Sunday Washington Post Comic Strips Survey: Steve Jobs in Hell

Greetings to our blog readers in Cuba, Denmark, and Egypt.....

This week, Scott Hilburn took the brave task of having his comic strip "The Argyle Sweater" take on the complex and surreal topic of what the late Steve Jobs  (pict. top) would have to deal with if he ended up in hell. In the comic strip, which does not have set characters like "Peanuts" or "Garfield," two demons give Jobs an iPhone and play several practical jokes on him through the device which of course irritates the cellphone entrepreneur.

The comic strip "Lio" also took to fantasy escapism with a strip that has Lio, the title character, whistling at his father to look at a shark fin floating in make-shift outdoor pool. The image for this strip that we are using is of two shark fins at a pharmacy in Yokohama, Japan.

Jim Toomey's comic strip "Sherman's Lagoon" regularly features sharks as well. In this week's strip, Sherman, the title character and a shark, tries to talk to his Uncle Phil via Skype and there are technical problems as well as mutual difficulties in finding things to talk about.

Insects also figured prominently in several Sunday strips this week including Keith Knight's autobiographical "Knight Life" in which two mosquitoes (bottom image) try to bite his legs and converse with each other in the process!

Here is our top ten:

1. The Argyle Sweater 

2. Foxtrot

3. WuMo

4. Pearls Before Swine

5. Lio

6. Knight Life

7. Sherman's Lagoon

8. Brewster Rockit: Space Guy

9. Candorville

10. Dustin

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.comicskingdom.com

http://www.gocomics.com

http://www.kchronicles.com

Top Ten Comics from Sunday Denver Post: North to Alaska

Greetings to our blog readers in Australia, Hungary and Russia.....

This week, we slightly depart with our survey of comic strips from the Sunday edition of "The Washington Post" with a look at our top ten favorite comic strips from "The Denver Post" (May 3rd edition).

The newspaper is one of the few which carries Chris Carpenter's great strip "Tundra," set in his native Alaska, which this week featured a gag about a guy who is on the low end of a totem pole. "Closer to Home" by John McPherson featured a TSA agent who decides to use an air passenger's spray deodorant.  "Sherman's Lagoon" features a squabble between married sharks about what to watch on. In Jim Toomey's last strip panel, the reader wants the male shark to change people, which made us think he just might be watching something like "Swamp People."

Here is our top ten from "The Denver Post:"

1. Tundra

2. Close to Home

3. Sherman's Lagoon

4. Bound and Gagged

5. Baldo

6. Pearls Before Swine

7. Rhymes with Orange

8. Jump Start

9. Dilbert

10. Frazz

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

Our Top Sunday Washington Post Comics of the Week for Dec. 7th

Greetings to our blog readers in Lithuania, Ukraine and Georgia!

There are many comic strips which don't get into even the largest American newspapers, such as "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee," Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog," "The Flying McCoys," "The Fusco Brothers" and "Strange Brew," but here is a sample of comic strips which are in the "Washington Post."

The large metropolitan newspaper serving the nation's capital as well as much of Virginia and Maryland has an eclectic mix of legacy comic strips like "Beetle Bailey" and "Hagar the Horrible" as well as nationally established comic strips such as "Zits" and "Pearls Before Swine" as well as some trendy comic strips with cult followings like "Prickly City" and "Reply All."

"WUMO," a single panel import from Denmark, is perhaps our most favorite comic strip in the Sunday edition, but this Sunday's comic strip featuring a failed effort by a teenager to leap from the moon to earth didn't work for us, but some of our usual favorites, like "Lio," "Brewster's Rockit" and "Sherman's Lagoon" once again made the proverbial cut.

"Lio" focused on the title character having a false sense of confidence with his new paint by the numbers (hence the reason why we have the late Bob Ross for our top image), "Doonesbury," which came in second, focused on panels dedicated to each of the strip's anchor characters, and "Brewster's Rockit" featured a major brewhaha over a workplace coffee maker aboard a spaceship (Captain Kirk would be proud).

"Dustin," which has nothing do with Dustin Hoffman (bottom image), examined a father and son debating if an older man and a younger woman were romantically involved like the late Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon were back in the day or if they were father and daughter.

Meanwhile, "Sherman's Lagoon" also focused on dating, but for this comic strip, Jim Toomey had Sherman the Shark and Mrs. Shark going out on a date as a married couple who know each other just a bit too well.

Here is our top ten:

1) Lio

2) Doonesbury

3) Brewster Rockit

4) Dustin

5) Pearls Before Swine

6) Knight Life

7) Sherman's Lagoon

8) The Argyle Sweater

9) Foxtrot

10) Judge Parker

http://www.gocomics.com/lio

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

Comic Strips Survey from Sunday Washington Post: We Love Keith Knight and Clown Gags

Greetings to those of you reading this blog in Turkey, New Zealand and Canada. And, "Gunaydin" (Good Morning in Turkish) to those of you in Baku, Azerbaijan as well.

It was a very close survey this week, and we had a number of comic strips from "The Washington Post" that we adored this week, including "Lio," "Judge Parker" and "The Argyle Sweater" which just missed making our top ten.

But, the following comic strips did make the cut:

"Rhymes with Orange:" This week, Hilary B. Price's comic had a brilliant clown gag which would have made Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman proud as the clown finds out that the man knocking at his door is a much more unsettling figure than a Jehovah's Witness.

"Sherman's Lagoon:" Once again, a great comic strip from Jim Toomey revolving around a Galapagos turtle and a shark about what they should have for dinner.

"Knight Life:" Keith Knight's strip features a vintage play on words, and a crustacean, which one might likely find more often in "Sherman's Lagoon." And, it is the one of the funniest strip episodes to take place in a bath tub.

"Reply All:" Hmmm....to talk with a friend sitting beside you at Starbucks or showing Instagram photos of your pet poodle to your friends back home in Vermont. Donna A. Lewis' strip illustrates a problem which is not just one confronting Millennials.

Here is our survey:

1. Rhymes with Orange (image #1)

2. Sherman's Lagoon (image #2)

3. Knight Life (image #3)

4. Pearls Before Swine

5. Reply All

6. Foxtrot

7. Agnes

8. WUMO

9. Dustin

10. Big Nate

http://www.galapagos.org/about_galapagos/tortoises/

http://rhymeswithorange.com/

http://shermanslagoon.com/

http://www.gocomics.com/theknightlife#.UyZ6JelOWUk/