Category / comic strips

by Kilby

Cleaning out (or adding to) the junk drawer

Reviving an old tradition, I would like to invite all CIDU readers to list any comics that they have “recently” added and/or dropped from their reading lists (this question hasn’t been asked in quite some time, so everyone is free to interpret what “recently” should mean). Bill normally scheduled this question for Dec. 31st, but since that would conflict with the Sunday Funnies, I decided to move it up to Friday, so that everyone can think about it over the holiday weekend.

For comparison, here are links to the available discussions that appeared in Dec. 2018 and Dec. 2019, along with an intermediate call for comic suggestions that Bill posted in March 2019. (Any similar posts for 2017 and earlier were destroyed by “Comicgeddon”; I spent an embarrassing amount of time looking for a 2020 list, before I realized why Bill hadn’t created such a post at the end of that year.)

P.S. I assume that almost all “new” entries will be for reading comics online, but in the unlikely event that anyone has started reading a new comic in newsprint (a.k.a. “fishwrap”) form, please let us know!

by CIDU Bill

Beginnings

Today’s premiere of Heart of the City 2.0 prompted me to think about other “first strips” and how, for better or worse, they set the tone for everything that would follow.

helen

Peter Zale hooked me with the very first Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet

something positive

Basically, Milholland was telling us on Day One that if you’re capable of being offended, you should leave now.

(And don’t worry: the “baby” is now in his late teens, a regular in the strip, and Davan’s surrogate son)

Perhaps somebody who has a Comics Kingdom membership can supply the very first Hagar the Horrible, which I also remember as setting the stage for the next half century.

Does anybody remember any other significant Day Ones?

by CIDU Bill

I’m not going to mention any names, but…

When I see, in a major comic strip, a gag I’ve never seen before, and then about a month and a half later I see the exact same gag in a lesser-known comic strip, I have to say Hmmm…

I imagine this sort of shenanigans — of shenanigans it be — is a lot less common today than it would have been 60 years ago, when the likelihood that one person would follow both strips was negligible.

by CIDU Bill

Isolation

Since many of us are on the verge of hallucinating by now…

The Comics Fairy appears and tells you you can choose three comic strip characters to join you for the reminder of the isolation period. Whom would you choose to spend the next month (or more) with?

Keep in mind that they have to get along with one another as well: life is stressful enough without you having to keep breaking up fights.