Comic Strip Conversations: Judge Parker is Always Good for This

Some three years ago, we took comic strip dialogue lines and pasted them together as if it was one conversation. The process is a bit cumbersome and challenging, but the results are sometimes quite intriguing. Comic strips with lots of talking like "Judge Parker" and "Sally Forth" are good for this.

1. "Are You Crying?" (Phoebe and Her Unicorn, Aug. 9th)

2. ".........My cartoonist still hasn't come up with an idea for today's comic strip" (Ziggy, Aug. 9th, top image)

3. "When is Mark Leaving for Hong Kong?" (Judge Parker, Aug. 9th)

4. "How long have you guys been married?" (Pickles, July 26th, pict. center)

5. "Oh, great, what does that old goat want now? (Blondie, July 26th, pict. bottom)

6. "We Need a Vacation" (Muts, July 26th)

7. "So, what do think of today's comic books?" (Funky Winkerbean, July 26th)

8. "You ever think about aliens from outer space?" (Jump Start, July 26th)

9. "Everything, I could possibly wish for is right here," (Sally Forth, Aug. 2nd)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

http://www.comicskingdom.com

http://www.gocomics.com

Top Ten Comics from the Sunday Roanoke Times: Jump Start Gets the Bronze

Greetings to our blog readers in France, Russia, and Bulgaria......

Today, we bring you the last installment in our favorite Sunday comic strips of the week series.

This was a week when Bill Griffith used his comic strip "Zippy the Pinhead" (not in "The Roanoke Times") to make fun of another comic strip "Funky Winkerbean" (which is in "The Roanoke Times"). Both strips share the same distributor Kings Features.

Our favorite comic strip from "The Roanoke Times" was "Speed Bump" http://www.gocomics/speedbump which featured several ducklings taking selfies of each other. Second place goes to "Get Fuzzy" in which a cat and a dog fight over a baby rattler, which one can presumably find at a Toys R Us http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy ............. Lastly, we went with "Jump Start" for third place which revolved around an African-American and a white mother with children almost colliding in the produce aisle of a grocery store http://www.gocomics.com/jumpstart

Here is the top ten:

1. Speed Bump

2. Get Fuzzy

3. Jump Start

4. Non Sequitur

5. Garfield

6. Agnes

7. Pearls Before Swine

8. Dilbert

9. Doonesbury

10. Zits

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

For a look at our favorite comic strips in the "Martinsville Bulletin" go to our sister blog at http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

Top Ten Comics from Sunday, Jan. 25th Roanoke Times: Get Fuzzy Finally Comes in First

Greetings to our blog readers in Estonia, Wales and India.

The images above are of 1) Jeb Bush (for "Doonesbury) ; 2) Danny DeVito (the boss) and the late Andy Kaufman on the '70s sitcom "Taxi" (for "Pearls Before Swine) and 3) Warren Beatty as "Dick Tracy" (for "Funky Winkerbean").

Kudos to Stephan Pastis of "Pearls Before Swine" for having the guts and gumption to make fun of his boss comics syndicator John Glynn!

"Get Fuzzy" usually takes places second place in our comics survey, but today, it finally made it to the top slot.

Here is our top ten from the latest Sunday edition of "The Roanoke Times:"

1) Get Fuzzy

2) Doonesbury (made fun of Jeb Bush)

3) Pearls Before Swine (made fun of Big Boss Man)

4) Speed Bump

5) Dilbert

6) Funky Winkerbean (featured 'Dick Tracy')

7) Agnes

8) Garfield

9) Jump Start

10) Red and Rover (featured Snoopy from "Peanuts"!)

http://comicskingdom.com/

http://www.gocomics.com/explore/comics


1)

Sunday Comics Grand Slam (2 of 4): Superman's Vacation

Superman taking a vacation. The new era of over-protective parenting. A beach trip with a family dog. Optimism in the workplace. A 36-year old family cat coming to terms with aging. A mother and young daughter waltzing past punk rockers on a sunny afternoon. A little league baseball manager using "The Bad News Bears" as inspiration for a pep talk.

These were among the Sunday comic strips from the June 15th issue of "The Roanoke Times," which serves Roanoke, Va, and southwest Virginia communities, including the college town of Blacksburg, the rural hamlet of Rocky Mount and the high school football is everything 'round here town of Buena Vista.

One of the stunners this week was that "Pearls Before Swine," almost always one of our favorites, surprisingly tanked, while "For Better or For Worse" and "Sally Forth," two comic strips which have never made our top ten were surprisingly good.

