So since we’re in the middle of a Bloom County Roundtable, I thought I’d officially state that I think it’s the most underrated comic strip out there. It gets little critical appreciation and isn’t much talked about, even though it’s fantastic, and one of the all time greats as far as I’m concerned. (It was mired towards the bottom of our best comics list. I sort of regret I didn’t put it on my own top ten.)
Overrated; well, Calvin and Hobbes is the first that springs to mind, for some of the reasons I discussed earlier in the week. I think Doonesbury’s pretty mediocre as well; visually blah and often smug and flat, though occasionally funny. The enthusiasm for Nancy among comics folks also baffles me; it’s visually slick, but completely devoid of any other interest, as far as I can tell.
I actually generally agree with the enthusiasm for the most praised comic strips — Peanuts, Krazy Kat, and Little Nemo. I think they’re rated about right.
So what do you think are the most overrated and underrated comic strips? Let us know in comments.
I think Lio is overrated. I’ve heard it referred to several times as a really clever, subversive comic, but it reads like Frank for dumb babies. Incisive criticism on my part, I know.
Sometimes it’s so dumb that “Frank for dumb babies” is way too nice. Representative strip: http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/lio/2008/lio081119.gif
That’s a totally Nancy gag. Art’s not as good as Nancy though.
Overrated: Jeff Mallet’s Frazz seems to be a favorite of a lot of folks these days (at least to judge by my FB feed), with its lead clearly conceived as a grown up Calvin; while it seems okay, I’ve never really warmed to it.
Underrated: Zits by Borgman and Scott. No, it’s not really an accurate picture of teenage life, any more than Archie (which it resembles in many ways) was, but it’s well drawn and often quite funny. Favorite character: RichandAmy. During one of my last trips to Amsterdam I was pleasantly surprised to see reprint collections of it prominently displayed in some shops (and not just Lambiek).
I’ll also mention Jimmy Johnson’s Arlo and Janis, which is sometimes almost like a grown up version of Peanuts and is pretty much the only daily newspaper strip whose married characters ever seemed to have an actual sex life (see R.C. Harvey’s discussion of this here: http://classic.tcj.com/blog/sexiest-most-suggestive-arlo-and-janis/).
My third underrated strip would probably be the Dick Moores version of Gasoline Alley. In recent years Frank King’s original version has kind of eclipsed the Moores run and it’s not hard to see why: King did some incredible work, particularly some of the Sunday strips with their astonishing flights of fancy. But while the early King daily strips have a certain quiet beauty, when reading the Drawn & Quarterly reprints, I actually found them kind of boring. The Dick Moores version by contrast was in may ways, better written and at least as well-drawn as King’s and was never dull. The long “Rover” sequence (from the eighties) about a boy who thinks he’s a dog is still among my favorite comic strip sequences of all time.
I could also mention a couple of strips that aren’t so much underrated as forgotten: William Overgard’s fantastic Rudy, which ran for about 5 minutes in the eighties:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7064/1685/1600/rudy.jpg
Norb by Tony Auth and Daniel Pinkwater, which also had an all-too-brief run in the eighties:
http://www.lambiek.net/artists/image/a/auth_tony/tony_auth_norb.jpg
Both of these strips were unusual for their time in featuring day-to-day continuity along with daily gags (not unlike Gasoline Alley in that regard actually).
Nancy gags are funny and uncanny and wonderful // I reject your comparison.
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It’s pretty clear though that the strip weighed down by the most unsupportably effusive praise is C&H.
First comment here in a long time, but how can one resist?
Overrated: ZIPPY — which, in a recent confluence of cartoonists in Chicago, was named the only good strip out today. It’s a comic to make comics critics feel good about dedicating themselves to comics.
Underrated: I don’t know. ZITS is a good choice, for quality. But I think it gets a fair amount of love for its formal POV playfulness. So I’ll nominate a strip every art comic critic seems to hate – Dilbert. (When you’re at the bottom, the only place you can go…)
Historically, I wonder if THIMBLE THEATER isn’t wildly overrated. While early MUTT AND JEFF and Swinnerton’s JIMMY (at least within certain periods) don’t get enough respect.
