Greetings to our blog readers in England, Pakistan and Malaysia......

Happy 89th birthday to the great Mel Brooks.......

Today, we look at our top ten favorite comic strips from "The Roanoke Times" in Roanoke, Va.

The winner is Stephan Pastis, of "Pearls Before Swine" fame, whom like Jerry Seinfeld did on sitcom television, makes brilliant fun of every day annoying occurrences, like people trying to start a second line for the same bank teller (Image #1: a piggy bank is in reference to the strip).

Second place goes to Dave Coverly's "Speed Bump" in which a third cave man makes stone drawings with his food which seemingly irritates his mates. Our initial choice for an image to go with this was "Captain Caveman," but we couldn't find a suitable image.

Lastly, third place goes to Darby Conley's "Get Fuzzy" in which Satchel the Dog sees a headline in a newspaper that Australia nearly executed Johnny Depp's dogs. We will send Javier the Intern to verify if this actually did happen.

Here is our top ten:

1. Pearls Before Swine

2. Speed Bump

3. Get Fuzzy

4. Non Sequitur

5. Doonesbury

6. Dilbert

7. Jump Start

8. Agnes

9. Garfield

10. Zits

http://www.gocomics.com

Top 10 from Sunday Roanoke Times: Speed Bump Wins for a Fourth Week in a Row

Greetings to our blog readers in Austria, Egypt, and South Korea........

Today, we look at yesterday's comic strips in the "Roanoke Times," a daily newspaper serving Roanoke, Va., and the southwest Virginia region. This week, "For Better or For Worse," a strip that rarely cracks our top ten comes in seventh with a strip about dog food. But, "Get Fuzzy" which features a strip about cat food ranks five places higher. However, "Speed Bump" with a great take on a woman blaming her husband for passing gas as his dog is eating all beans and drinking beer.

"Pearls Before Swine" has another Stephan Pastis pun which features Mountain Dew; it does appear to be an overt product endorsement and neither is our use of their logo!

Here is the top 10:

1) Speed Bump

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Pearls Before Swine

4) Zits

5) Doonesbury

6) Jump Start

7) For Better or For Worse

 8) Garfield

9) Dilbert

10) Non Sequitur

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.gocomics.com

Top 10 Dinner Guests: Will Alexandra Petri Be Running Late.....

Greetings to our blog readers in Ireland, Greece and Pakistan....

Today, we start a new entry series as we look at ten dinner guests we would love to have at our table for dinner; we got this idea from both "Washingtonian" magazine http://www.washingtonian.com and the NPR show "The Dinner Party Download" http://www.dinnerpartydownload.org which runs on radio stations such as WUNC-FM (91.5-Chapel Hill, NC) http://www.wunc.org

Among our guests would be "Washington Post" social life columnist Alexandra Petri http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/ who wrote a vintage column about the art of losing.

The other people who made our top ten include: 1) Ambassador Rudolf Bekink of The Netherlands (pict. top), 2) Film director Sofia Coppola (pict. center) and 3) Cong. Jared Polis (D-Colo.). Here is our top ten:

1. Rudolf Bekink

2. Sofia Coppola

3. Cong. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va; even though we don't tend to agree with him).....

4) Gillian Jacobs of "Community"

5) Stephan Pastis, comic strip guy

6) Alexandra Petri

7) Cong. Jared Polis (D-Colo.)

8) Parker Posey, independent film actress

9) Zeynep Tufekci, UNC professor, expert on Turkey

10) Roy Williams, UNC men's basketball coach

Our Favorite Comics from Sunday, Jan. 18th from Comics Kingdom: Bleeker Rules Again.....

Greetings to our blog readers in Switzerland, Malaysia and Zimbabwe as well as those of you who reside in Cong. David Price's (D-NC) congressional district, which I believe includes Chapel Hill, Durham and Fayetville, so Cong. Price represents Chapel Hill on Capitol Hill (Stephan Pastis might like the pun, well maybe not!)....