We are using the image of Turkish Superman (the late actor Tayfun Demir) for "Speed Bump," the strip about the Man of Steel taking a getaway, the image of "Happy Days" for the "Doonesbury" strip on over-parenting and a lavish Jimmy Choo handbag for "For Better or For Worse," the strip where a stroll downtown leads to an encounter with tweenagers who look like The Ramones.

Here are our top ten comic strips from "The Roanoke Times," for our list of top ten comic strips from "The Washington Post" (same date), go to our sister blog: http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

1. "Speed Bump"

2. "Doonesbury"

3. "Funky Winkerbean" (which dealt with the beach trip with the family dog)

4. "Dilbert"

5. "Get Fuzzy"

6. "Garfield"

7. "For Better or For Worse"

8. "Sally Forth"

9. "Zits"

10. "Agnes"

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

http://www.doonesbury.com

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com

http://www.dilbert.com

Top Ten Comics from the Sunday Roanoke Times: We Like the Censored Pearls Before Swine

Today, comic strip artist Stephan Pastis said the latest edition of his strip "Pearls Before Swine," which made fun of extreme political correctness (the example he gave was when stewardesses starting being referred to as flight attendant), was not shown in "The Washington Post" yesterday.

But, the strip, which is hardly as political as "Mallard Fillmore" on the right or "Doonesbury" on the left, was our top pick before we knew that the strip was removed. While we noticed two different strips for "Pearls Before Swine," we suspected that it was something Pastis had deliberately done himself.

At any rate, here are the top ten strips from this past week. They include not just 'Pearls,' but also Dave Coverly's "Speed Bump," which asked what it would be like if inmates at places like the Dan River Correctional Facility in Yanceyville, NC, had yearbooks, a "Doonesbury" swipe at the right-wing dogma haunting the GOP and a satire of workplace politics in "Dilbert," where the big boss man proclaims: "The key to success is ignoring the people who say it can't be done." The boss is immediately questioned.

Here is our top ten:

1. "Pearls Before Swine" (the reason for the vintage for the Turkish Airlines flight attendants photo at the top)

2. "Speed Bump" (the reason why we have a scene with Clint Eastwood from "Escape from Alcatraz.")

3. "Doonesbury" (the reason for the Republican boxer shorts)

4. "Dilbert"

5. "Funky Winkerbean"

6. "Jump Start"

7. "Get Fuzzy"

8. "Agnes"

9. "Zits"

10. "The Mutts"


http://www.gocomics.com

http://www.doonesbury.com

http://www.dilbert.com

http://www.turkishairlines.com

http://www.roanoke.com

Top 10 Sunday Comics from The Roanoke Times: Funky Winkerbean Delivers

Yesterday's touching "Funky Winkerbean" comic strip which featured a father having a dream about his son in the military who is in Afghanistan in the form of a vintage comic book cover with a young soldier on it, is our top Sunday comic strip of the week from "The Roanoke Times," a newspaper in Roanoke, Va.

Second place went to the very hip one panel comic strip "Speed Bump" where a couple visiting a bed and breakfast like the one in Vermont that was on Bob Newhart's sitcom "Newhart" in the 1980s who are being approached by bed bugs!!!

And, "Agnes" came in third as the title character goes to church with her grandmother and has a funny take on the service which does not share with her grandmother.

Here is our top ten, which includes a return of Mister Butts to "Doonesbury:"

1) Funky Winkerbean

2) Speed Bump

3) Agnes

4) Doonesbury

5) Zits

6) Get Fuzzy

7) Pearls Before Swine

8) Dilbert

9) Jump Start

10) Non Sequitir

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

http://www.dilbert.com

"The Roanoke Times" Comic Strips Survey (....and, how you can win a free trip to Rome)

We are actually shoplifting the idea of a 'Free Trip to Rome' from WUNC-FM, an NPR station that is legitimately offering a free trip to Italy. Of course, we just used that in the header to grab your attention!

Here are our ten favorite comic strips from The Sunday, Feb. 2 edition of "The Roanoke Times," which included: 1) Two faculty members walking through a massive snowstorm in "Funky Winkerbean;" 2) A unique look at how to use email and social media in "Pearls Before Swine," which Dale Carnegie would perhaps not have recommended; 3) the staff deciding how to divide a pizza for the office in "Dilbert:"

1. Pearls Before Swine

2. Funky Winkerbean

3. Doonesbury

4. Get Fuzzy

5. Dilbert

6. Zits

7. Garfield

8. Speed Bump

9. Agnes

10. Jump Start

http://www.wunc.org

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.dilbert.com

Best Comic Strips in Sunday Roanoke Times (Roanoke, Va): Rats, Ants and Batman

We are just going with one image this week. It is of an army of ants, which are the centerpiece of Dave Coverly's "Speed Bump," a one-panel strip, which bears the off-beat humor of the great 1980s comic strip Gary Larson's "The Far Side." "Speed Bump" ranks number two on our list.

