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 Sunday May 31st Roanoke Times Comics: Hi and Lois is Actually Hilarious........how did that happen?

Greetings to our blog readers in Mexico, Russia and New Zealand.............

Here is a look at our ten favorite comic strips from the latest Sunday edition of "The Roanoke Times," the daily newspaper serving Roanoke, Va., and surrounding areas, including the hamlet of Boones Mill, Va., which is reportedly one of the most notorious speed traps in the country.

Our top comic strip is "Speed Bump" by Dave Coverly which this week features a regular Joe green lizard meeting a hipster green lizard; we imagine he is waaay past The Decembrists or Arcade Fire.

For our second place comic strip, which is "Pearls Before Swine," we go with an image of Lily Tomlin from her "Laugh In" days when she played Ernestine the annoying phone operator, who would be unemployed today. In the strip, Rat is writing a letter to a major company after being forced to hold on the line for an unfathomable amount of time .....(we've all been there, right?!).........

Lastly, our image of the '80s home video game classic Pitfall, for an unexpected gem from "Hi and Lois" as the dad realizes he has a vast collection of casualties of modern technology. It's almost enough to make one wish they had held on to that 8-track tape player or that vinyl copy of "Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits."

Here is our top ten:

1) Speed Bump

2) Pearls Before Swine

3) Hi and Lois

4) Get Fuzzy

5) Dilbert

6) Doonesbury

7) Zits

8) Garfield

9) Agnes

10) Jump Start

http://www.roanoke.com/comics

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

http://www.dilbert.com

http://www.lilytomlin.com

Top Ten Sunday Comic Strips from the "Roanoke Times:" Yeah, No Room for Hi and Lois

Greetings to our blog readers in Tunisia, Germany and Slovakia...........

Today, we are blogging while listening to "The Best of Bread," a compilation of hits from the '70s soft rock band Bread fronted by David Gates, who is alas like the last or next to last guy from the band who is still alive. And, we are also one hour away from the series finale of "Mad Men," which might possibly end with a song from Bread.

Here are our top ten comic strips, which include an independent business owner who wants to protest the government ("Pearls Before Swine") which reminded us of the comic book guy from "The Simpsons," a dragon preparing to snack on a knight ("Speed Bump") and Garfield coming in second to Odie at a talent show ("Garfield"), perhaps next time the 37-year-old cat should take up juggling or tap dancing:

1. Speed Bump

2. Pearls Before Swine

3. Garfield

4. Doonesbury

5. Get Fuzzy

6. Non-Sequitur

7. Agnes

8. Dilbert

9. Mutts

10. Jump Start

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy

http://www.gocomics.com/Agnes

Top 10 Comics from the Mother's Day Sunday 'Washington Post:' It's Not Easy Being Green

Greetings to our blog readers in Malaysia, Malta and Mexico....maybe, we should go with Greece instead of Malta; it's a larger country.....oh, ooops, sorry for thinking out loud!

Today, our ten favorite comic strips from "The Washington Post" included "WuMo" bringing in Hulk, a Gremlin, and Yoda, to the office, to show off that they are now being green. Get it? Well, it's funny if you see it: http://www.gocomics.com/wumo ......our assumption is that Kermit the Frog feels a bit snubbed.

In second place, "Lio" continues a great tribute to filmmaker Ridley Scott with a comic strip homage to "Blade Runner" http://www.gocmics.com/lio  featuring all the characters for the film which will be midnight screened at the Tower Theatre in Salt Lake City, Utah from June 12th to the 14th. Here is the link: http://www.saltlakefilmsociety.org

Dave Coverly's single-panel strip "Speed Bump" features a kangaroo who carries a puppy in her pouch: http://www.gocomics/speedbump

We also really liked "Mark Trail," an educational science comic strip which informs us about those dreaded doodlebugs (pict. center): https://comicskingdom.com/mark-trail

Here is our top ten: http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

1. WuMo

2. Lio

3. Speed Bump

4. Foxtrot

5. Brewster Rockit: Space Guy

6. Reply All http://www.gocomics.com/replyall

7. Rhymes with Orange

8. The Argyle Sweater http://www.gocomics.com/theargylesweater

9. Dustin http://comicskingdom.com/dustin/2015-05-10

10. Mark Trail

For our look at our ten favorite strips from "The Roanoke Times," go to our sister blog (not my sister's blog) at http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

Sunday Comics Survey from Feb. 8th Roanoke Times: Pastis Goes for the Punt

Greetings to our blog readers in New Zealand, Croatia and France.......

And, our deepest condolences to the friends and families of the three Syrian Muslim college students who killed in their Chapel Hill, NC, apartment yesterday.

