Jerry Beck finds the worst comic strip ever
Cartoon historian Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew declares that Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy, which appeared in 1950s issues of My Weekly Reader, is the worst comic strip ever made.
I'm inclined to agree with him, but I think Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy has a quality that commands it to be read, unlike the comic strips in today's newspapers, which are both awful and uninviting.
Admittedly it’s aimed at children, and produced in the more innocent era of the early 50s. But the consistently corny gags, the awful stiff artwork… surely this takes the prize. Unless one considers the Weekly Reader’s back up strip: Loki, Your Fuzzy Forest Friend.Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy (Cartoon Brew)
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That's just made me unbearably sad. It's so badly concieved it almost breaks your heart to have to read it.
I vote for every Garfield since 1990.
The worst comic strip ever printed in a newspaper is 'Mallard Fillmore".
"Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy" isn't very good, but at least it isn't pushing a reality-eschewing neo-conservative agenda.
Even the worst comics can provide some of the best entertainment. Take about ten "Henry" comic strips, cut them by panel, mount them on magnets and you have a deliciously variable strip on the fridge! It still leaves me wondering why his face is shaped like a butt...
Garfield's in the running, but it's not as fluffily ineffectual from a comedy standpoint as Fred Bassett.
I don't mind the artwork of Fred Bassett, but the writing could literally be done via A.I.
Surely, this innofensive pun-based humour is not the worst EVER!
I think that honour belongs to 90s "x=treme" comics artist Rob Liefeld, and his atrocious one panel joke series "shrink."
http://robliefeld.net/shrink.htm
Read these. I DARE you.
Dammit, I clicked comment asap to point out these cartoons were hilarious compared to Garfield and Fred Basett but you beat me!
Kind of reminds me of Achewood.
What really bothers me is that the monkey has a rabbit for an uncle.
By the way, Cathy is the worse than Garfield....
Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy has that stink of something created by committee to be Educational And Good For Children.
When will Chumpy realize that his "uncle" is a rabbit? Chumpy, as a higher primate, I'm begging you to RUN.
these are about ten times better than family circus.
Yup, this is very bad. Garfield is worse, although it was funny in the eighties. Heathcliff, worse yet, and always was. Still, the worst around today has got to be Frank and Earnest.
I always liked Henry. It was cute and quiet. And he looked less like a butt than like an adolescent Popeye.
Who is the guy who does those very bad comic strips about nature, with people who're out of perspective and who all have square jaws? I've blocked him out but I'm pretty sure he's the worst ever.
You realize, of course, that UFB and C are a gay couple, right? In one panel (with the geese honking) they're making a bed together, one handling the sheets, the other the pillow. In another they have a couple over for dinner. They do housework together. All the signs are there.
Cathy is the worst. The writing is mediocre, but the artwork is beyond hideous.
Uncle Funny Bunny is a Monkeys Uncle?
In light of AngryYoungMans comments, it makes me wonder about the etymology of that phrase.
If a one-panel Funny Bunny were published today, it would be called Family Circus.
Nancy
Almost, but not quite. The worst comic strip of all time is called Adam's Apples and it appears only in The Oregonian, because it is created by a Portland teacher. The writing is equal to that of Uncle Funny Bunny, the art is not quite as good, and it's general tone could be described as "gently scolding." It is one of the most miserable train wrecks I have ever seen in print.
Uncle Funny Bunny seems to be a close second.
Surely, surely, Mallard Fillmore is a close contender.
i thought the "loki, your fuzzy forest friend" with the ice skating bird was perfectly charming.
Although the gags themselves are abysmal, and the drawing style unrefined, there is one redeeming quality to the strip. The characters move quite a bit and have expressive bodies, unlike most of today's comics which are rarely more than 3 panels of talking heads.
Family Circus certainly is heinous but the nadir of of the medium has to be BAZOOKA JOE.
Understandably it's not a syndicated strip but that is no reason that it shouldn't be singled out for it's lame puns and uninspiring sight gags.
###
You anti-Garfield folks have simply been reading the wrong version:
http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/
This comic is no worse than 95% of what I see in the newspaper, whenever I can be bothered to read one.
On the flip side, are there any GOOD cartoons left in traditional media?
I still read Zits, Dilbert, Sherman's Lagoon, and Pearls Before Swine online, but I can't remember laughing out loud at any of them in years. Whereas with XKCD, QC, or Penny Arcade, it's a reasonable hope that I laugh out loud once or twice a week from one of them.