"Pearls Before Swine," which is Pastis' comic strip is not actually distributed by Comics Kingdom, but "Hi and Lois" is. Today, we take a slight departure from the norm,  and focus on our favorite comic strips from the distributor rather than a given Sunday newspaper. This gives us a chance to rank "Zippy the Pinhead," one of our favorite comic strips that has a loyal cult following but is not in many newspapers, especially those in small markets, like (presumably) Altoona, Pa, Dayton, Ohio, and Charleston, W.Va.

This week, Bill Griffith, who draws "Zippy" featured an homage to the old "Nancy" comic strip from yesteryear.

Our images for today are from 1) bread bowls, which are featured in the Sunday comic strip for "Six Chix" where a café is literally serving everything imaginable in a bread bowl, 2) "Are You Being Served?," an old English sitcom which our fellow blogger and friend Chris Knight from Reidsville, NC, adores for the comic strip "Retail" and 3) a shark for "Sherman's Lagoon."

Here is our Comics Kingdom top ten:

1) Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog

2) Bizarro

3) Zippy the Pinhead

4) Six Chix

5) Retail

6) Between Friends

7) Sherman's Lagoon

8) The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee

9) Take It from the Tinkersons

10) Piranha Club

http://bleekercomics.com/

http://tinkersons.com/

http://www.zippythepinhead.com

http://www.tnaqua.org/

http://www.ncaquariums.com/

http://scaquarium.org/

Comic Strips Survey Sunday Roanoke Times (Jan.11th): Stephan Pastis Wins Again

Greetings to our blog readers in Belgium, the great country which has brought us Asterix and Lucky Luke (just kidding, we know those are French comic book characters and that, of course, Belgium is the home of Tintin).......

Today, we once again give you our ten favorite Sunday comic strips, this time from the Sunday "Roanoke Times;" Stephan Pastis once again delivered the goods in "Pearls Before Swine," with a hilarious take on how Zebra, one of the title character, got his dad the epic Ken Burns PBS documentary on the Civil War, and his dad was unable to figure out how to use a dvd player. We are using an image of Stonewall Jackson (on top), a Civil War general for the Confederates, for that strip.

Yeti the Snowman which one might see in Nepal (well, maybe not) is our center image. In Dave Coverly's single panel strip "Speed Bump" a woman is sitting beside Yeti in a doctor's office waiting room; we imagine Yeti was perhaps reading "National Geographic" or "Afar"....well, maybe not!

And, lastly, we go with a Simaese cat in the bottom image for "Get Fuzzy," which once again proves that cats and dogs are basically the ones controlling our lives.

Here is the top ten:

1) Pearls Before Swine #

2) Speed Bump #

3) Get Fuzzy #

4) Garfield #

5) Doonesbury #

6) Agnes #

7) Dilbert #

8) Non Sequitur #

9) Zits *

10) Jump Start #

#-Go Comics strip

*-Comics Kingdom strip

http://www.gocomics.com

http://www.comicskingdom.com

 http://www.roanokedoesntsuck.com

http://www.nationageographic.com

Our Top Ten Comic Strips from the Dec. 28th Sunday Roanoke Times

Greetings to our blog readers in Dubai, Nigeria and Indonesia....

This week, we look at our ten favorite comic strips from the Sunday Dec. 28th "Roanoke Times" in Roanoke, Va., which unlike "The Herald-Journal" in Spartanburg, SC, does NOT feature "Gasoline Alley.," but they do have "Hi and Lois," which once in a while cracks our top ten.

Our favorite comic strip is once again "Pearls Before Swine," as Stephan Pastis once again delivered a hilarious strip which once again deals with a dispute between Goat and Rat, two of the three main characters in the strip, along with Pig. This spat revolves around whether Rat wants to stay at his fenemy Goat's house or not....the alternative is, of course, staying in a hotel/motel (top image).

Second place goes to "Get Fuzzy," which is reportedly horror writer Stephen King's favorite comic strip, and this week's Sunday strip actually features "Catch-22" (middle image) and "Moby Dick," which are two novels King has not written (forgiven the English major humor).....

