Sunday Comics – They’re Not What They Used To Be

I used to love the Sunday comics. It was great to spend a few minutes seeing what my favorite strips were up to. They would also be bigger and in color. A nice bonus from the usual strip during the week.

Now I never read the comics section ever. There were three strips I would read everyday: Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County and Farside. Since all them ended there’s no other strip I read. I never got into any of them. I’m sure there are some good ones, but it just didn’t seem worth trying to get back into a daily ritual of reading them.

Some comics just seem like they’re going to go on forever. I mean Charles Shultz died and I figured it would be the end of the Peanuts comics. Nope, now they run “Classic Peanuts”.

Garfield, Family Circus, Hi & Lois, Blondie, Hagar, Beetle Bailey still get their spots on the comics page. The only one I would glance at would be Family Circus. It was just a fast read. It’s usually one line with that one picture in the circle. They’re not exactly laugh out loud funny, but it doesn’t take a lot of time to read.

I never…..NEVER read some of these strips that seem to be holdovers from the 1930’s. Prince Valiant, Mary Worth, Brenda Starr, Flash Gordon. I always tried to picture who was the audience for these today. I always guessed it was older folks who just became addicted to reading the adventures of Flash and Brenda everyday.

It makes sense it would be a nostalgic experience reading the same strips as they did fifty years ago. They were probably the only ones reading them. I can’t imagine kids nowadays getting psyched to read the climax of the Prince Valiant story arc. I’m surprised those strips survived so long.

I noticed some strips have tried to pick up the Farside mantel. One picture with an ironic or odd caption. None of them caught on with me. They just seemed exactly what they were, a second-rate version of Farside.

Andy Capp and The Lockhorns I’m kinda happy to still see around. Everything is so politically correct today they just seem to be bucking the trend in a way. One’s basically about an alcoholic and the other about a married couple who hate each other.

I would have thought at this point Andy would be in a 12-step program and The Lockhorns would be in couple counseling. I remember someone once told me that the character, “Andy Capp” was meant to sound like “Handicap”. Another reason I have to respect that strip. Ziggy would never make light of that sensitive topic.

Animated shows have some of the most politically incorrect humor around. South Park excells at that. Drawn Together is another I recently saw. Hilarious and I couldn’t believe the stuff they got away with.

As for the Sunday funnies it’s just become another section of the paper I throw off to the side. I’ll have to get my Farside fix from those calendars.