Can anyone recommend a still-in-print comic that's actually funny?
Mallard Fillmore gets a 2nd here. There was a spate of letters to the editor in the San Jose Mercury alternately complaining about it and defending it. My unscientific survey revealed the best reason to keep it was "balance" because it is right wing(nut). Left or right, the shitty art and lack of any mildly original humor (there were Obama/Jerimiah Wright "jokes" about 4 weeks after that all came down) should get that piece of shit cancelled.
#11: You are unfortunately thinking of Mark Trail. I can't understand who still reads that comic.
One of the worst in my paper that hasn't been mentioned yet is "Girls & Sports". The drawing is terrible, and jokes are always forced and unfunny.
Bazooka Joe.
back when I chewed gum, I was compulsively unable to keep from reading that trash. Even though it was ALWAYS a letdown. "Maybe the next one will be funny!"
Nope.
Eventually I turned away from gum altogether to break the cycle.
*Ahem* Here's a small collection of worst comics ever:
http://www.lileks.com/institute/funny/comics/worst/index.html
As for today's best comics, I like Mutts:
http://muttscomics.com/
I think this was referenced in Simpsons. In the episode they were playing hockey, Bart ripped the head off of a Mr. Funny Bunny doll because he thought it was Lisa's favorite when she was a baby, then he remembered it was his favorite.
Fun!
A remix of these with the Chimp as bush would be choice...
@bcdm:
Some of my favorite comic strips to read online and why:
9 Chickweed Lane: Well-drawn, adult subject matter with a decent sense of drama and humor.
Dilbert: Overdone, but still funny sometimes.
Frazz: Because I still believe that the main character is an homage to a grown Calvin. Kids who are too smart for their own good, and subtle-enough encouragement to lead an active, healthy, exuberant life.
Cow and Boy: Well-drawn, a bit repetitive, but the non-sequitors usually catch me off guard.
Rose is Rose: Very expressive, great use of perspective. Little Pasquale is adorable, even if he bears no resemblance to a real child.
Here's another vote for "Nancy."
I used to work with a woman who looked exactly like "Cathy," so much so that I accidentally slipped and called her by that name once.
Bazooka Joe wasn't all bad:
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.arts.animation/2007-11/msg00025.html
For worst comics, I'd like to throw out "The Lockhorns" and "Marmaduke", both seen in the always-disappointing Parade Magazine included in your Sunday newspaper.
I'd toss that strip from the back of Highlights into the hat.
Lexy-Lou
I second the vote for Fred Basset as the worst comic strip ever. There are five or six 'set-pieces' that repeat endlessly - Fred's bone is stolen by Jock, Fred and his Male Owner fight over who gets to sit in an armchair, etc, etc.
And yes, I still read it every day. Shut up.
We should clear out those speech bubbles and have a contest to rewrite the comic strip and make it funny!
worst? B.C., hands-down. it was funny back in the 70s and 80s, but now he beats mallard fillmore for the propagandizing.
best for me these days are: zits, pickles, get fuzzy, uh... i'm sure there's more. people may harsh on "for better or for worse", but i've been reading her forever, and her story arcs over the course of the strip have been amazing. i'm still sad over the death of farley.
Mallard Fillmore is abominable.
How about Day By Day by Chris Muir. His gross misunderstanding of human anatomy is the only thing that distracts from the horribleness of his crass punchlines.
Another vote for Garfield = Worst. If it gets any more infantile he'll have to draw it in creamed carrots on a bib.
At the risk of sounding like an utter nerd, I love what Gary Gianni has done with Prince Violent. I liked his work for Dark Horse and he seems to have found an excellent vehicle for his style.
Last year The Oregonian had a sort of publicity contest to determine what strip would replace a long running strip . . . I forget which. They ran some utter losers and some really strange ones. The best was "Tio" (with an accent) a silent strip about a strange little kid who had monster friends. I wish they'd ditch Peanuts and run that.
The Oregonian is running one that's growing on me, "Cul de Sac," about preschool kids. They have weird beliefs and worries. Kind of a modern, less neurotic Peanuts.
* * *
#11, #27
"Mark Trail" was more fun when it was an adventure strip where the nature lessons were just an afterthought. Mark would do stuff like track down and kill poachers and torch the houses of kids who set forest fires. He had a pack of wolves under his command and was advised by the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt.