And. Dave Coverly's "Speed Bump" has a penguin meeting a polar bear, hence the reason for our image of Chilly Willy (bottom)...

Here is our top ten:

1. Pearls Before Swine

2. Get Fuzzy

3. Dilbert

4. Speed Bump

5. Agnes

6. Doonesbury

7. Non Sequitur

8. Zits

9. Family Circus (wow! Three weeks in a row.......?!)

10. Garfield

SIDEBAR: Here is the top ten from the previous Sunday (Dec. 21, 2014), which we never posted: 1. Pearls: 2. Get Fuzzy; 3. Agnes; 4. Doonesbury; 5. Dilbert; 6. Speed Bump; 7. Non Sequitur; 8. Jump Start; 10. Family Circus

For this week's Sunday Washington Post survey, go to our sister blog's link: http://nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com/2015/01/top-ten-comic-strips-from-sunday-dec.html

http://www.visitutah.com/

www.roanoke.com/

http://www.gocomics.com

http://comicskingdom.com/

http://www.goupstate.com

Sunday Comics Survey from Washington Post: Lincoln Wins!

Greetings to our fans in Seoul, South Korea, or where ever you may be today. Here is our weekly comic strips survey, today we are featuring comics from the Sunday "Washington Post" that ran on May 18th. Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos now owns the newspaper, and for $1.75 million, we will sell him this blog as well.

Among our favorites were "Pearls Before Swine," which takes the Abe Lincoln in McDonald's concept (a short story in which the 16th president takes a ride through a time machine) and examines what the 16th president would do in the age of Twitter. Stephan Pastis even dares asks the question about what Honest Abe would have tweeted right before going to see a play at Ford's Theatre, where he was assassinated.

Interestingly enough, the actual Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, now an active venue and museum (top image) has started a production of "One Destiny," a 35-minute one-act play about Lincoln's ill-fated visit to the theatre.

Similarly, "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy" featured a great satire that reminded us of "Doctor Who" (center image), "The Argyle Sweater" featured an audition for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (bottom image) and "Foxtrot" featured a siblings squabble over a printer which was running out of ink.

Here is our survey:

1) "Pearls Before Swine"

2) "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy"

3) "The Argyle Sweater"

4) "Foxtrot"

5) "Rhymes with Orange"

6) "Lio"

7) "Dustin"

8) "Sherman's Lagoon"

9) "Judge Parker"

10) "Knight Life"


SIDEBAR: The other day, we had an entry dedicated to college commencement speakers. Today we add three more: 1) Ed Helms, Cornell University; 2) Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, William and Mary and 3) John Legend, University of Pennsylvania.

http://www.gocomics.com


http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.fordstheatre.org/

Sunday Comics Roanoke Times Survey: It's Another Great Week for Funky Winkerbean

There are 21 comic strips in the Sunday edition of "The Roanoke Times" and so far this year, even "Family Circus" (one of our least favorite comic strips) has cracked the top ten, but "For Better or Worse" never has, and that streak continues this week as well.

But, why focus on comic strips we'd like to see dumped for "Sherman's Lagoon" when the newspaper which has a circulation of about 100,000, does have some splendid comic strips as well as ones which are surprisingly good at times, "Dilbert" and "Garfield" are both good examples of comic strips which have come back from the dead, well at least that's the case with the one about a 36-year old cat.

Here is our top ten:

1) Funky Winkerbean (see top image of a "Swamp Thing" comic book): We simply love it when the strip's writer/artist Tom Batiuk designs his own versions of retro comic book characters with Starbuck Jones. In this week's strip, Starbuck Jones is seen fighting off a saber-toothed octo-shark. Yikes!

2) "Pearls Before Swine" (see middle image of Ron Cey): Perhaps the usage of former Los Angeles Dodgers great Ron Cey won't be understood by readers of Stephan Pastis' strip in Manchester, Sydney or Hong Kong, but we loved this week's strip which also features an homage to "The Godfather." Pastis never fails to surprise us.

