The Funnies

Who doesn’t love the newspaper funnies? Every morning from childhood to high school, Dad would bring the paper in from the mailbox, and I would pounce upon section C as soon as he reached the kitchen table. Not that I found them all funny – on the contrary, most of them could barely muster enough substance to be called distracting – but they still seemed to strike a chord within me. Perhaps it was that desire to make fun of their labored humor, an urge that has followed me all my life, and heralded my love of Joel, Mike, and the Bots.

Now that I’m an adult, my tastes have changed a bit. I actually read other portions of the newspaper, for one. But I still turn to the comics at the very end, saving them for dessert. The Chicago Tribune offers a wider variety of comics than the Idaho Press-Tribune, though the greater amount of comics does not change the fact that the large amount of comic strips out there simply aren’t funny (at least, not in the way they intend).

Fortunately, as always, the sprawling internet enables people with greater wits than my own to address these flaws on today’s funny pages. I have recently discovered several blogs and websites that I would mildly or highly recommend to those who have grown up reading, loving, and scoffing at the funnies:

The Comics Curmudgeon: Witty man (and technical writer!) Josh takes on a wide array of the funnies daily, selecting the most ridiculous of the day and ripping them to shreds. Recommended. Warning: Regular profanity.

Mary Worth and Me: A more family-friendly, yet still cynical, exploration into one of the longest-running soap-opera comics of newspaper history. Recommended.

Mary Worth, Style Maven: Tina, grad student and seamstress, comments on the visual oddities of Mary Worth, and occasionally recreates the strip's fashion faux pas using her sewing machine skills. Mildly recommended.

The Amazing Spider-Blog: Takes on the legendary Amazing Spider-Man strip, and peels back the veneer of coolness to reveal that Peter Parker does little else besides watch TV and whine. The writer makes his posts a little more upbeat by having a daily “Things I Like” (TIL) side note. Mildly recommended.

The Luck of Dennis St. Michel, Viscount Stokington: I’ve saved the best for last. This brilliant piece of work takes the characters from the funny pages and plunges them into a Victorian novel of manners and intrigue. You need to be well up on most of the comic strips out there (Apartment 3-G, Popeye, Marmaduke, Slylock Fox, and many others), as well as Jane Austen, Romantic (with a capital “R”) and Victorian novels, and British history and fashion to get all of the jokes, but those without all the inside knowledge can still find it hilarious. Enjoy as Sir Dennis turns mercenary to woo the Lady Margaret (Dennis the Menace), help Kit Walker (The Phantom) exact revenge on Sir Julius Dithers (Blondie), rip the bodice from Madame Morgan (Rex Morgan, MD), and evade his demented enemy Calvin Hobbes (rather obvious, no?). Highly recommended. Make sure to start reading at the very beginning!