Um. Ok, I made that up, but it would be cool.
#19: Do you have a link for that? I went looking, but could only find this one, which I'm doubting is what you were referencing. Although it has its own.....charm
http://museumofmodernfiction.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/adams-apple/
How "Raising Hector" ever made it into syndication is beyond me. It's on of those train-wrecks on the comics page that you hate yourself from looking at, but you have to look.
http://www.raisinghector.com/images/sundaysamples/sunday1.php (Note that this is one he considers the best...it's not random.)
Worse than the typical cliche-a-day, and not only can't the author draw, he can't letter either.
Marmaduke, easily. It's so bad that it's offensive.
@Stephan Jones: the strip was called "Lio", not "Tio". Very funny in a warped Charles Addams kind of way.
The worst strip by far is "Mallard Fillmore". There are no real jokes, only real nasty assumptions about Liberals and other people the author hates. The art is pretty awful too.
http://pbfcomics.com/
Hey M, thanks for that Garfield minus Garfield link. Existential angst indeed.
Comics today are funny if you read them right with a good dose of snark. check out www.JoshReads.com, he makes comments on the daily paper "funnies".
The creator of Mallard Fillmore sounds like quite a character:
http://dkosopedia.com/wiki/Edward_Bruce_Tinsley
Bazooka Joe was at its best in a NatLamp send-up many years ago, where they changed it to a series of international versions. It featured Bubbalo Carlos, Chew En-Lai, and my favorite, "Mastication Elastic Joseph and his Acquaintances".
Is anyone else familiar with the one-panel comic strip "Love is..."? It ran in the Pennysaver in South Texas, but I've seen it other places. Seventies-style hairdos, and everyone is naked unless except when they put on pajamas. Weirdly entertaining, but danged hard to search for on the web without some other term :(
WAUGSQUEKE , Have you seen R. Sikoryak's "Inferno Joe"? It's Dante's Inferno retold in Bazooka Joe style strips. It ran in an issue of RAW way back when:
http://www.rsikoryak.com/mastcom.html
Ooh, these read like the ancestor of Pokey the Penguin! I like.
I've hated this one for a long time:
http://www.comics.com/creators/union/index.html
#53: Sure, "Love Is . . ." ran in The Daily News when I was a kid. As I recall, they stuck it in the classified ads.
They spoofed the comic on The Simpsons once.
There was another strip that ran in the Daily News classified. It was a one-panel thing, featuring a Chinese guy who gave sage advice in broken English.
The Oregonian has consigned Nancy and Judge Parker to the classified. So, anyone desperate enough for those can still find them.
Frazz is pretty good. Heavy Watterson influence.
Damn it, JONES, you had me going on the alternate Mark Trail.
Early B.C. 1965:
''Meet Curls. He's a master of sarcasm.''
''Really? Say something sarcastic.''
''Pleased to meet you.''
I'm not currently in the U.S. so I don't have a solid feeling for what's current, but Marmaduke, esp. post-1990 or so, is a strong candidate for worst comic ever. (Although the ones Lileks points to were apparently even worse.)
I'd also like to nominate Boondocks, the comedic value of which I'd like to believe I never understood not because I'm white, but because it's simply so non-funny (not to mention, particularly poorly "drawn").
Franko @#39:
Yes, the evangelizing in B.C. was dreadful, but have you taken a look lately? Mason Mastroianni, grandson of the late Johnny Hart, has taken over the strip and, while he hasn't reached Hart's earlier level of genius, he's actually made me laugh, which Hart had long since stopped doing.
Anonymous @#53:
Love is... has Seventies-style hairdos because it was a Seventies strip. I don't know when Stefan Jones @#57 was a kid, but I seem to remember that thing appearing even back at the end of the 1960s, and IIRC, it appeared in Cosmopolitan. An idealistic but dopey little feature, IMHO, which apparently is either cheap to license for use or known not to have its copyright enforced. It appears in the lowest-budget rags nowadays.
How it is that no one has mentioned as the worst comic strip ever Family Circle is beyond me. I shade my eyes to avoid even looking at it and, when I fail, immediately feel the bile rising.
It's so bad I can't bring myself to write it's name!
