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/

Comic Strips Grand Slam (4 of 4): We Really, Really Like Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog

Personally, we think two of the best comic strips around are "Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog" by Jonathan Mahood and "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee" by John Hambrook. But, alas promoting these great comic strips with their own image might be grounds for copyright infringement and since we don't make a dime for blogging, we are going to go with images of Cong. Eric Cantor (R-Va), the recipient of last week's Worst Week in Washington in "The Washington Post" (we asked Chris Cillizza, the political reporter who writes the piece to consider the Spanish ambassador this week, but alas, we got no response), Tim Howard, the goal keeper for Team USA who plays professionally for some team in England, and the late, great Jacques Cousteau instead.

We hope Mahood and Hambrook appreciate our efforts to go out of the way to avoid copyright infringement.

These strips are all in the Kings Features' comic wheel, which also includes "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" from our good friend John Rose, alas his strip did not make our top ten (Note: These are last Sunday's strips, the new batch of brownies is already out of the even_ they won't get that joke in Dubai, will they?):

1)  Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog

2) The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee

3) Retail

4) Arctic Circle

5) Dustin

6) Tina's Groove

7) Sherman's Lagoon

8) Rhymes with Orange

9) Deflocked

10) The Pajama Diaries

http://bleekercomics.com/

http://edisonleecomic.com/

http://retailcomic.com/

http://arcticcirclecartoons.com/

Our Ten Favorite Comic Strips of the Week: Cubicle Dwellers, Aliens and Rural Kentuckians

Though it has never been mentioned in the comic strip, we suspect that "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith," one of the oldest running American comic strips in existence, takes place in a remote, rural place like Harlan, Kentucky, where one will likely find revival preachers.

It makes this initial entry on our ten favorite comic strips from the Sunday pages, along with "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy" in which 'our hero' must be fight to save planet Earth from an alien insectoid invasion, and "Dilbert" in which a bald-headed executive gives workplace strategies to Dilbert.

By the way, there is a UFO Museum in Istanbul, Turkey, of all places, not far from where the Gezi Park protests, against Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the authoritarian prime minister of Turkey. 

Here are the Top Ten, in alphabetical order, as opposed to order of preference:

1) "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith"(John Rose is now the cartoonist of the strip)

2) "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy"

3) ""Dilbert"

4) "Doonesbury" (this one was really awesome!)

5) The Duplex

6) "F-Minus"

7) "Knight Life" (Keith Knight continues his 'Life's Little Victories' series)

8) "Mother Goose and Grimm"

9) "Non Sequitir"

10) "Speed Bump"

http://www.dilbert.com

http://www.doonesbury.com

http://www.knightlifecomic.com

http:///www.ufoevidence.org (not an endorsement)

http://www.harlancountytrails.com