Comic Strips Dialogue: We Quote Pickles

Three years ago, we used to take dialogue from comic strips and put them in order to make a full conversation. We are using an image of the play "Defending the Caveman" for the comic strip "B.C." Similarly, we are using the Northside High School (Roanoke, Va.) logo for "Hagar the Horrible," who is also a Viking. And, lastly, we using sinks from a Turkish bathroom for the line we are using from the comic strip "Take It from the Tinkersons."

Here we go (Don't Try This at Home or On Your Blog...it's time-consuming):

1. "Mmmm! Something sure smells good!" (Pickles, Aug. 2nd)

2. "Let me give you a cooking lesson." (Baldo, Aug. 2nd)

3. "Go away. I already beat you once!" (B.C., July 19th)

4. "Try to relax! Focus on your peaceful surroundings! Don't think about work!" (Hagar the Horrible, Aug. 2nd)

5. "Hey, I know real people!" (Garfield, July 19th)

6. "You're a Bob Dylan fan, right Cosmo?" (Shoe, July 19th)

7. "Wow! Talk about false advertising." (Adam at Home, May 3rd)

8. "Diner was marvelous, mom." (Hi and Lois, May 3rd)

9. "I........Have to Go to the Bathroom" (Take it from the Tinkersons, May 3rd)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

http://www.comicskingdom.com

http://www.gocomics.com

Top Ten Comic Strips from Sunday Myrtle Beach Sun: Ziggy Breaks the Fourth Wall

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

Today, we give you our ten favorite comic strips that were featured in the Sunday edition of "The Myrtle Beach Sun" in Myrtle Beach, SC. Ironically, the beach image at the top is from one of their vacation destination rivals Ocean City, Maryland!

The beach was the topic in first place strip "Off the Mark" where all the kids had taken their cellphones into the water!

The second image is in reference to "Dustin," where the kids basically pretended they were Al Pacino from "Scarface" and had a water gun fight.

Lastly, "Ziggy" featured Tom Wilson, the cartoonist behind "Ziggy," breaking the fourth wall as Ziggy told the readers that the cartoonist couldn't come up with any ideas for this week's comic strip. Maybe, next week, Ziggy can state the famous "Hamlet" line: "To Be or Not to Be, That is the Question." Just a thought.

Here is the top ten:

1. "Off the Mark"

2. "Dustin"

3. "Doonesbury"

4. "Mother Goose and Grimm"

5. "Betty"

6. "Ziggy"

7. "Curtis"

8. "Stone Soup"

9. "Dilbert"

10. "Hagar the Horrible"

http://www.gocomics.com/offthemark

http://www.gocomics.com/ziggy

Top Ten Comics from The Washington Post (Sunday Edition): We Endorse Dustin for President

Greetings to our blog readers in Croatia, Israel, and India.....

During our lunch hour, we took the Mental Floss Presidential Quiz, and we forgot about Chester Arthur, who was president 20 years after the Civil War. Our sincerest apologies to his descendants. Otherwise, we named all the presidents correctly, even Rutherford Hayes and Martin Van Buren.

Here are our top ten favorite comic strips from "The Washington Post." First place, goes to "Dustin," where a water balloons gag (pict. top) ends with a brilliant zinger. Second place goes to "Lio," a comic strip with dark, gothic humor, which this week features a Grim Reaper gag (pict. center), and lastly in fifth place, the lazy American male is lampooned in "Rhymes with Orange."

"Hagar the Horrible" is not actually out tenth favorite comic strip, but we thought we would start our own running gag, by having it in tenth place every week. Here's the list:

1. Dustin

2. Lio

3. Doonesbury

4. WuMo

5. Rhymes with Orange

6. Foxtrot

7. Zits

8. Brewster Rockit

9. Prickly City

10. Hagar the Horrible (Pearls Before Swine would've actually gotten tenth place)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

http://www.dustincomics.com

http://www.gocmics.com/lio

http://www.gocomics.com/lio

Top 10 Sunday Comic Strips from the Times-Call: Carlos Gonzalez Makes the Chart

Greetings to our blog readers in the Czech Republic, Japan, and Ireland......

As we are posting this, Wolf Blitzer of CNN is interviewing Republican long-shot presidential candidate Mike Huckabee for his views on the nuclear agreement our government has just made with Iran. Yes, of course, we diligently paid attention to Mr. Huckabee.......zzzzzzzz.....Wait, did Huckabee just say Israel borders Iran?! He may want to check the map again.

Politics aside, this week, we are running our top ten from "The Times-Call," a daily newspaper serving the Boulder County suburbs of Denver, Colo. One of the unique aspects of this paper's comic pages is that they run two King Comics strips: 1) "Take It from the Tinkersons" and 2) "The Pajama Diaries," which are not in some major newspapers' funnies section, like "The Washington Post" and "The New York Times" (we're just kidding on the NYT as they don't have a comics section).

