akrish

So I just wrote this really long, hopefully thoughtful post, but it didn’t turn out as I wanted so this is much lighter. This article wound up in my RSS reader and it got me thinking about comics. I used to read tons of comics when I was a kid and nowadays when I look at the newspaper, most of the comics pretty much suck. Here are some of my favorites (in some loose ordering):

1. First of all, Calvin and Hobbes is one of the greatest comics of all time, and that article attests to that. If you can get your hands on Calvin and Hobbes books, I highly recommend them. Bill Watterson treated his comics as artwork and he really does so much more with the inches of space than many other cartoonists. Also, his material is often deep and philosophical, and I think a lot of kids can relate to Calvin in more profound ways that other cartoons. Calvin is one of my favorite childhood characters because of his imagination and his cynicism.
2. Tintin isn’t a newspaper comic, but more of a comic book. It’s originally a French comic book but it should not be hard to find English translations. The comic is quite popular and when I last went to Europe (years ago), I saw the comic book everywhere. Anyway, it’s a very good comic. It’s not like other comics in that it’s purpose is not comedy. They are about the adventures of this journalist (Tintin), who ends up travelling all over the place. And of course there is subtle humor scattered throughout, making these comics quite entertaining.
3. Asterix again is like Tintin in that it is a French comic book. However, this one is more explicitly humorous. The humor is very unlike American humor, differentiating this comic from other popular ones. For one, the names of all the characters are puns, like “Asterix”, “Obelix”, and “Chief Vitalstatistics”. Read the comics for more of these puns, unfortunately I’m not if you’re still able to get them or where you can do so. There are tons of other humorous elements, in fact, there’s a wikipedia article about them.
4. Foxtrot is another really funny comic that was in syndication until pretty recently. If you haven’t read it, you should read some on the website. It’s about your average American Family, and mostly about the three kids, a high school jock, a stereotypical freshman girl, and a super-nerdy fifth grader. I guess, the humor is pretty standard for American cartoons, but I related to a lot of the subject matter, more so than many other comics.
5. Beetle Bailey. For some good old-fashioned laughs, check out this comic. My dad had a bunch of the comic books so I ended up reading them as a kid. Beetle Bailey is a lazy soldier and it’s about his the escapades of him and his camp.
6. Dilbert. I started reading Dilbert as a teenager (much later than the rest), but I guess as a programmer, I can kind of relate to Dilbert’s life (though fortunately I’m stuck in a corporate hell-of-a-job). I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the others, but Scott Adams is still a really funny writer. I recently came across this, which definitely made me laugh.

And of course now there are web comics. I periodically read xkcd and phdcomics. So yeah, enjoy!