On a lighter note, here are our ten favorite comic strips from the most recent edition of "The Roanoke Times," the daily newspaper of Roanoke, Va.

For starters, "Pearls Before Swine," a Stephan Pastis comic strip, makes fun of Norwegian lemmings one of whom goes for a pass thrown by another lemming and well, you can guess the rest. One of the surviving lemming says (SPOILER ALERT) that he will not be going to Disneyland. Our top image of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who won his fourth Super Bowl, is used for the strip, though he is not mentioned in 'Pearls.'

Third place goes to the single-panel gem "Speed Bump" which has a male angel being presumably nagged by his wife about reading a novel instead of going to bed. For this, we chose the late Daniel Foster Wallace novel "Infinite Jest," (pict. center) which is over 1,000 pages long! Perhaps, an inmate at Red Onion Prison in southwest Virginia is reading the novel. If so, they may actually finish it. A literary major at Brown University in Rhode Island, conversely, may not get to the end!

And, fifth place goes to "Agnes" who is questioning her teacher about the overload of homework (bottom image: an algebra calculator).

Here is our survey:

1) Pearls Before Swine

2) Doonesbury

3) Speed Bump

4) Get Fuzzy

5) Agnes

6) Garfield

7) Jump Start

8) Dilbert

9) Zits

10) For Better or For Worse

For last week's "Roanoke Times" comics survey, go to our sister blog http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

Our Favorite Sunday Comics from the Jan. 18th Roanoke Times: Sorry, No Hi and Lois

Greetings to our blog readers in Germany, Thailand and Ghana..........and to those of you who reside in Cong. Tim Huelskamp's (R-Kansas) congressional district, which is most of Kansas (not an endorsement)..................

Here are our ten favorite comic strips from the most recent Sunday edition of "The Roanoke Times," the daily newspaper for Roanoke, Va. As usual, "Hi and Lois" didn't make the cut, but some comic strips that we usually rank very low actually made the top ten!

The images are of 1) an octopus for "Speed Bump," this week Dave Coverly's single-panel strip focused on octopi flirting; 2) Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat" for "Zits," which got a surprisingly high third place from us, in this week's strip the teenage title character is wearing something akin to a Dr. Seuss Hat and 3) Rain, which correlates with Stephan Pasits' "Pearls Before Swine" comic strip where (SPOILER ALERT) it starts to rain as Rat is showing Pig how accurate iPhones are; we imagine if the late Steve Jobs were alive, he may have liked this strip.

Here is our top ten, as has been the case for many weeks in a row, "Get Fuzzy" finishes second:

1) Speed Bump

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Zits (highest ranking so far)

4) Pearls Before Swine

5) Agnes (highest ranking so far)

6) Mutts (highest ranking so far)

7) Garfield

8) Dilbert

9) For Better or For Worse (it made the top ten)

10) The Family Circus (it made the top ten too!)

http://www.aqua.org/

http://www.georgiaaquarium.org/

http://www.tnaqua.org/

http://www.travelks.com/

Sunday Comics Survey for Jan.4th Roanoke Times: Get Fuzzy Comes in Second Yet Again

Greetings to our blog readers in South Korea, Ireland and Russia........

Our favorite Sunday comic strip of the week was "Doonesbury." In today's strip, a patriotic man approaches a War in Iraq veteran and thanks for him for his service, but the former solider expresses misgivings about his years of combat, which provides for an awwwkward moment. Yes, this is also the reason why we have an image of Saddam Hussein at the top of our page.

Second place went to "Get Fuzzy" for the third or fourth week in a row; the strip is usually runner up to "Pearls Before Swine," which featured a pun about John Lennon (pictured bottom) songs, which finished fourth today in our survey.

Third place went to Dave Coverly's single panel jam, which was one of many strips today that had prison jokes......yeah, what's up with that?

Amazingly enough, "Family Circus" made our top ten for the third or fourth week in a row, and "For Better or For Worse," actually made our top ten for the first time since like 2003.......

Here is our top ten:

1. Doonesbury

2. Get Fuzzy

3. Speed Bump

4. Pearls Before Swine

5. Agnes

6. Dilbert

7. Non Sequitur

8. Jump Start

9. Family Circus

10. For Better or For Worse

http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com (for this week's "Washington Post" comics survey)

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.roanokedoesntsuck.com

http://www.comicskingdom.com

http://www.gocomics.com

Comic Strips Survey from Sunday Roanoke Times (Oct. 19th edition)

Greetings to our blog readers in Australia, Uganda and Finland; and to our domestic friends in New Jersey, Utah, and Florida.