BLOOM COUNTY: a noxious mix of smug pieties, hippy feelgoodisms, and flat pop-culture references. Plus cute animals. Consign it to the flames.
And Calvin and Hobbes was, often, really wonderful. And there’s no reason one shouldn’t judge a strip by its best work.
I certainly agree with you about Dilbert. But it could just be that you have to have worked in a cubicle for a boss with weird hair to really appreciate it. This one, for example,hits quite close for home: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-09-26/
I guess I can see your point about Zippy, but I still love it without reservations, particularly when he sometimes puts aside the Griffy snark and does some actual reporting on the world, as with the long run documenting a trip to Cuba from a few years back.
I’d just like to share this passage from the Gasoline Alley entry in the book 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics, edited by Maurice Horn, this entry written by Bill Crouch, Jr.:
“Gasoline Alley is a part of American pop culture, overdue for a television sitcom and serious merchandising. It is the best that family values stands for. When Beavis and Butthead are deservedly in the trash heap of failed faddish comic-strip characters, the Wallet family will just be rolling along as usual.”
Regrettably, the whole book isn’t written in this same goofy, cranky/sentimental, petulant tone. According to his bio, Bill Crouch, Jr. has written a bunch of Flintstones comics and “his book The ABCs of Cartooning will be published in 1997.” I want it.
In general, the way we read comic strips these days makes us miss the appeal and strength of many, if not all, of them. I’ve switched from the reprint-binge-read to reading them as intended — day by day, or week by week for Sunday-only strips — and it’s radically transformed the whole experience, for the better. Li’l Abner, for instance — so much of that strip is about Capp building suspense day to day, teasing us with something unknown but alluded to by one character after another. Reading them all bunched together means you miss that entirely, and don’t “get” the strip at all.
So, anyone reading strip reprints — I’d strongly recommend slowing right down and reading them once a day. Give it a try! (The one downside is that some of the great strips do take a few years to settle in)
A few thoughts on specific strips…I don’t care much for Peanuts, but that’s probably on me, not the strip. Calvin and Hobbes, on the other hand, yeah, not so much. Fantagraphics’ new Barnaby reprints should put that strip back in contention — one of those strips that, if you like it, you really like it. Mr O’Malley is one of the great strip characters, right up there with Wimpy and Krazy. Mickey Mouse’s esteem has been climbing because of its own reprints, as it should. Modesty Blaise doesn’t have a high enough profile outside the UK, as a slick, sexy adventure strip. Li’l Abner’s critical reputation seems to be in free-fall these days — how many kids below the age of, like, 50 still rate it at all? Alley Oop has been left behind by the era of reprints, so hopefully the upcoming Sundays volume can turn that around. The handful of Walter Quermann’s Hickory Hollow strips in Art Out of Time make me wish for more.
…I just noticed that Little Orphan Annie doesn’t appear on the HU list. WTF, world of comics? You’d generally hesitate to call such a well-known and well-liked strip underrated, but, shit, if doesn’t appear on that list, then maybe it is underrated — easily a top 10 strip, for mine.
And surely there’s a wealth of non-US strips that deserve wider attention. Where are all the great French strips, for instance — not that I know there are any, but surely there are, just waiting to be translated and introduced to anglophones. (Kim Thompson RIP) The great strips can’t all be American, can they?
Overrated: Wee Pals. Yes, it’s all well and good that it had a racially mixed cast, but that didn’t make it particularly funny or insightful.
Underrated: Leonard Starr’s version of Little Orphan Annie, simply called Annie (capitalizing on the Broadway show) that ran in the 1980s and ’90s. As a rule, I don’t like legacy strips much, but this was an amusing, goofily sci-fi take on an old classic, with some good characterization. Though it was far from realistic, Annie herself seemed like a real almost-teenager (I’m thinking she’s about 12 in this version, but am not sure) which she really didn’t in the final years of Harold Gray’s strip. Starr’s version was much less political, too.
Almost Underrated: Sally Forth. I think the writing’s quite good. It’s the art that sabotages it.
Finally, my paper only carries the Sunday BC, but, frankly the art amd writing has improved since Johnny Hart’s grandsons took over. It harkens back to the strips 1960s-70s glory days.
