Minicomics: If Out at Home Were in Newspapers
August 7, 2009
some quick strips making fun of newspaper comics. Yes, there are a FEW good comics still in the paper, but a lot of them are pretty damn awful.
Plus, none of their readers can get angry at me because they’re all 90 and think the computer is a fancy picture radio.
Did you happen to see PVP’s Watchmen parody? Also, Kate’s expression in the third panel sells the whole thing for crazy low prices, even beating those big box stores!
Okay. “Flash in the pan” – what does it means? Sorry, I’m not from the US, so i can’t understand that slang. Yeah, and I can’t understand the second strip too, but it’s my problem:D
Oh man, that last one cracked me up! Thurman’s dialog is awesome! Of course, it helps that I know which comic that is referencing. The other two I can’t tell, but then it’s been many years now since I read newspaper comics.
i still read news paper comics on occasion and i agree that most of them are horrible. over the last few years i’ve concluded that Webcomics > Newspaper comics to the point where i barely read newspaper comics anymore
I.
LOVE.
THIS.
COMIC.
I have checked all of the major English newspapers, and all except one of the comics suck.
The good one is Nemi, which is written by a Scandinavian and appears in a free paper.
Go figure.
FACEBOOKS!!!
PH -
A flash in the pan is something that’s incredibly interesting for a very short period of time. It flashes up brightly then quickly vanishes and everyone forgets that it was ever there in the first place, like N*SYNC.
The second one was just a parody of how dumb newspaper comics are. Many of them just toss in random, older pop culture references and go home for the day without bothering with an actual joke. No one will get the second panel, unless you’re insane.
The third, well, everyone knows that Garfield is horrible and it stands out on the top along with other grand titles like Marmaduke as the worst comics to ever grace newsprint.
LaughingTarget – ohh, man, thanks for the help. Okay, now, a get this strips. I think I never understand that the third panel is a Garfield parody. Congrat
Oooouch! Love it.
I love these.
So true. My interest in Sunday comics greatly declined after Bill Watterson stopped making Calvin and Hobbes all those years ago.
@PH: The origins of the phrase is from when guns used to have an actual pan of finely ground gunpowder which when ignited would set off the main charge and fire the gun. “A flash in the pan” meant you were going to have to use your bayonet sooner than you intended to.
I love it.
But really, Garfield’s content HAS been deteriorating…
It’s reduced to three copied and pasted panels (No, wait! The middle panel is a different color! GASP!) and Garfield either a) talking to himself b) talking to himself but answering Jon’s comment from the first panel or c) answering his own hypothetical question.
But Pearls Before Swine is still good. Even if they overuse the “argh bad pun now I’ll kill/maim/insult myself/readers/someone else/cartoonist” joke.
I still read newspaper comics. Why? Let me explain.
There are 13 webcomics I have bookmarked. 8 of them update on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. 1 Monday through Friday. 1 Monday though Saturday. And 3 seven days a week.
When I find a new webcomic, I read the current comic. Even if I don’t like it, I usually click back one or two or more comics and read those. What I’m looking for is a hit-and-miss ratio. How many do I like and how many dont I like. If I get a high enough hit-and-miss ratio (say I like every second comic) then I bookmark it, and read it frequently.
When reading a webcomic, obviously, I have to go to that site. That means that on some days (Mondays) I have 13 clicks. While on others (Sundays) I only have three comics I can read.
A newspaper, however, will provide me with 13 comics, every single day, all on one page. Even with a 1-in-26 hit-and-miss ratio, there will be something on that page I like every second day. I work security overnight and often will get at least one paper for free. I always read the comics. There are a few I really like (Rubes is pretty good) but more I dont (I’ve never ever found a marmaduke funny, but since it’s only one panel, I read it. I also dont much care for Doonesbury and often skip it)
I will very rarely buy a newspaper, but with free papers due to my job, and with places like McDonalds more than willing to give you a free paper with your breakfast, I quite often get to read these. While the quality is low, there is much to be said for the convince of having all of them on one page.
lol… very nice, but I have to ask… are there even newspapers anymore?
13 clicks? I don’t know if other browsers have a method to do what I do (I imagine Opera does at least), but in Firefox I just make a folder of bookmarks to all the comics I read. Then when I want to check on them, I just go to the “Open all in tabs” entry. If I had a lot of ones in there that updated with different frequencies, including more than one daily, then I’d probably divide it up into several folders so I don’t waste time opening all of them when only two or three updated. But as it is most of the ones I read update at the same time.
If I wanted to be really geeky about it I could write a quick script to automatically check which day it is and launch all applicable comics in the browser for me. But I don’t read enough of them for that to be worth it.
@Pizzasgood
I use a webcomic crawler (www.piperka.net) that I check every day that tells me when my comics have updated and how many updates there have been since my last check. This comes in handy when you read a lot of webcomics that have erratic scheduling (ie~once a month updating, author going on hiatus frequently, etc.)