3) "Speed Bump"

4) "Get Fuzzy"

5) "Zits" (see bottom image): This week, "Zits," a comic strip focusing on a 16-year-old boy who never ages, has Jeremy's mom using a Polaroid camera, one of our favorite Casualties of Modern Technology, which is like 'so totally' lost on him. Images/hallucinations of Fred and Wilma Flintstone add to the hilarious effect of the strip.

6) "Dilbert"

7) "Agnes"

8) "Garfield"

9) "Mutts"

10) "Doonesbury"

http://www.roanoke.com

http://baltimorecomiccon.com/

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com/

http://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/

http://zitscomics.com/

Top Ten Sunday Comic Strips from The Washington Post: Greetings from Easter Island

Another Easter Island gag from the Danish import "WUMO," which replaced "Get Fuzzy" in "The Washington Post" a few months back, is our top choice this week as a smiley face decides it's time to leave Easter Island (it's hard to explain "WUMO" strips for the same reason it's hard to explain Salvador Dali paintings).

Dave Coverly had a hilarious comic strip in "Speed Bump" as well as two prisoners discuss whether or not they want to buy their institution's yearbook. Hilary B. Price's "Rhymes with Orange" had a play on words from a Marvin Gaye song which somehow involved sheep.

Similarly, Darrin Bell's "Candorville" revolved around a discussion of The Milky Way by two African-American males on a living room couch, which involves a joke about the current nature of privacy (or a lack of it) in today's America.

Lastly, "Pearls Before Swine" had a different strip than the one which was in other newspapers. Stephan Pastis, who draws the strip, said publicly today that it was a decision made by "The Washington Post." The removed strip involves extreme political correctness. and the replacement featured a donkey going to a public rage. Ok...........


Here is our top ten:

1. WUMO (see image one, Easter Island)

2. "Speed Bump"

3) "Rhymes with Orange" (see image two, these are two Turkish sheep, we hope they didn't become lamb chops)

4) "Lio"

5) "Candorville"

6) "Pearls Before Swine"

7) "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy"

8) "Doonesbury"

9) "Sherman's Lagoon"

10) "Prickly City"


http://www.gocomics.com/wumo

http://www.gocomics.com/lio

http://www.candorville.com

http://www.rhymeswithorange.com

Top Ten Comics from Sunday Roanoke Times: Dogs on Espressos or Turkish Coffees

Stephan Pastis, the award-winning comic strip artist who writes and draws "Pearls Before Swine" is visiting Fountain Books in Richmond, Va., on Thursday. 'Pearls' takes second place this week behind "Speed Bump," which literally illustrates what dogs would be like if they drank too much caffeine. We imagine this comic strip was liked by (mr) Shannon Wheeler, who created the independent comic book anti-hero Too Much Coffee Man, more than 20 years ago.

Dogs were also featured in "Funky Winkerbean," as therapy dogs (pictured bottom) take center stage.

As for 'Pearls,' the strip features Zebra and Crocodile talking about the ethics of using Norwegian lemmings (pictured center) in a croquet game, which arguably makes the comic strip the most surreal of mainstream comic strips with the exception of perhaps "WUMO," which is not carried by "The Roanoke Times."

One surprise this week thanks to a surprisingly funny "Hi and Lois," the strip makes our top ten as we fully understand how Millenials have taken to things we grew up with, such as typewriters and rotary phones.

Here is our top ten:

1) Speed Bump

2) Pearls Before Swine

3) Agnes

4) Garfield

5) Get Fuzzy

6) Doonesbury

7) Funky Winkerbean

8) Dilbert

9) Zits

10) Hi and Lois


http://www.fountainbookstore.com/event

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com/

Our Favorite Comic Strips from The Roanoke Times: Another Comic Strip Hero Appears in Pearls Before Swine

Greetings to those of you in France, India and Ireland (Happy St. Patrick's Day as well to you).

