When you see Wizard of Id in your newspaper, you?ll see it?s still credited to ?Parker and Hart.? You might assume this refers to creators Johnny Hart and Brant Parker, but both men died in early 2007. Why not just toss a little snapshot of an animal carcass passing through the stages of decay onto the comics page while you?re at it? It?s about as easy to look at as modern Funky Winkerbean. For whatever reason, the creator of Funky Winkerbean has decided to document that degenerative process in excruciating detail. There is very little I can count on to depress me more in a day than a new Funky Winkerbean strip, provided I don?t go try to read letters to the editor.ĭo you know why people stop talking to each other after college? Because they don?t want to see their wild frat buddies begin the slow slide into becoming middle-aged, emotionally drained shells of humanity. Now we see all of those once-vivacious college stoners as broken-down old men and women, energy blissfully sapped away by their children, still talking to each other out of the sheer inertia of daily routine. Now the strip is still sad and depressing, but in a more subtle and poignant way. #Newspaper funny pages full#I checked back on it earlier this year, just in time to see the ?Cancer? phase of the strip in full stride, which gave way to the mind-boggling melodramatic Death of Lisa and her even more ridiculous afterlife of dancing with some jackass dressed up like the Phantom of the Opera. Even back then I could tell it was something of a stoner?s comic, telling slice-of-life jokes about school life in a sort of dreamy haze. I remember reading Funky Winkerbean for a bit when I was a kid. It basically makes no sense if you don?t know anything about Spider-Man, and makes no sense if you do, and at this point is just trudging along out of sheer inertia. Stories amble along, using the premise of a married Peter Parker that the comics threw out not too long ago, and using villain designs that sometimes acknowledge the ’90s and other times don?t acknowledge major stories like Kraven?s Last Hunt. There are worse things than this strip in the papers now, but it?s obvious from the sitcom writing and total lack of major storylines that it really has no particular point to make. Spider-Man has a tendency to become a surly asshole during the brief action scenes, which are brief respites from weeks-long stretches of Peter Parker loafing around watching TV. While it was originally drawn by John Romita Jr., the current artist is far less talented at cramming superhero fights into three tiny panels a day. That?s all the credit I can give Spider-Man, though, which is otherwise a real mess. He hasn?t even traded his marriage to the devil yet! The stories are upbeat and cheerful, and feature Spider-Man with a supporting cast that hasn?t yet been turned into evil aliens, corpses, or evil alien corpses. It?s the only adventure strip launched after the genre?s heyday in the ’50s to pick up an audience, and the only place where you can read Spider-Man stories written by the character?s co-creator, the indefatigable Stan Lee. There are a few things I?ll give the newspaper’s Spider-Man credit for. And like all un-living monstrosities, these 10 comic strips desperately need to die. These strips are terrible, shambling zombie that long since stopped making any sense or even being mildly funny, and have been in papers for longer than most of us have been alive. When strips continue past their prime, they needlessly clog space which could be given to new, potentially funny strips…and thus, this is why the newspaper’s comics pages feature the same bland horrible pieces of shit we all hated as a kid. In our youth, we were able to read The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes sure, we were sad when they ended, but in retrospect it’s much better being able to enjoy re-reading them, rather than have the strips continue indefinitely and inevitably become terrible. This is a clear example of why today’s newspaper comics page is an increasingly sad, run-down place. In the wake of the long-awaited Foobocalypse, the strip has become some sort of horrible shambling zombie that desperately needs to have its head blown off by a shotgun shell. In an example of true comic strip insanity, she?s opted not to simply retire the strip from papers, but to send the strip into reruns that are interspersed with new strips created in the style of the old strips. So, Lynn Johnston?s For Better or For Worse ended not that long ago.
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