Fair enough. I can certainly see how reading the early King GA strips could improve the experience; OTOH the Dick Moores version actually works either way, day by day (as I read it for many years in the Boston Herald) and in the two compilation volumes of it that I’m fortunate to own.
Yeah, it didn’t occur to me to consider Annie as underrated. A few critics may have grumbled about its politics, but I thought it was still generally considered a classic.
And how about Lee Falk’s Phantom? Highly rated (or so it seems) outside of the US, but kind of marginal here, it seems.
Agreed, re: Leanard Starr’s ANnie As I recall, he brought back Mr. Am, and did some sinister stuff with The Asp. OTOH, I seem to recall he also had a thing for lame pun names, like a ballerina named “Anya Toze”.
Dilbert can be funny. The art is pretty crappy though — which can I guess be seen as thematic since it’s about people doing their jobs in a half-assed manner.
Overrated: Li’l Abner. I’ve always found Al Capp’s satire heavy-handed and unfunny.
Underrated: Dilbert. Yes, the drawing’s lazy and ugly. But Scott Adams is a very strong writer, and one of the best satirists in the history of newspaper strips. He’s certainly a lot wittier than Al Capp.
Robert — I only started to appreciate Abner once I stopped expecting it to be funny (it isn’t), and just read it as a whimsical adventure strip.
I think Jones’ advice to read them once a day is great. I still haven’t finished reading through Bloom County, so I might finish the strip that way.
Ditto on Dilbert being underrated. I found the strip funny and disturbing as a kid, and still do now. I also one of the rare strips not about domestic life.
Underrated: Non Sequitur. I loved it as a kid– does it hold up to scrutiny now? The last few Sundays have been episodes in a sort of long-form story arc on white slavery in ancient times, so I’m really not sure. But the art is still lovely.
I’d have to agree about Zippy being overrated, having read a lot of it in a futile attempt to get to the bottom of why it was so great, and failing. Based on my reading of the first volume of the Terry and the Pirates reprints, as well, I’d ahve to say the reaosn it seems to be held in generally high regard eludes me, unless it improves substantially after the first few years.
As for underrated, I don’t quite share Noah’s high regard for Bloom County (and reading it again in the current complete iteration has been a trifle disappointing, given how fondly I remember it), but I’d agree that it’s probably underrated, overall. And yes, I’d say that Dilbert is very much underrated; at its best, it is extremely funny. But what about Alley Oop (during the Hamlin years, anyway)? I rarely hear its praises sung, but I think it’s great stuff, beaufitully drawn, with strong and exciting stories.
The appeal of newspaper strips and webcomics in this style has always mystified me. I dont count Eisner’s The Spirit and similar comics because it feels just like a regular comic book.
It is a total mystery to me why so many people prize this form for creativity. Monthly comics is a bad idea for a very large percentage of creators, but weeklies and dailies sounds insane. It’s like standup comedy in that there are so many factors against you that you have to be a truly special type of freak to make it work.
It makes me think of crazy ideas for professions; like a chef who wants to have rocks thrown at him and a bull chasing him around a kitchen while he tries to work.
Deadlines aside, creating humor or any other type of amusement in the form time after time seems extremely tough to me too.
I think the only comic strips I’m a proper fan of are Gustave Verbeek’s visual trickery.
Even if I like the drawings in some strips, I never feel drawn or compelled by the content of 99% of them. I’ve been tempted to buy a Krazy Kat (because it is often called the best comic ever) or Thimble Theatre (because Domingos liked something that had a pop culture phenomenon in it) book before but there is just isnt enough allure in what I have seen. When I was a teen I assumed someday I would read Terry And The Pirates, Steve Canyon, Prince Valiant, Tarzan, Flash Gordon and Peanuts but I have pretty much no interest now. When I’m tempted I think the desire is to be totally enveloped in a world that you get to spend a very long time in.
From what little I seen of CC Beck’s critical writing, I always found it a bit unconvincing but it was kind of weird and funny. I always remember him saying “newspaper strips are boring because people who read newspapers are boring”; I found that funny in how sweeping a statement he made.
