{"id":174,"date":"2003-06-04T08:01:57","date_gmt":"2003-06-04T13:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=174"},"modified":"2003-06-04T08:01:57","modified_gmt":"2003-06-04T13:01:57","slug":"funnies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/06\/04\/funnies.html","title":{"rendered":"Funnies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lileks.com\/bleats\/archive\/03\/0603\/060403.html\">Lileks <\/a>is busy talking about the comic strips he reads, I might as well do the same.  After all &#8212; there are worse things I could do than slavishly imitate James Lileks.<\/p>\n<p>After my company&#8217;s e-mail system started filtering out some of the comics I was getting by e-mail (that&#8217;s great, guys &#8212; I&#8217;ve got 23 spams in my in-box since yesterday afternoon, uncaught by your Massive Filters, and even the stuff you say you do focus on &#8212; sex and pr0n &#8212; is still well-represented), I decided to go and do it all via browser, aided by a clever little program named <a href=\"http:\/\/www.outertech.com\/index.php?_charisma_page=product&#038;id=1\">BatchRun<\/a>, which lets me open up a dozen browser windows at one click.  This gives PopupCop fits, but it&#8217;s a damned convenient tool.<\/p>\n<p>The exception to that is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mycomicspage.com\/free\/?ref=mcp\">MyComicsPage<\/a>, which sends multiple strips (from the uComics corral) per e-mail, nice and convenient.  It covers a number of the ones below, though by no means all of them.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucomics.com\/adamathome\/\">Adam@Home<\/a>, the tale of a guy who works on-line from home, taking care of the baby, etc., hits more often than it misses.  Tech humor is usually good for a chuckle.\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/comics\/babyblues.html\">Baby Blues <\/a>has been recycling the same humor since its third year or so.  But since I didn&#8217;t have kid back then, and do now, the application of it seems fresh, even if I know the raw materials are a bit stale.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucomics.com\/baldo\/\">Baldo<\/a>&#8216;s appeal to me I do not entirely understand.  Hispanic family humor, I guess.  Or Hispanic teen humor.  Or just good drawing, maybe.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/seattlepi.nwsource.com\/fun\/bizarro.asp\">Bizarro <\/a>is almost always funny. And well-drawn.  A nice match.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucomics.com\/boondocks\/\">The Boondocks <\/a>has, as Lileks points out, grown dramatically narrower in its cast and setting.  Now it&#8217;s basically mordant commentary on US politicians and black culture.  It&#8217;s still witty, so I still keep it around, but it&#8217;s charm is wearing off like a cheap chrome finish.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucomics.com\/calvinandhobbes\/\">Calvin &#038; Hobbes <\/a>continues in reruns, and is just as fine the twelfth time around as it was originally.  One of, if not the, All Time Greats, and I can&#8217;t decide if I lament it having been &#8220;only&#8221; a ten year run (&#8217;85-&#8217;95), or applaud its retirement while still at the top of its game.<\/p>\n<li>I&#8217;m a recent convert to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.daybydaycartoon.com\/\">Day by Day<\/a>, an ongoing social\/political commentary strip.  It&#8217;s pretty good, and certainly a refreshing balance to, say, <i>Doonesbury<\/i>.<\/p>\n<li>I still get enough chuckles out of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.doonesbury.com\/strip\/dailydose\/index.html\">Doonesbury <\/a>to keep it around, too.  I already know where the punchline is coming from almost every time, and the ideology is like a big, comfy chair you bought twenty years ago that you know you should either reupholster or get rid of but can&#8217;t get yourself to actually get up and do something about. And sometimes &#8212; sometimes &#8212; I get surprised.<\/p>\n<li>If <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comics.com\/comics\/dilbert\/archive\/\">Dilbert <\/a>continues to recycle the same ideas over and over again, it&#8217;s because you can never tell too many jokes about dumb bosses, irritating co-workers, or amoral pet dogs.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamespy.com\/comics\/dorktower\/\">Dork Tower <\/a>is a drop-dead hilarious strip about gaming, sci-fi, and other geeky hobbies.  If you aren&#8217;t reading it, you probably don&#8217;t get about half the things I talk about here.  (There&#8217;s a separate weekly Dork Tower strip printed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gametableonline.com\/wwwthreads\/index.php?url=dork_tower\">here<\/a>, too.  Though, oddly enough, they are the same today.)<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uclick.com\/client\/wpc\/fw\/\">The Fifth Wave <\/a>is a one-panel cartoon, usually on a technology theme, usually pretty funny.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fborfw.com\/strip_fix\/index.html\">For Better or For Worse <\/a>is my favorite soap opera.  So sue me.  While the humor is hardly cutting, it continues to push its characters into different places, through personal changes, and that&#8217;s more than a little refreshing (as compared to, say, <i>Boondocks <\/i>and <i>Doonesbury<\/i>).<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucomics.com\/foxtrot\/index.phtml\">Foxtrot <\/a>is just damned funny, Jason&#8217;s antics in particular.  Don&#8217;t know why I&#8217;m be so amused by a nerdy little kid, though &#8230;<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/seattlepi.nwsource.com\/fun\/funky.asp\">Funky Winkerbean <\/a>is another soap opera, often humorous.  Tom Batiuk recently changed to a much more polished and realistic art style (reminiscent of John Byrne).  A good, solid, ongoing read.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucomics.com\/heartofthecity\/\">Heart of the City <\/a>is sometimes cloying, but there&#8217;s enough nerd humor and imagination to keep me coming back.<\/p>\n<li>Frank Cho is no longer drawing original <a href=\"http:\/\/www.creators.com\/comics_show.cfm?comicname=lib\">Liberty Meadows <\/a>strips for the comics pages &#8212; he&#8217;s moved over to comic books, instead, which means a lot less, ah, censorship.  But the strip reruns are still wacky fun, a strange blend of talking animals, soap opera, and fine art.