For this week's survey, we are going back to strips which ran on Sunday, May 4th. Carlos Gonzalez of the Colorado Rockies (pict. top) is in reference to "Foxtrot," the top strip in our survey, which depicts a kid catching a fly ball as he is taking a selfie of himself in the process. The second image of a colorful fish is for second place finisher "WuMo" which revolves around a fish who want to plug in a toaster in a fish tank. Lastly, the Bulgarian cuisine picture at the bottom is for "Tinkersons" in which a family meal is interrupted by a cellphone, which perhaps ironically belongs to the father as opposed to his wife and children.

Here is our top ten:

1. Foxtrot

2. WuMo

3. Take It from the Tinkersons

4. Pearls Before Swine

5. Get Fuzzy

6. The Pajama Diaries

7. Dilbert

8. Zits

9. Mother Goose and Grimm

10. Hagar the Horrible (this comic strip also finished tenth last week in our poll of comics from "the Martinsville Bulletin in Martinsville, Va.)

http://www.pajamadiares.com

http://www.tinkersons.com

http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot

http://www.gocomics.com/wumo

http://www.coloradorockies.mlb.com

Our 10 Favorite Comic Strips from The Martinsville Bulletin: Witches' Brew

Greetings to our blog readers in Poland, Serbia, and Italy.......

This week, for the very first time we are featuring a survey of comic strips from "The Martinsville Bulletin" in Martinsville, Va; the small city best known for its NASCAR speedway is about half-way between Roanoke, Va., and Greensboro, NC. It is also the city where a small-time over-the-top evangelist the Rev. Johnny Robertson, whom we frequently make of, is head-quartered. We believe he has claimed that only the people who attend his church can go to heaven. Ok........

The winner of the survey is "Rhymes with Orange" which features two witches arguing over how to cook a prince in their witch stew, "Garfield" finishes second with John asking the world's only 37-year-old cat to help him with some needed home improvements, and "Dilbert" comes in third with Dilbert arguing with his boss over work place strategy to resolve problems, which seems to be a recurring theme in the office place set strip.

We also have "Snuffy Smith," now drawn and written by John Rose of Harrisonburg, Va., in which pop culture catches up with the century-old strip as the dialogue is about zombies and "The Walking Dead." And, for the very first time in our history of surveys, "Hagar the Horrible" cracks the top ten with a gag about lottery winnings. Helda, Hagar's wife since the strip was first released in 1971 (we believe) was not in the Sunday strip.

Note: Wendy the Witch, a Harvey Comics character was our first choice of images for a witch, but we had to settle with one from "Bewitched," a popular sitcom in the 1960s.

Here are our top ten strips from the Bulletin:


1) Rhymes with Orange

2) Garfield

3) Dilbert

4) Snuffy Smith

5) Zits

6) The Lockhorns

7) Mutts

8) Hi and Lois

9) Funky Winkerbean

10) Hagar the Horrible

http://www.visitmartinsville.com

http://www.martinsvillebulletin.com/

Our Top Comic Strips from Sunday, Dec. 21st edition of "Herald-Journal" in Spartanburg, SC

Greetings to our blog readers around the world, especially those of you in Norway where it must be verrrry cold!

Some two weeks ago, we passed through South Carolina and we picked up a copy of "The Herald-Journal" is Spartanburg, SC, one of the largest cities in the state.

As a lark, we are posting images from three comic strips in the Sunday edition of that paper which did not make the top ten; The images are of 1) the Northside Vikings football logo, Northside High School is nicknamed The Vikings and they are in Roanoke, Va.;  for "Hagar the Horrible" 2) American soldiers for "Beetle Bailey" and 3) "KizilMaske" or "RedMask" (in Turkish comic books) who is known in America as "The Phantom."

*-Comics which appear in "The Washington Post," which we survey a lot

#- Comics which appear in "The Roanoke Times," which we also survey a lot

Here is our top ten:

1. Bizarro

2. Closer to Home 

 3. Get Fuzzy #

4.  Doonesbury #*

5. Dilbert *#

6. Dustin *

7. Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (the strip's cartoonist John Rose is an acquittance of mine)

8. Garfield *#

9. Gasoline Alley

10. Family Circus *#

http://www.goupstate.com

http://www.gocomics.com

http://comicskingdom.com/

http://www.visitspartanburg.com/

Best Comics from the Sunday Washington Post (....and, how you can win a free trip to Amsterdam)

Thanks again for taking a look at this blog as we post our long-overdue entry on he best comic strips from the Sunday Feb.2nd edition of "The Washington Post"...........oh, about that trip to Amsterdam, we sort of used that just to get your attention (there is no free trip to Holland). Our apologies to Rudolf Bekink, the Dutch ambassador to the USA, for that! But, perhaps, you can go there and see an Ajax Amsterdam soccer game on your own dime:)

This Sunday, 1) Lio invited some ghoulish friends to watch the Super Bowl; 2) Hagar the Horrible reused to do the laundry (that strip did not make the top ten); and 3) there was a family feud in "Foxtrot" over whether to watch the Super Bowl or "Dowton Abbey." Of course, since the Seattle Seahawks won the 105-3, this proved to be a mute point in reality.