This week, we resume our look at our favorite comic strips from the Sunday, Oct. 19th edition of "The Roanoke Times," for our favorite strips from last week, visit our sister blog at http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

Our favorite comic strip of the week was "Pearls Before Swine," by Stephan Pastis which did a brilliant take on the Abbott and Costello (top image) skit "Who's on First," but in this satire, Rat asks Goat "Which band did Keith Moon play for?"; the answer is The Who, and all the shenanigans roll from there.

"Dilbert," which has substantially jumped in our rankings in recent weeks, features an office visit from a robot (center image) who actually doesn't speak in Scott Adams' strip, which finishes second in our survey this week.

The bronze medal goes to East German ice skater Katarina Witt (we were just trying to see if you were paying attention). Actually, the third place finisher is Dave Coverly's "Speed Bump," a single long panel strip that has some Tennessee raccoons (actually, we have no idea what they are from) digging up trash through backyard garbage cans as well as community recyclable bins that one might find in a hip college town like Boulder, Colorado.

Here is our top ten:

1) Pearls Before Swine

2) Dilbert

3) Speed Bump

4) Get Fuzzy

5) Non-Sequitir

6) Zits

7) Agnes

8) Doonesbury

9) Garfield

10) Jump Start

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine

http://www.dilbert.com/

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy

http://www.boulderweekly.com/

Top Comics from the Sunday Roanoke Times

Greetings to our blog readers in Italy, Belgium and France........

Here is our latest installment of the funniest comic strips in today's "Roanoke Times," which features comic strips for children (the usually boring "Family Circus"), hip Gen Xers such as myself ("Pearls Before" and........hmmmm..........ok, "Get Fuzzy" and lastly comic strips for old people at a nursing home in Troutville, Va. ("Pickles," "Hi and Lois," "Blondie," et al.....)....

Our top comic strip of the week is "Speed Bump" which shows what a prehistoric meteor drill may have been like, followed by "Get Fuzzy," this week the Siamese cat argued with the dog over a tennis ball, and "Dilbert" which asks the question what would you do if you were named Worst Employee of the Month (that strip is the reason for the image of a yellow and blue necktie, which are also the colors of the Turkish soccer team Fenerbahce; we personally root for their rivals Galatasaray).

Here is our list:

1) Speed Bump

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Dilbert

4) Pearls Before Swine

5) Agnes

6) Doonesbury

7) Funky Winkerbean

8) Zits

9) Non-Sequitur

10) Garfield

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy

http://www.dilbert.com

Sunday Comic Strips Survey from "The Washington Post:" A Good Week for Fish

Since the top three comic strips of week revolved around Sherman the shark ordering a fish on a cellphone for dinner at a fine seafood restaurant, an eagle with an Afro, and the misadventures and hijinks of a space hero who takes himself a bit too seriously: we chose to go with images of a goldfish, an eagle, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who hosts the new version of "Cosmos" on tv. The comic strip "Speed Bump," which also featured fish finished fifth in our survey.

With that in mind, here are our top ten comic strips from the Sunday edition of "The Washington Post:"

1) Sherman's Lagoon

2) WUMO

3) Brewster Rockit

4) Dustin

5) Speed Bump

6) Pearls Before Swine

7) LIO

8) Foxtrot

9) Doonesbury

10) Prickly City

For a look at our top ten from "The Roanoke Times," to our sister blog: http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

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

Top Ten Comics from Today's Sunday Roanoke Times: Speed Bump Stands Out

Greetings to our blog-readers in Canada, El Salvador and Brazil.

Today, we once again take a look at the Sunday funnies in "The Roanoke Times," a daily newspaper in Roanoke, Va.

We also survey the comic strips in the Washington Post: http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

Our personal favorite comic strip of the day that was in neither newspaper is "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee:" http://edisonleecomic.com/ ..........

Other strips that we saw today online that we really enjoy include "Retail," "Pros and Cons" and "Bleeker." We actually also contemplated stating what our least favorite strip of the day was, but we gather we aren't the only ones who quit laughing at "The Family Circus" and "For Better or for Worse" a long time.

Our favorite "Roanoke Times" comic strip "Speed Bump" had a hilarious gag with two octopi/octopuses, while "Pearls Before Swine" showed bambis getting revenge on hunters and "Get Fuzzy" focused on a play on words as Bucky the whacky Siamese cat argues with his owner Rob Wilco on the differences between the words 'coop' and 'coup.

Here is our top ten:

1. Speed Bump

2. Pearls Before Swine

3. Get Fuzzy

4. Agnes

5. Doonesbury

6. Zits

7. Funky Winkerbean

8. Dilbert

9. Garfield

10. Jump Start

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump#.UtxncTYo6Uk

http://stephanpastis.wordpress.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