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.comics.com\/comics\/chickweed\/index.html\">9 Chickweed Lane <\/a>is usually good for a chuckle.  Certainly it stretches artistic boundaries at times, and the characters have an amusing fantasy life.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamespy.com\/comics\/nodwick\/gamespyarchive\/newnodwick.html\">Nodwick <\/a>is really a (fine) fantasy comic book, but there&#8217;s a weekly one-page strip that is posted online that&#8217;s &#8212; well, usually smile-provoking, if not hilarious.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucomics.com\/nonsequitur\/\">Non Sequitur <\/a>is a one-off single-panel (landscape) cartoon, usually very amusing and ironic, as often on current issues as on the human condition.  The Sunday strips, which contain ongoing stories, don&#8217;t hit the mark as often.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenorm.com\/\">The Norm <\/a>rocks.  Imagine a cross between Charlie Brown and Calvin, but all grown up with a wife and job.  Sort of.  Good stuff.<\/p>\n<li>When <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pvponline.com\/\">PvP <\/a>first started, it seemed much more focused on console gaming, which, not being a console gamer, was only peripherally interesting.  It&#8217;s branched out into general technogeek humor these days, which is fine by me.<\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucomics.com\/reallifeadventures\/\">Real Life Adventures <\/a>is another one-panel (portrait) cartoon.  The art is crude, but the domestic and business schlub humor is often priceless.<\/p>\n<li>Even if <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comics.com\/comics\/roseisrose\/index.html\">Rose is Rose <\/a>sometimes threatens to cause diabetes, the artwork is so damned imaginative that it&#8217;s just a joy to read.  And, frankly, I&#8217;m a sucker for loving couples and imaginative kids.<\/p>\n<li>Last time I did one of these round-ups, someone recommended <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucomics.com\/stonesoup\/\">Stone Soup<\/a>.  Well, okay.  I haven&#8217;t gotten bored enough with it to drop it, yet, and I do occasionally clip a copy.  It has not really clicked with me, though, and if I had to build my comic list from memory, I would probably not remember it.<\/p>\n<p><li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucomics.com\/tomtoles\/\">Tom Toles <\/a>is one of the few editorial cartoonists I read.  Though he sometimes goes way in left field, I usually find him amusingly thought-provoking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since Lileks is busy talking about the comic strips he reads, I might as well do the same. After all &#8212; there are worse things I could do than slavishly&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-comics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1780,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/04\/30\/thor_and_spidey.html","url_meta":{"origin":174,"position":0},"title":"Thor and Spidey","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 30-Apr-02 1:56pm","format":false,"excerpt":"James Lileks has some nice commentary (now there's a shock) on comic books in his life. While he's wrong about Thor (the whole \"Ye gods, he's a god!\" thing has...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Comics &amp; Comic Books&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Comics &amp; Comic Books","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4537,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/11\/footnote.html","url_meta":{"origin":174,"position":1},"title":"Footnote","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 11-Aug-03 8:33am","format":false,"excerpt":"Oddly enough, I got three e-mail on Friday about my blog, none of them on the same subject. One that caught my eye (and which I was going to blog...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Crime &amp; Punishment&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Crime &amp; Punishment","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/crime-punishment"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2858,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/09\/12\/todays_obligato.html","url_meta":{"origin":174,"position":2},"title":"Today&#8217;s obligatory Bleat reference","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 12-Sep-02 8:05am","format":false,"excerpt":"Which makes me feel like pledge week, in that if I could simply program your browser omit these posts for those wise among you who already read Lileks on a...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;9-11&quot;","block_context":{"text":"9-11","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/9-11"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1850,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/04\/19\/kids.html","url_meta":{"origin":174,"position":3},"title":"Kids","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 19-Apr-02 3:46pm","format":false,"excerpt":"As I sit here, Kitten in my lap, I recommend to you James Lileks' comments about having kids. He puts it very nicely....","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Parenting&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Parenting","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal\/parenting"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1440,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/01\/05\/calling_a_spade.html","url_meta":{"origin":174,"position":4},"title":"Calling a spade a spade (so to speak)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 5-Jan-02 1:04am","format":false,"excerpt":"James Lileks rants on Peace Schools and the idea that all cultures are equally wonderful. There are some people whose hackles prick up and twitch if you say the West...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Geopolitical Brouhaha&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2041,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/03\/21\/screed.html","url_meta":{"origin":174,"position":5},"title":"Screed","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 21-Mar-02 6:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't know what it is about Michael Moore that gets folks' dander up. Actually, I do know, but regardless, I'm glad James Lileks is one of the bedandered....","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Politics &amp; Law&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Politics &amp; Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}