LITTLE JOHN,
You don't draw, do you? If you did, you'd know that ''Boondocks'' is not poorly drawn at all. It's stylized enough to be idiosyncratic, but he's not that bad.
It's probably more meaningful to black readers, but it's satiric enough for everybody. It's not ''funny' in the usual sense, but how many are?
No, Umbert the Unborn is the worst comic strip ever.
Somebody else found it first.
http://www.cracked.com/forums/topic/35541/the-please-make-this-comic-funny-thread
No wait... I take that back -- that thread links to Jerry's page. You guys are just late to the party.
Once you've read Calvin & Hobbes, pretty much all other newspaper comics are horrible.
Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!
I guess a minced oath is the only joke.
I gotta tell ya, this thing might not be breaking any ground, but it was made to cater to kids of a certain age. Maybe 8-9? And I honestly find this stuff more fun to deal with than—let's say—reading another overwrought Wagnerian comic-book saga. Please, enough already. We know Batman lost his parents and now he's a rich psychopath; why am I watching this again.
If UFB had been published in some alterna-comic context - say back in RAW or a Chris Ware type compendium - the utter pathos would bring tears to your eyes...
CATHY - worst comic ever.
Buddy66 @62:
No, don't draw, can't draw. My problem with the "drawing" style of Boondocks is that it appears to a shabby template of the South Park variety. It leads me to surmise that Aaron McGruder can't draw either.
But on other strips, satirical or not, I can usually recognize the point, even if I have to study a bit. More than any other strip ever, Boondocks successfully obfuscates the point from me so that on only a very few occasions was I even able to detect a gag or satirical point. I don't always laugh at the gag in, say, Wizard of Id, but at least I can find it.
@#23 mentioned it first, but #28 nailed it: Bazooka Joe owns this category of intentionally awful strips. Always entertaining enough to compel the reader on to the next panel, but never reaches the payoff.
There has to be a sweet science behind this game. Like, if it's too funny, the reader will laugh, feel fulfilled and move on with his/her day. If the comic is just awful, the reader will feel disappointed, give up altogether and move on with his/her day. But if the comic hits that sweet spot, where you can *just barely* string the reader along in anticipation of an eventual payoff, that's where the magic happens. The comic creates a captive audience.
And that's Bazooka Joe.
no love for the brit stinkers?
Hagar the Horrible, George and Lynne, even the 'venerable' Andy Capp, all worthy of consideration.
I think these comics are great. but then again, I like Neil Hamburger.
Worst these are not. People have to remember the era these came out of. When there was very little visual entertainment outside of the paper and people got their entertainment out of the radio.
Small papers most likely got what their budget could afford. Nowadays we look down on them with all of our tools and computers we have now.
Which not only makes today's proto-garfield not only worse but inexcusable.
Also, all those that rail against bazooka joe seem to forget spud and his friends on Double bubble. But these are not bad when you consider their comics *had* to take up less space than a quarter of inch. Which does not lend itself to complicated plots.
I find these awful and lame comics to be nostalgic, charmingly innocent and naive, achingly poignant and hugely preferable to the snarky tripe that passes for funny in these lamenable post-modern times. The worst crime a comic can commit is to find itself hilarious (which usually happens in conjunction wth a complete lack of anything funny).
Indictments go immediately to the smug "Sally Forth," with is besotted with its own (faux) cleverness; the execrable "Get Fuzzy," which recycles old narrative-structural tropes from "Calvin and Hobbes" without bothering to provide humor or characterizations of any consequence; and, worst of all, "Funky Winkerbean," whose characters all sport the same, annoying little half-smile that says, "How clever we are!" FW creator Tom Batiuk gives us characters with no demonstrable individuality (beyond the usual rudimentary equations, i.e., "Crazy" is crazy, Mr. Dinkle the band coach is overbearing and obsessive; Funky himself is a complete cipher) and then, with Neronic ferocity, puts them through devastating life situations and expects us to care.
Give me "Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy" before making me read any of this self-conscious dreck any day!
I dont think it's fair to call all new comic strips terrible. Family Circus and Marmaduke are certainly among the worst ones though. As for good ones, Doonesbury has excellent art, although the humour is hit and miss depending on your take on current events. I'm also fond of many of the single panel gags.
A lot of newspaper strips are good at first but then go stale. I think partly it's the medium - they have to produce something every day, and are constrained from telling long stories or from going too far outside the box or they'll lose the paycheck.
