Technology is not Inherently Funny Edition (Apr. 1)

Worst:
Another lame technology joke.

Runners-up: Baldo, Curtis, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Pickles, Red and Rover, Rymes with Orange, Zits

Best:

Runners-up: Candorville, Lio, Pooch Cafe, Watch Your Head

I don't get it (Mar. 2)

Worst: I suppose the joke is that the cow's udder is comparable to a belly button? If that is the joke, it's not funny. If that isn't the joke, I have no idea what is going on here.

Runners-up: Family Circus, Foxtrot, Frazz, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Rhymes with Orange, Zits

Best:

It's always kind of incongruous when the animals' natural behavior clashes with America's natural behavior.

Runners-up: Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Candorville, Get Fuzzy, Opus, Sherman's Lagoon

Comics of the Day

Worst: Cross dressing!?

Runners-up: Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Brevity, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Family Circus, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose and Grimm, Red and Rover, Rhymes with Orange

Best:I know JFK did a lot to fight communism. He's got the Cuban Missle Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, and Vietnam on his resume. Other than that, I don't know what else he did. His presidency does seem long on mystique and short on policy successes though.

Runners-up: Agnes, Candorville, Frazz, Pearls Before Swine

Comics of the Day

Worst: This is an absolutely horrible pun. First, schouter isn't really a word, or if it is, it's not one I have ever heard used. Second, shouter and chowder don't even sound that alike. Even if you were four, you would have to be an incredible idiot to make this mistake.

Runners-up: Beetle Bailey, Brevity, Curtis, Hagar the Horrible, Rhymes with Orange, Single and Looking, Speed Bump

Best:

This was just sweet, and it had a solid joke at the end. Poncho's excitement was very enjoyable.

Runners-up: Agnes, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Garfield, Get Fuzzy, Lio, Pearls Before Swine, Piranha Club, Zits

Bonus Visual Runners-up:
I had a very hard time choosing between these two strips and Family Circus for worst. Speed Bump falls into the trap of thinking random equals funny. Rhymes with Orange uses a horrible pun that makes no sense. I made the mistake of clicking on the Rhymes with Orange strip when I was saving the image, and I got sent to a description of the strip. It starts "Rhymes with Orange is a smart person's strip...it's about the little details we all live with." I am a smart person, and I hate this strip. This is also not a little detail that I, or anyone I know, live with. I have never been pulled over for having too many cattle in a cattle drive. It's like the people who promote this strip want to convince us it's actually worth reading or something.

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'm still not sure I get this joke. I assume it has something to do with people finding cockroaches repulsive. I also think the dialogue is kind of sexist.

Runners-up: Baldo, Blondie, Brevity (once again, substituting random for clever), Family Circus, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Rhymes with Orange

Best:
Runners-up: Agnes, Pickles

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.

Worst: Sigh. This would work better without the silent penultimate panel. It would still be stupid, but it would be well done stupidity. For the record, this makes four worst strips for Grimm, and three worst runner-ups, in seven days (MG & G does not run on Sunday, thank God).

Runners-up: Dilbert (the third panel is a waste of space), Mutts, Hagar the Horrible, Family Circus, Sally Forth (the high was 70 degrees today), Close to Home, Zits, For Better or For Worse, Piranha Club, Candorville, Tank McNamara, Rhymes with Orange

Best:

This is the one strip that made me smile today.

Runners-up: Pearls Before Swine, Watch Your Head, Frazz, Pickles, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!

Comics of the Day

Worst:
So is the joke that morons are likely to get stranded on desert isles, because that is the only way this makes any sense to me. Otherwise it's just the typical representation of evolution with the word morons attached. Maybe morons are funny, but probably not.

Runners-up: Red and Rover, Curtis, Rhymes with Orange, Candorville (Darrin Bell is capable of much wittier and relevant jokes about the quality of the media)

Best:
This comic wins a lot of points for the visual in the third panel, which I thought was cute. Otherwise it's the same joke Stephan Pastis has been riffing on all week, but no one else did better today really. And if you're going to use one joke all week, at least make it a good one, which Pastis usually does.

Runners-up: Watch Your Head, Dilbert, Agnes, Non-Sequiter

Other Comics notes: Dennis the Menace and Mother Goose and Grimm both have dumb jokes today, but I wanted to praise them for the visuals. Joey's expression and Attila stuck upside down in a Pringles can both amused me. This doesn't make up for the lame jokes, but at least they did something well.