A Series of Opinions on the Newspaper Comics I Read Religiously as a Child with Little Nuance

So, I love Calvin and Hobbes. I read it from literally I was able to read. My parents had a collection of the books, and I read them all endlessly. It's my dream to one day own the leather-bound gold-page collection with annotated notes.

Did you know I also read other newspaper comics? When I'd finished reading C&H for the 1000th time, I would grab the daily newspaper from my parents and visually devour the comic section.

After reading them from the ages of 6 to about 17, I have held many opinions after all these years. Here's some notes

• I haven't gone back to read any of these
• This is solely based on my memories
• My opinions are NOW based on what I read THEN
• I will not have any nuance here

Okay here we go, starting from the top left side of the page

Doonesbury

Given that I was reading these as a child most of the nuance of the humor of Doonesbury went right over my head, and it was a lot of words, which I feel was indicative to left wing humor at the time.

Mallard Fillmore

It's 300% a single image of Republicans going "Haha thing I don't like Bad". Literal opposite of Doonesbury's essays.

Beetle Bailey

This comic is my first remembered instance of me Wanting Two Men To Kiss. I don't even think I have any thoughts beyond that memory, just let Beetle and Sarge hold hands.

Peanuts

It's Peanuts.

Rose is Rose

Rose is Wine Mom in newspaper comic form, but like, the happiest of wine moms. I rapidly switch between scoffing at how it's over-saturated with nothing but joy and just bein' like "yeah, you do you" with it. It's No Thoughts the comic, do with that what you will.

Sometimes it tried to be Sanitized Calvin and Hobbes though and it never will.

Blondie

Hey would you believe that Blondie??? Dagwood's wife?? Was once the main character?????? Like holy shit when it hit "modern age" it was in name only. Downgrade of the ages. I remember the "Made In America" comic making me feel icky even at such a young age.

Pickles

This felt like Daria for Old People. I will not explain further.

Pearls Before Swine

PBefS and the next one here share a common theme of "HA HA _REFERENCE" but this one was the more...mean spirited of the two. Growing up reading this, I didn't laugh. I was what replaced another one when I was like....9, and I always resented it for that alone.

FoxTrot

You know how kids have a phase where they're like "Oh boy I love MEDIA PROPERTIES", like how everything nowadays has to be in Minecraft or have Minecraft in it? That's this comic, there I said it. 99% of it was just being like "hey look modern thing in my comic" and sadly I was the age where that resonated.

I named many a character Jason.

Family Circus

One panel is all it takes to make me roll my eyes.

And now the right side

Non Sequitur

Non Sequitur was amazing when it didn't have the strangest axes to grind. Even so, I still remember Redundancy Man Man and I use the phrase "Boys are stupid and I'm not a cat" as a secret call to see if anyone else has this level of sicko-mode knowledge.

Zits

Teens, am I right parents? My parents loved this and so often said "This is you" about them, but I honestly feel like that it was trying to be more than that, and never really accomplished it. Luann did it better.

Dilbert

The less I say about Dilbert, the better. Focusing solely on the comic, it's just...bland. (I have also been personally blocked by the creator)

For Better or For Worse

Having your characters age in real time was a bold choice, but I don't know how it panned out. Gave me absolute WHIPLASH going between humor and VERY DARK by comics standards and I don't think those serious moments ever landed the way they wanted to.

Garfield

My lasaga

Luann

Okay I said Luann did it better than Zits, but that doesn't mean it was great. Relatively inoffensive but the author's hyper-patriotism would shine though just every so often, which....yeah.

Over the Hedge

Haha funny animal. Haha funny animal make joke. Haha funny animal make statement about life and human experience that _{look okay we KNOW we'll never be Bloom County we're SORRY we're just doing our best okay???? fuck}

Dennis the Menace

I can't end this on a high note, again, it's fine.

This is done in an effort to blog more, I wrote this in under an hour.