NCCCCC: Catch That Cliche

After counting the votes, we have the finalists in the National Corniest Cliche Comic Character Countdown and they are a motley bunch of stereotypes. Many people were frustrated with the No Patterson Rule. For Better or For Worse is a tough strip to pigeon-hole in these categories because it is part humor strip, part soap opera, and all lame. And know that it is in the zombie strip limbo of the living dead, the strip is beginning to compete with itself in any topic where spleens can be vented.

We had plenty of write-ins, most of them very well-reasoned. There were over a thousand votes cast, so I feel I got a real slice of the comics-loving community. And they love to hate the losers. Lets go through the finalists and then we can decide who is the Best (or Worst) of Show

	Alarming Alcoholic – Leroy Lockhorn Despite having an early lead, Andy Capp got edged out by Leroy Lockhorn. Now both of these characters have a glass in their hand as part of their defining character traits, but Leroy is bitterer and far more likely to be in an out of control stupor. I really wish Andy had won because he is a more iconic figure with far better clip art available online, but the readers have spoken.
	Dopiest Dad – Dagwood Dagwood would give anyone a run for the money in dopiest anything category. There is not anything he does that he doesn’t do lazily or incompetently. Except perhaps make oversized sandwiches. Happily married but dim-witted fathers are one of the last safe objects of derision in America and Dagwood has been blazing that trail for over severty-five years. Other dopey dads owe him a debt of gratitude for making them look good in comparison.
	Perplexing Pet – Marmaduke As I mentioned in the comments, this was Marmaduke’s category to lose and he won by the largest margin of any category. Even the much maligned Garfield got out-voted two-to-one. How this hyperactive Great Dane has managed to milk one joke for decades is the real mystery. And nothing I can say about the sexual subtext of the strip can match this.
	Kid to Kick In The Ass – Dolly I just could not fit everyone’s favorite loathsome brat into this category. I could have doubled the field and still not pleased everybody. Danae from Non Sequitor was favorite write-in. Still, Dolly is a worthy winner in the toughest division.
	Judge’s Choice – Flagstone Family At least one reader caught on that the candidates seemed to include an awful lot of folk from Hi and Lois and this was no accident. While no character finished higher than fourth in their respective category (Thirsty at least beat out all the other Walker/Browne lushes (a disturbingly common character type among that clan)), the entire Hi and Lois cast epitomizes lazy caricature driven characterization. For over a half century, this white-bread family has been a collection of “types” that went obsolete somewhere around the British Invasion. Even as they have tried to adapt and stay relevant, they remain constantly at least one decade behind the times.

So make a choice and check some boxes and we’ll see what you think.

In the meantime I’m going to start compiling a list of divisions for next year’s tourney. Some ideas I have kicking around are: Most Unforgivable Patterson, Swishiest Soap Star, Least Fulfilled Female, Most Dysfunctional Family. Go ahead and give me some other ideas. Until then, read my regular stuff and be sure to come back next year.

NCCCCC: Kid You'd Like To Kick In The Ass

Comics are for kids. At least that is the common perception. That is why they are full of kids that so smart-assed that normal parents would have taken a strap to their little butts long ago. There is a mile wide chasm between the genius of Calvin and Hobbes and the puerility of most comic kids. Let’s look at the most egregious.

Dennis The Menace

Back in the day, Dennis was a candidate to become a jumpsuit wearing juvie in a youth boot camp. Nowadays his behavior wouldn’t get a Ritalin prescription from the most pill happy Dr. Feelgood. Still, if I were Mr. Wilson, I would have given Dennis a real close look at the wood chipper a long time ago.

Dolly (The Family Circus)
Being the most annoying kid in the Family Circus is like being named Top Dictator of The Twentieth Century, the competition is keen, but it’s not much to brag about. If you imagine that the whole family gets their well water from a dioxin poisoned brownfield and each kid is representing his own particular symptoms of brain damage, the strip begins to make sense. Dolly’s repertoire of spoonerisms, mangled syntax and eye-rollingly demented observations are enough to get the very front seat on the short bus.

Marvin
Marvin is at best Garfield in human form. At worst, he is the most idiotic toddler ever to have an internal monologue. When he was a baby, he just sat around in fully loaded diapers philosophizing. He is now a preschool toddler, but the quality of the wit hasn’t improved any. He may have graduated from diapers, but the stink on the comics page is still there.

Dot and Ditto (Hi and Lois)
You may not see anything particularly noxious in the Flagstone twins at first, but if you pay attention you will see that they encompass all the annoying habits of all comic kids. They disrespect their elders, they abuse and torment siblings and they fight with each other in a disturbingly incestuous way. And they’re named after punctuation, for heaven’s sake.

Edison Lee (The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee)

The oddly dichotic Edison Lee and his titular brilliant mind is a reader nominee. The strip may not be syndicated widely, but those that have read it despise it with the intensity of a thousand suns. Its raison d'être seems to disguise Mallard Fillmore's hateful politics in a family friendly wrapper. This boy idiot/genius is a particularly unfunny walking talking point that belongs in the Limbaugh Letter rather than on a comics page where people want to be entertained, not lectured to.

Ruthie
The One Big Happy star is here based on the hatred of loyal reader Demetrious X who is saving a special circle in Hell for this malapropism prone misfit. Ruthie bundles tons of annoying features in one little bundle of spite. In addition to her sub-Dolly puns, she is mean, bitter, and vindictive. I’m not sure this comic doesn’t violate the “currently in print” rule since all the strips at the official website are reruns, but we are leaving it in to give it the benefit of the doubt. After all, the fact that I can’t tell the difference is telling enough.