The winner of this week's survey is the always hilarious "Pearls Before Swine." Interestingly enough, "Pearls" bore some similarity to this week's "Family Circus," which is essentially "The Waltons" or "Little House on the Prarie" of the comics section in that it has traditional themes. Both comic strip focus on a family gathering on Thanksgiving Day. But, Stephan Pastis, the cartoonist behind "Pearls" shows a family of rats actually being upfront and honest with each other while "Family Circus" has the orthodox view of the American holiday.

Tony Cochran's "Agnes" featured the title character making a pop culture reference to "Batman," which makes on wonder if Adam West read this week's Sunday strip (he played Batman on American television in the '60s).

Here is our top ten:

1. Pearls Before Swine

2. Speed Bump

3. Agnes

4. Get Fuzzy

5. Funky Winkerbean

6. Blondie

7. Garfield

8. Dilbert

9. Doonesbury

10. Zits

http://www.speedbump.com

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com

http://www.dilbert.com

Top Ten Favorite Comic Strips from Sunday, Nov. 10th "Roanoke Times"_ Brutus Buckeye Wins the Day

Greeting to our friends in Azerbaijan, Cyprus and Dubai. For those of you live in places like Turku, Finland, or Perth, South Africa, you may be unaware that Sunday is the day when large color comi strips roll out across America.

While smaller newspapers like "The Roanoke Times" or "The Akron Beacon" (in Akron, Ohio) may not have as many comic strips as "The Denver Post" or "The Baltimore Sun," one never knows what gems might be found in any Sunday comic strips section.

This week, "Pearls Before Swine" had a hilarious take on Brutus Buckeye (pictured top) who is the mascot for Ohio State University, "Funky Winkerbean" featured a hilarious fake comic book character named Starbuck Jones (yeah, that's the reason for the image in the middle) and "Doonesbury" tarred and feathered the tea party, a fringe right-wing political movement in America which wants to turn America into what it once was: An Artic region covered with ice (we borrowed that from Steve Martin).

Here is our list of the top 10 comic strips from this week's Sunday "Roanoke Times":

1) Pearls Before Swine

2) Funky Winkerbean

3) Doonesbury

4) Zits

5) Speed Bump

6) Get Fuzzy

7) Agnes

8) Dilbert

9) Hi and Lois

10) Blondie

http://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/

http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/sports/m-footbl/

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com/#

http://www.doonesbury.com

http://www.dilbert.com

Our Top Ten Comic Strips for This Week- Hermit Crabs, TED Talks and Norwegian Lemmings

Last year, we took lines from Sunday comic strips and made a collage out of those words for a series of entries. But, since those entries were very time-consuming, and we thought we might get the wrath of Bill Griffith, the cartoonist of "Zippy the Pinhead," among others, we decided to try the same concept in another way.

Our absolute favorite comic strip of the week was "Brevity," which made fun of TED Talks, and hence we have English education maverick Kenneth Robinson, a frequent TED contributor, in the middle image.

Other highlights included Tom Batiuk's "Funky Winkerbean," which dealt with two pizzeria guys talking about their high school days. Batiuk was in our region over the weekend as he visited our friends at Chapel Hill Comics in Chapel Hill, NC. The strip is carried in "The Roanoke Times," the newspaper of my hometown of Roanoke, Va.

We also loved the conversation between a hermit crab (pictured top) and a Galapagos turtle in "Sherman's Lagoon" about how 'cool it is to be single,' though (SPOILER ALERT) at the end of Jim Toomey's comic strip this week, once senses one or both of them will seek out the underwater version at E-Harmony. Of course, one can see such undersea creatures at The National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland (come on, give us a free admission for the plug, we'll make the 7.5 hour drive in return!).

Lastly, "Pearls Before Swine," which is even in the "News and Advance" in Lynchburg, Va. (we love to make fun of Lynchburg here), featured the fate of Norwegian lemmings, creatures known to commit ritual suicide in droves every year.

Ironically, we are featuring the usually right-wing comic strip "Mallard Fillmore" because they made fun of Greek yogurt (the executive editor of this blog Tilly Gokbudak is a Turkish-American").

