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

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

Cheap Knock-Off Edition (Apr. 3)

Worst:
Bill Watterson made this joke a lot better with his Dinosaurs in Rocket Ships series.

Runners-up: Close to Home, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, Frank and Ernest, Get Fuzzy, Hagar the Horrible, Speed Bump, Zits
Best:

Runners-up: Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Curtis, Dilbert, Piranha Club

Not Cute Edition (Mar. 21)

Worst:
Red and Rover is built on the premise that dogs are cute. They aren't, and therefore the strip doesn't work. I do not understand how this strip appeals to anyone. It's like Family Circus, it's meant to be cute but it's not.

Runners-up: Blondie, Curtis, Family Circus, For Better or For Worse, Frank and Ernest, Garfield, On the Fastrack

Best:
If I have kids, I think I'll teach them to curse like this.

Runners-up: Doonesbury, Frazz, Lio, Non Sequiter, Pearls Before Swine, Single and Looking, Speed Bump

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: Even worse than yesterday's. Actually, I think it might be the worst pun we've seen in the comics in a long time, and the awkward attempt at a clever set-up does not help.

Runners-up: Close to Home, For Better or For Worse, Frank and Ernest (is this implying what I think it is?), Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose and Grimm, Rhymes with Orange, Speed Bump, Zits (again this strip just comes across as curmudgeonly and out of touch)

BestMutts continues its homage to a recent movie. It's nice to see a strip aim somewhere south of the 70 year old demographic.

Runners-up: Frazz, Lio, Pearls Before Swine

Comics of the Day

Worst: Runners-up: Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Brevity, Candorville, Family Circus (Calvin and Hobbes did this exact same joke years ago), Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose and Grimm, Non Sequiter, Pickles, Prickly City, Rhymes with Orange

Best: Haven't you always wanted to try this?

Runners-up: Baldo, Big Nate, Curtis (Barry tells it like it is!), Dilbert, Frank and Ernest, Frazz, Lio, Pooch Cafe, Single and Looking

Comics of the Day

Worst: Runners-up: Family Circus, Foxtrot, Garfield, Mutts, Non Sequiter, Prickly City, Zits (I woke up on time in high school, made my own breakfast, packed my own lunches, managed my own homework, Connie bothers me because she spoils Jeremy and he gets blamed for it)

Best:

I love the overly dramatic writing in the last panel. I love that Agnes' grandmother is religious. I love the sense of chaos and distance from reality Agnes displays.

Runners-up: Beetle Bailey, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! (love the attention to detail, some cartoonists might have let this slide with only the final joke), Candorville (nothing new about the joke, but well presented), Cul de Sac (I used to love mitten juice), Doonesbury (on the strength of Romney's "I change all the time" line), Get Fuzzy, Sally Forth (Sally's sister is cute), Watch Your Head

Comics of the Day

Worst: I don't get why this is supposed to be funny. I wasted about ten minutes of my day on this strip.

Runners-up: Blondie, Close to Home, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose and Grimm

Best:

I wonder how much time Darby Conley spends on Bucky's misspellings. I always find Bucky's spelling entertaining.

Runners-up: Piranha Club, Zits