield, Zits

Best:
When the characters are good, the jokes flow naturally. Love the visual of Bucky with the ice cream carton.

Runners-up: Agnes, Beetle Bailey, Candorville, Cul de Sac, Foxtrot, Frazz, Hagar the Horrible, Lio, Mutts, Pearls Before Swine, Single and Looking, Speed Bump

Poop Joke Edition (Apr. 5)

Worst:
This dog and cat combo really annoy me. The dog is meant to be stupid and the cat cranky and cynical, but it's poorly done. There are a lot of more interesting anthropomorphic animals in the comics.

Runners-up: Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose and Grimm, On the Fastrack, Prickly City

Best:
Yes, it's a poop joke, but it's a funny poop joke.

Runners-up: Agnes, Big Nate, Daddy's Home, Dilbert, Frazz, Lio, Pearls Before Swine, Pooch Cafe, Zits