I don't know whether Aaron McGruder's A Right to be Hostile (New York: Three Rivers Press 2003) counts as a New Book or as a Reread. I mean, it's a collection of comic strips, and I read most of them in the papers one a morning, over four years. In addition, I own both the previous collections (The Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read the Newspaper (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing 2000) and Fresh for '01, You Suckas (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing 2001); many strips are available on-line at the Universal Press Syndicate’s syndicated comics site), and most of the strips in this 'treasury' are in one of those. So in all, there were just a handful of strips I hadn't read in this collection, so it was almost all re-reading. And laughing. A lot of laughing.
I did notice something reading this particular collection, in part because Mr. McGruder points it out in his foreword, or introduction, or whatever. He's stopped drawing other characters; it's just Huey, Riley, Grandpa, and Cesar. Hardly any Jazmine or her parents, no Mr. Petto, no Cindy, none of the other kids or teachers in the school, and no more fish-out-of-water stories about these city kids on Timid Deer lane. It's all jokes about current events now, mostly just Huey and Cesar mocking Our Only President and his cronies. Which is funny, sure, but it is a little disappointing, when you remember how funny it was when Riley decided he was going to change his address to Notorious B.I.G. Ave, with a can of spray paint.
Heck, Mr. McGruder can write (and draw) whatever he wants; I shouldn't complain about the best daily strip in the papers. Well, it's the best thing of any kind in the papers, unless you get Jon Carroll's column, or Molly Ivins'. It's like complaining because the Dirty Dozen Brass Band added a keyboardist; they’re still great, and I still like what I hear. The fact that I like Woody Allen's earlier, funnier movies doesn't mean he has to try to make more just like them. I'm just saying, as good as the recent strips are, it's missing something that was also great.
Which, I suppose, is why I own the collections.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
Speaking of favorite newspaper comics, I like Boondocks, but think Get Fuzzy is also pretty damn funny a lot of the time.
Somehow Boondocks never did anything for me in the papers; it always seemed like something I would enjoy, but I never much did. But then Kam loaned me the first collection, and I enjoyed it immensely; it worked a lot better for me all gathered together. I like the second collection, too.
For some reason, Get Fuzzy has never appealed to me at all; I read it now and then, because most of the people I know love it, but it just doesn’t click for me.
I’ve found Get Fuzzy to be very inconsistent. Some days it’s great, some days it’s awful. But there are a lot of comics like that. It’s rare to find something that’s consistently funny.
I’d put Foxtrot up as a nominee for the best daily comic strip.
Hmm. I could write an entry about daily comics, I guess. I currently enjoy The Boondocks, Zippy the Pinhead, and Doonesbury, plus the Fusco Brothers and Mister Boffo for the occasional brilliant one, and Arlo and Janis for the dirty jokes. Oh, and Sylvia, just because. Zits is funny often enough to be worth a daily glance, in much the same way Stone Soup is.
I read Foxtrot, but haven’t found it funny in a while; like Overboard, I read it for the warm nostalgia I get, remembering when it was funny. Come to think of it, Doonesbury is like that, too. And there’s Farley, for a different kind of nostalgia.
I like keeping up with For Better or For Worse; it’s occasionally annoying, and hardly ever funny, but it’s my Mary Worth.
I know that there are far better comics available on the internet, and now that I’m no longer taking a newspaper in hard-copy, perhaps I’ll add some to my daily lineup. It’s rough being my own editor, though.
R.I.,
-V.