A lot of the strips in newspapers I’m familiar with seem almost invisible, because it taken me years to consciously notice/think about them, even though I’d seen them for so long. They seem like sleepwalking cartoons; you wonder who reads them. Some were unbelievably banal.
The only collections I’ve had are Windsor Mccay ones. Nemo is amazing in terms of the visual trickery but in general I found it a real heavy chore to read. At first it has quite a lot of unnecessary text but even when it cuts down there is still too much and the formula gets really stale even if the images and ideas are still excellent.
I just couldnt read a strip collection daily or weekly. I cant think of many things I’d want to read that regularly over one year let alone many years (decades in some cases).
Dominick — actually, yes, Terry does improve a lot after the first few years; or, at least, it changes enough that you might like the later strips even if you dislike the very early years. It starts out as comic opera stuff, visually very much in the style of Roy Crane; but gets more serious and looks radically different (and better, IMO).
Oh, Norb is wonderful.
Of the contemporary crop of comics, I think “Bizarro” is underrate. Dan Piraro does a good variation on the B. Kliban formula, and his drawings are often charming. “Rhymes With Orange” is also of the Kliban school, and it’s pretty good too.
As for overrated, I’d maybe cite “Foxtrot.” It’s not terrible, but given that it comes out once a week, it ought to be better. And people seem to like.
Now, as to the older stuff, I think it would be difficult to overrate “Cap’n Easy.” As to overrated, it’s hard for me to get my head around the love for “Prince Valliant” and some of the other, more illustrative adventure strips. That said, there’s no denying the quality of the illustration, and I can imagine them being pleasant diversions if read according to the rhythms of their circulation, so I’m not going to pass judgement.
If there was a comic that I could erase from the world for how annoying and overrated it is, it would be Garfield. I have such an intense hatred for it that even the remix art parodies — Garfield Minus Garfield, If Garfield Looked Like A Normal Cat — make me angry to look at. The best that can be said is that Jim Davis can draw OK. I concur on Lio, too, and have an irrational irritation with the mediocre Blondie — everyone in that comic except Blondie is constantly asking to be smacked upside the head.
An underrated one coming out nowadays is Non Sequitor, which I admire for how it so succinetly lives up to its title. I enjoy Candorville as well, but it’s often not very strong. Darren Bell’s political cartoons are really funky looking sometimes. Zits has always scored high, even if our mother would occasionally clip strips out and wave them at us meaningfully.
The Washington Post’s funnies pages are just terrible now, to be honest. They have a bunch of total crap — there’s this AWFUL thing that looks like it was done in MS Paint called “Reply All”, and the Weingartens strip is really not as funny as the guy who used to do great Below the Beltway columns should be — I guess he’s just gotten less funny and more cranky.
You guys gotta do an over/under for gag (magazine) cartoonists as well
any newspaper strip that anyone loves is overrated
nah, i’m full of shit. i LOVE Nancy. but i don’t like anything else. i’m like one of those people who doesn’t like musicals except for Sondheim maybe?
oh, i’m one of those, too.
Coming here late, but…
I, for one, am one “kid under 50” (26 in a few days) who happen to find LI’L ABNER hysterically funny — at least in the 40s and 50s. And I’ve introduced the strip to close to 10 acquaintances through the years and all but 1 found it hysterical, too. So at least Al Capp has some younger fans left. (I do agree Capp, at least in public, became rather disgusting as an older man, though — not necessarily because of his politics, but because he was nasty and rude to whoever disagreed with him — and his strip suffered greatly from this in the end.)
As to most underrated comic strip, I don’t know — but if asked to choose the most undeservedly “overshadowed” strip, I’d undoubtedly go for Jack Kent’s KING AROO. Pick up IDW’s two reprint volumes and see for yourselves (sadly, I’m told that no more volumes are planned).
Calvin and Hobbes is by far the most overrated strip of all time. Beautiful artwork but not funny. Too wordy, trite and self aware. 50s and 60s Dennis the Menace is far better. People who state that Calvin and Hobbes is so great usually don’t know the history of comic strips. Pogo, Li’l Abner, Dennis the Menace are all better drawn and much funnier.