I used to love Get Fuzzy and Pooch Cafe, but now whenever I read them I just wonder where the funny went... I think they just get burnt out.
Online comic writers set their own deadlines and can set themselves a useful schedule, plus they have immediately available archives, so telling a long story with plot twists is significantly more feasible - if you missed one, you can go back and read it right away.
The internet is a much better place for comics for these reasons, I think. And now that some artists have managed to make a living doing it online, there's less incentive for a new artist to try to get a syndicated gig.
What, no shout out for Parade's "Howard Huge," the poor cousin to the already unfunny Marmaduke? Or how about Drabble? Drabble would be notable for how poorly drawn it is, expect it's more known for it's lame attempts to rip off the Simpsons.
Cathy is horrible, but mostly for how, for years, Cathy was the safe harbor for older, single women. But when she got married, Cathy got married, and Guisewite stuck a knife in the back of every spinster fan out there who now had to endure not only that all their real friends had gotten married, even lame-o comic strip Cathy had found a partner. Ack, indeed.
Genuinely sad.
But I must admit, the addition of the second color (blue and green) to the B/W repro adds just SO MUCH LIFT to the aesthetic ;)
I can't believe no one has brought up "Monty" as a great, in-print comic. It's the only comic in papers today that I find consistently funny and relevant.
Yeah, I remember that. I also remember that WR was right up there in the insufferably smug category when they predicted about a month before Sputnik that Russia was 50 years behind the U.S. in science.
Cathy's MARRIED? No, tell me it ain't so, Joe.
Her bachelorette friend Marcia's standing by a microwave. It gets turned on, and ding! Marcia says ''Babies!" Her biological clock gets turned on by a microwave. ''Babies!'' she says and rushes out of the store to find a husband and those ''babies.'' Classic. Wonderful. Married?
I haven't seen Cathy (or humorless Marcia) for twenty years....
C'mon, not for nothin' already, but "Goofus and Gallant" takes the cake.
Worst comic EVER!
I have a few questions about Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy.
1. First, the world building. Uncle Funny Bunny is an anthropomorphic rabbit and Chumpy is an anthropomorphic chimpanzee (although they both appear to be completely human from the neck down. At least Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, for all their anthropomorphism, had somewhat animal-like bodies). In some strips the other denizens of the Bunnychumpyverse are similarly constructed raccoons and foxes, but when we see Chumpy in school his classmates and teacher appear fully human. So should I conclude the Bunnychumpyverse is multiracial and humans are just one ethnic group among many?
2. Is the relationship between Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy rather like the relationship between Bert and Ernie? Chumpy is still in school and in some strips Uncle Funny Bunny appears to be in a position of authority over him. But the two are the same height, implying they are a similar age, and in other strips the two appear to be equal partners.
3. The strip where Chumpy mutilates a chair to prevent being bored to death by any more guests is actually kind of amusing. How could the artist let this happen?
4. Does Loki, Your Fuzzy Forest Friend live in the same universe as Bunny and Chumpy?
Uncle Funny Bunny is an anthropomorphic rabbit and Chumpy is an anthropomorphic chimpanzee (although they both appear to be completely human from the neck down.
The answer may lie here. Perhaps they are simply early examples of a growing trend in body mod.
"Raising Hector" is by far the most gratingly amateurish strip I've ever seen in a major newspaper. Its existence (to say nothing of its syndication) is inexplicable to me.
"This comic is no worse than 95% of what I see in the newspaper, whenever I can be bothered to read one.
On the flip side, are there any GOOD cartoons left in traditional media?
I still read Zits, Dilbert, Sherman's Lagoon, and Pearls Before Swine online, but I can't remember laughing out loud at any of them in years. Whereas with XKCD, QC, or Penny Arcade, it's a reasonable hope that I laugh out loud once or twice a week from one of them.
Can anyone recommend a still-in-print comic that's actually funny?"
Exactly! This isn't too much different from the dumb gags in papers.
+1 to the shout out to xkcd and QC.
Frazz is okay, Doonesbury is sometimes decent.
There's an anime-styled one called My Cage that isn't terrible.
I can say the only print comic strips I have ever TRULY enjoyed are Calvin and Hobbes and Opus.
@ #66 Daemon and #87 Anonymous
Calvin and Hobbes FTW!
Haha the snowmen...