Yeah, they're that bad

Spring [1] picked up the Sunday paper on, well, Sunday and the first thing I snagged was the Sunday Comics.

I shouldn't have bothered [2].

Thankfully it wasn't my money this time.

Even Berkeley Breathed's [3] new comic strip, Opus [4], was … eh (the first three panels were funny, then it went downhill fast).

Foxtrot [5] was mildly amusing.

Obligatory Sidebar Links

Sacred hamburger: the role of our heros in the decline of the newspaper comics page [6]
The frightening side of change: why syndicates don't like Scott Kurtz and Keen [7]
Wiley blinks. [8]

Everything else? Dilbert [9]? Peanuts [10]? Baby Blues [11]? For Better or for Worse [12]? Mutts [13]? Sherman's Lagoon [14]? Born Loser [15]? Brewster Rockit: Space Guy [16]? Prickly City [17]? Zits [18]? Red and Rover [19]? Luann [20]? Blondie [21]? (is that strip ever going to die?) Non Sequitur [22]? Doonesbury [23]? Prince Valiant [24]? (the artwork on that one is worse than it was a decade ago—what happened?) Hi & Lois [25]? Mary Worth [26]? (do people still read this?) B. C. [27]? Marmaduke [28]? The Lockhorns [29]? The (gag!) Family Circus [30]? Get Fuzzy [31]? Cathy [32]? (“Aaaaaaaaack!”) Baldo [33]? Rose is Rose [34]? The Wizard of Id [35]? Curtis [36]? Garfield [37]? Hagar the Horrible [38]? Sally Forth [39]? Beetle Bailey [40]?

Bland.

Or worse (and really, the artwork on Prince Valiant was bad, really bad).

There wasn't even a joke in the Garfield strip:

Panel 1: **Garfield:** Food! (Pointing to food bowl)

Panel 2: **Garfield:** Bed! (Pointing to bed)

Panel 3: **Garfield:** Punching bag! (Pointing to Odie)

Panel 4: **Garfield:** Confidant! (Pointing to Pooky

Panel 5: **Garfield:** Soft touch! (Pointing to Jon)

Panel 6: **Garfield:** Honestly, what do you get the cat who has everthing?

“Garfield”, Sunday, December 20^th, 2004

Basically, it was a waste of about fifteen minutes.

I'll stick with the web-based comics. Not because, as a whole, they're better, but because there's a wider variety, and even if 90% of them are worse than the syndicated newspaper comics, that still leaves more web-based comics that are better than the number of syndicated newspaper comics. Or a larger number of web-based comics that cater to my tastes.

[1] http://www.springdew.com/

[2] /boston/2003/11/25.2

[3] http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/

[4] http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/pages/opus_returns.asp

[5] http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrox/2004/12/19/

[6] http://www.websnark.com/archives/2004/12/sacred_hamburge.html

[7] http://www.websnark.com/archives/2004/11/the_frightening.html

[8] http://www.websnark.com/archives/2004/12/wiley_blinks.html

[9] http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/

[10] http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/peanuts/

[11] http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/babyblue/about.htm

[12] http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/forbetter/