Here is a synopsis and survey of our ten favorite comic strips from "The Roanoke Times" (Sunday, March 16th edition):


"Pearls Before Swine:" Stephan Pastis, who is in the middle of a national book store tour that will include stops at Fountain Books in Richmond, Va. (on March 27th) and Park Road Books in Charlotte, NC (on March 28th), did a hilarious take on the delicate art of being a police sketch artist. In the process, Charlie Brown of "Peanuts," makes a cameo in the seventh panel.

"Agnes:" Tony Cochran's strip is usually difficult to explain and this week's Sunday strip is no exception, but it does not involve the late actress Agnes Moorehead (pictured center) of TV's "Bewitched" fame. Rather, it depicts Agnes, the neurotic little girl, trying to show her friend a homemade plush doll with a very strange face. Vincent Price would have been proud!

"Speed Bump:" We'll just say it's the funniest comic strip with a dog that we think might be a Yorkshire terrier (pictured bottom) that we've seen all year!

Here is the survey:

1) Pearls Before Swine

2) Agnes

3) Speed Bump

4) Dilbert

5) Doonesbury

6) Funky Winkerbean

7) Garfield

8) Get Fuzzy

9) Zits

10) Blondie

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine#.UyZ_EulOWUk

http://www.fountainbookstore.com/

http://www.parkroadbooks.com/

Our Top Ten Comic Strips from "The Roanoke Times:" Blondie Actually Makes the Top Ten; Speed Bump Wins the Survey

Greetings to our blog readers in Canada, Spain and Switzerland.

And, a shout-out to our celebrity visitors George Lucas, Jane Fonda and Nancy Kerrigan (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Here is our top ten:

1) Speed Bump: In Dave Coverly's one panel strip one of the Easter Island heads acts up, and his mother straightens him out

2) Get Fuzzy: In this strip, the age-old battle of which pet is more popular: the cat or the dog takes center stage.

3) Pearls Before Swine: Stephan Pastis goes autobiographical again, this time asking his own creations, the rat and the goat, how he looks with a beard and a beret. (Hmmm....yeah, I suppose some of you are imagining Che Guevara right now)

4) Doonesbury

5) Dilbert

6) Blondie: Dagwood goes ski jumping?!! This should make the strip more popular in Finland.

7) Funky Winkerbean

8) Zits

9) Mutts

10) Agnes

SIDEBAR: Last night in Boston, Yale actually upset Harvard in men's basketball by a score of 74-67, but perhaps no noticed as everyone in the world is watching Bob Costas and NBC's coverage of the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

And, this is our 2,225th blog entry!

http://www.gocomics.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

Top Ten Comic Strips from The Sunday Roanoke Times.........yes, Pearls wins again

Stephan Pastis, the man who created Ataturk the Spitting Llama (thanks ok, us Turkish-Americans know our yogurt is better than Greek yogurt), once again wins our sweepstakes with his "Pearls Before Swine" trip in which a family trip to Key West, Fla, to go whale watching takes a Twilight Zone episode turn, which is, of course, hilarious.

"Get Fuzzy" was second as Bucky, Rob Wilco's out of control Siamese cat, goes on a rant about how a kid who has memorized Pi is not really smart of be interviewed on network television.

And, a cat was also featured in "Dilbert" where the title character was curiously absent. Here the cat gives personal advice to Dilbert's boss on how to seem caring around employees since he is a man incapable of empathy.


Here is the top ten from the Sunday "Roanoke Times:"

1. Pearls Before Swine

2. Get Fuzzy

3. Dilbert

4.Doonesbury

5. Garfield

6. Funky Winkerbean

7. Zits

8. Speed Bump

9. Agnes

10. Blondie


http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.gocomics/getfuzzy

http://www.stephanpastis.wordpress.com

http://www.dilbert.com

http://www.whalewatching.com

http://www.mainewhales.com


http://www.fla-keys.com

http://www.newport-news.org  (Newport News, Va., is said to be a good place for whale watching)