Here are ten of our favorite comic strips of the week (in alphabetical order as opposed to the more subjective order of preference); we found this comic strips in "The Washington Post" and the online version of "The Denver Post:"


1. "Brevity"

2. "Dog Eat Doug"

3. "Funky Winkerbean"

 4. "Garfield" *

5. "Lio"*

6. "Mallard Fillmore"

7. "Overboard"

8. "Pearls Before Swine" *

9. "Rhymes with Orange" *

10. "Sherman's Lagoon"*

*-Comic strips featured in the Sunday print version of "The Washington Post"

http://www.garfield.com

http://www.shermanslagoon.com

http://www.chapelhills.com

http://www.aqua.org

http://www.ted.com/talks

Saturday is Free Comic Day

Since Free Comic Book Day is Saturday and May Day is today, we thought we'd post three comic books with "Green Arrow" (known as Yeshil Okcu in Turkish) from DC Comics who is supposedly the most progressive of mainstream American comic book characters.

Hmmm.....yeah, I suppose if Rush Limbaugh is reading this, he will call for a boycott of Green Arrow, well we really don't care.

In Gotham (New York City), Midtown Comics is celebrating Free Comic Day with guests like Jim Lee, of "Uncanny X-Men" fame, Scott Snyder from "Batman," Nate Cosby from "Green Hornet" and our good friend (well, we have actually conversed online) Chris Eliopolous, who has a great underground comic strip called "Desperate Times." Gosh, we sure hope we spelled your name right, Chris (especially since you are of Greek heritage, and I am half-Turkish)!

At Midtown Comics, Jamal Peepers and Alex Simmons from Archie comics, which produces many children's comic books besides the usual Archie and Jughead standards, including "Sonic the Hedgehog."

Other comic book stores celebrating the occasion are Casablanca Comics in Portland, Maine, (the other 'Portlandia'), B & D Comics in Roanoke, Va., and Chapel Hill Comics in Chapel Hill, NC, which will also host comic strip artist Tom Batiuk of "Funky Winkerbean" on June 8th.

SIDEBAR: Since our hits go through the roof whenever we quote Che Guevara, we will post one of his quotes here. It should be pointed that while we politically support most center-left positions, we are not in favor of radical revolutions, especially if firearms are involved!

Here is one of Che's more famous quotes; we are not sure if he said this the day he was executed in Bolivia in 1968:

"The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall."

http://www.midtowncomics.com

http://www.casablancacomics.com

http://www.chapelhillcomics.com

http://www.bandcomics.com

http://www.freecomicbookday.com

http://www.chriselipolous.com

Comic Strip Dialogue_ In the Mending Pile

 

Wow! What-a-nightmare we've had trying to get this blog entry up; it was initially supposed to be posted by midnight, New York Time, which was 16.5 hours ago.

 

At any rate, here are some samples of actual dialogue from various comic strips, most of them are Sunday strips and about of them are from yesterday's edition of "The Roanoke Times" in Roanoke, Va. As much as we love doing this series, we will only be doing it until the end of the year. As it is time-consuming and there is the chance that Hank Ketcham of "Dennis the Menace" fame will see this blog entry and not be amused (this is actually a joke, Ketcham has been dead for a full decade, but the comic strip was still in his name up until just a few years ago.)

 

#- Strips which are not carried by "The Roanoke Times."

 

%- Strip dialogue that was used from a daily strip

 

*- Strips we have never quoted before

 

 

 

 

 

1) "She usually just leaves stuff there till we've grown out of them!!!" (from "For Better or For Worse," yes, it is the reason why we have a children's Smurfs t-shirt. This is also the strip which lead to us calling this entry "The Mending Pile," since this retro term was used in that same strip)

 

 

2) "Your homework better be finished" (from "Zits")

 

3)  "Can we take a rain check? I've got some thinking to do." (from "Funky Winkerbean," our personal favorie line of the day).

 

4) "Go back to your cubicle and don't leave until five o'clock."

 

5) "Mystery Science Theatre 3000"? What's that?" (from "Sally Forth")

 

6) "I must've missed that?" (from "Blondie," said by Santa Claus)

 

7) "Come to think of it, you're kind of a copy cat" (from "Hi and Lois")

 

8) "Who robbed my coffee shop?" (from "Jump Start")

 

9) "See that girl across he room? She just whispered she wants me..." (from "Rhymes with Orange#%)

 

10) "Think now's a good time to have some friends over?" (from "The Pajama Dairies" *#)

 

11) "Well, you know I've always wanted to party like a rock star." (from "Mother Goose and Grimm.") #

 

12) "Well I think we have a good start and a lot to think about." (from "Prickly City") #%

 

13) "I did it! A Thousand! Somebody take my picture! Unbelievable!" (from "Animal Crackers") *#

 

14) "But it don't make no sense" (from "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith") *#

 

15) "Wait a minute....was so and so elected" (from "Zippy the Pinhead.") *#

 

http://www.dilbert.com

 

http://www.rhymeswithorange.com

 

http://www.pajamadiaries.com

 

http://www.zippythepinhead.com

 

 

http://www.roanoke.com