Here is the top ten:

1) Lio

2) Foxtrot

3) WUMO

4) Sherman's Lagoon

5) Brewster Rockit: Space Guy

6) Pearls Before Swine

7) Reply All

8) The Argyle Sweater

9) Prickly City

10) Dustin

http://www.washingtonpost.com

Top 10 Comic Strips NOT in Our Local Newspapers: Love Those Yorkies

Many of the slots in local Sunday comic strips sections, even in large city newspapers, are taken up by legacy strips, such as "Hagar the Horrible" and "Beetle Bailey." But, there are actually many great comic strips out there.

This is a companion piece to our blog entry on our sister blog "The Daily Vampire" http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com/2014/01/arctic-cold-comic-strip-spectacular-1.html

The funniest strip of these ten is from "La Cucaracha," a comic we were not familiar with today, which features a Mayan temple made from ice (the top image is of Tikal, a Mayan ruin site in Guatemala). Other highlights were "Pooch Café" (the reason for the Yorkshire terrier in the bottom image) and "Todd the Dinosaur" (the reason why we Barney in the middle_ The Rev. Joseph Chambers in Charlotte, NC, said the purple dinosaur was an example of socialist propaganda?!!!).

Here is a list of ten comic strips that we saw on the web today, none of these strips are in either "The Roanoke Times" or "The Washington Post:"

1. La Cucaracha 8.2

2. Pooch Café 7.8

3. Todd the Dinosaur 7.6

4. Tundra 7.5

5. The Pajama Diaries 7.5

6. Pros and Cons 7.3

7. The Other Coast 7.2

8. Mother Goose and Grimm 7.2

9. Arctic City 7.1

10. Overboard 7.0

http://www.gocomics.com/lacucaracha/#.UsoBCTYo6Uk

http://www.gocomics.com/poochcafe#.UsoBTzYo6Uk

The Funny Pages Dialogue_ That's No Problem, Helga

Keith Knight is a brilliant cartoonist and journalist, and someone I greatly admire. That is made especially true because I can't even draw stick people! His comic strip "Knight Life" runs in the Sunday Washington Post. We did not get a chance to use a line from his comic strip this time, but we do have lines from many of the other strips that were in the most recent edition of the Sunday Post.

We have noticed that comic strips tend to use a lot of exclamation points!!!!

By the way, we must give credit to Javier the Intern for compiling this (a running in-joke on this blog, Javier is a fictional character); the aim here is to compile in a way that makes for one silly conversation.

Here we go:

"You're not getting any better at this are you" (from "Sherman's Lagoon")

"What kind of animal did you draw?" (from "Frazz")

"That's the problem, Helga!" (from "Hagar the Horrible")

"Hey, I told you to go with the "Dcotor Who" scripts." (from "Foxtrot," an image of Dr. Who is in the center).

"Honey, are you ok? What's going on?!" (from Blondie, we thought Dagwood was the one who likes to sit on the couch, but that distinction belongs to another old-time comic strip "Andy Capp")

"You did not just write that to me in an email." (from "Reply All," one of Javier's favorite comic strips)

"All I have to do is make a few phone calls!" (from "Judge Parker")

"I can afford to lost one crummy quarter!" (from "The Amazing Spiderman")

"I'll go scare that kid dressed as a space skunk!" (from "Brewster Rockit")

""Excuse me, but wasn't the Halloween section over there?" (from "Dennis the Menace, a comic strip character that is known in Turkish as "Bacaksiz"_ the kid without legs)


SIDEBAR: You wanna impress your hot girlfriend who looks as gorgeous as Kim Kardashian? Well, then you should go the web site for Mr. Porter where you can find unicorn-stamped sweater (pictured) which retails for $725. It must be true because we read it the Sunday Post.

And, for those of you who are into fashion (I'm just a novice myself), then you should check out "All on the Line," with Joey Zee; new episodes air on the Sundance Channel every Monday night at 9:00 p.m. Reruns of the series will be airing this evening (east coast time).

Comic strip links:

http://www.slagoon.com

http://www.kchronicles.com

http://www.foxtrot.com

http://www.replyallcomics.com

http://www.tundracomics.com

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com

Fashion links:

http://www.ustopshop.com

http://www.dapperlow.com

http://www.theurbanagent.com

http://www.guysstyleguide.com

http://www.mrporter.com

http://www.sundancechannel.com/all-on-the-line/