The conventional wisdom is that nobody ever bought a newspaper for a comic strip, or switched subscriptions to follow a strip from one newspaper to another. While that’s certainly not universally true, it’s no doubt accurate as a general statement. Yet if that’s the case, why is the competition for new strips so fierce, why do papers keep such close tabs on comics-page readership, and why do they trumpet their best strips or that rare coup when they steal a strip from a competitor? Comic strips are serious business in newspapers, but aside from reading them, nobody pays them any mind.
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Our criteria were yuks, social insight, and–often overlooked by those who take comic strips for granted–artistic ability: the depth of the drawing on the page or the distinctiveness of the style. In addition, we find no shame in granting that we graded strips with long histories liberally and today’s cookie-cutter, appease-a-demographic strips more harshly. Defenders of Sally Forth are free to complain in letters to the editor and, if we’re guessing correctly about the kind of people who read Sally Forth, they probably will.
And to anyone who says it’s a waste of time to rate comic strips and comics pages, we respond, “Banana oil!”
Garfield (Jim Davis)/3/Every day is Monday
Snafu (Bruce Beattie)/6/One of the better one-panels
Jump Start (Robb Armstrong)/3/Comix blaxploitation
Love Is . . . (Kim Grove Casali)/0/. . . a drag