This category is perhaps the most competitive to date. Be sure to give each character full consideration (if you can stomach it) before casting the most annoying one down the well.



Voting in all categories will end sometime Saturday evening, so make sure you have picked someone in each of the other categories.

NCCCCC: Perplexing Pet Playoff

The Perplexing Pet category has been the hardest bracket of the National Corniest Cliché Comic Character Countdown to seed. Many strips have pets, but they rarely have major roles except for getting sick at inopportune times and ruining planned Paris vacations. Most of the time if they aren’t the star, they are just visual background.

Some of the pet-oriented strips are among the best in print. Snoopy in his day, for better or for worse, became THE breakout Peanuts character and made Charles Schultz a very wealthy if rather troubled man. And speaking of For Better Or For Worse, the death of Farley affected a generation more than Ol’ Yeller. Last year Bucky Katt mopped the floor of the National Coolest Comics Character finals with the other contestants.

On the other hand, there are strips with pets that are among the most reviled characters on the funny pages. And others that just make you scratch your head in confusion. Let’s have a look at some of those.

Garfield
One of the most hated yet inexplicably popular “talking” animal characters ever. The very young and the feeble-minded find him hilarious and Jim Davis has been trying to breathe some new life into the franchise, but the damage has been done. Garfield is arguably not even a cat. I’m not aware of too many Monday-hating, lasagna-loving, “bachelor-baby”ing real life cats out there. But he is a character in all senses of the word and a merchandising juggernaut.

Heathcliff
Perhaps the best way to describe Heathcliff is as a mute, less funny Garfield. Seemingly slightly more cat-like than Garfield, Heathcliff is more of a delinquent alley cat with airs. The pantomime style doesn’t give him much personality to work with and he makes the least of it.

Earl and Mooch (Mutts)
Mutts is a comic strip loved by those pretentious snobs that lament the lost artistic glory days of the funny pages. The strip is beautifully drawn in a gorgeous retro style with lots of in-jokes that date back to The Yellow Kid. But have this cat and dog duo (without looking, tell me which is Earl and which is Mooch) ever done anything funny? Unless you count talking with a lisp as appropriate 21st century comedy material. They are loved as a concept but the strip lacks sound execution.

Dawg (Hi and Lois)
Even the name is completely generic (and highly offensive to those of us who despise the University of Georgia athletic program). Dawg is the Flagstone family pet that mostly interacts with pre-verbal Trixie, which makes him about as important as the sunbeam.

Marmaduke
Marmaduke is a Really Big Dog.

Pick which pet belongs in the pound for crimes against comics. This category is tough to give firm direction on, so leave your thought process in the comments.


And if you haven’t voted yet in the Alarming Alcoholic or Dopey Dad category yet, make sure to visit those.

NCCCCC: Dopiest Comics Dad

In the second round of the National Corniest Cliché Comic Character Countdown we are looking at the heads of households that are clueless dorks. The cliché comic dad is a clueless loser easily duped by his wife and kids. These guys could have a CBS sitcom based on them. The trick is finding the fine line between satire and stupidity. Homer Simpson is a parody of the typical sitcom dad, but Jim NoLastName from According to Jim is just a tool.

The trick is interpreting intent and execution. Dads that I cut from the short list included Walter Duncan of Zits, Greg Wilkins of Curtis, and My Hero Ted Forth because they all exhibit signs of life underneath the heavy lidded burden of paternity.

And I have to invoke the No Pattersons Rule. They are so polarizing that they would win regardless of category. I've also declared Roger Fox from Foxtrot ineligible since the Sunday-only version barely features him.

Dagwood Bumstead (Blondie)
Dagwood is one of the archetypal comic characters. He is lazy, clueless, and always hungry, but he just doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time being a dad. Mostly he hands money to Chip and answers the phone for his 50’s era teenagers.

Hiram Flagstone (Hi And Lois)
There is no more clueless family than the Flagstones. Hiram (Hi for punnish reasons) is the traditional whiter-than-Wonder breadwinner that comes home to a house of chaos. And like Kevin James in King of Queens, he has a wife way hotter than he deserves.

Ralph Drabble (Drabble)
Deliberately clueless, the Drabble family pater familias is just Homer Simpson just without the lovable doofusness. We laugh at him rather than with him. That is if we laugh at all.

Frank DeGroot (Luann)
Luann’s dad is full of advice. Lots and lots of bad clueless advice. He has a son that has conned him into his own house. His titular daughter is one of the shallowest ditziest teenagers this side of a Zoey 101 marathon. And his shiny forehead just screams impending mid-life crisis.

Darryl MacPherson (Baby Blues)
While he may not be a household name, nobody exhibits the signs of domestic emasculation worse than the dad of Baby Blues. He is constantly changing diapers, wiping noses, or shopping for mini-vans. He is either too sad or too real.

So pick the dad you love to hate or just despise for being such a weenie.

Write-ins and comments welcome.

NCCCCC: Alarming Alcoholic

Welcome to the National Corniest Cliché Comic Character Countdown, where I annually pick some comic chestnuts to run through the wringer. Our first category this year is everybody’s favorite role model, the liquid substance abuser.

Comics like to traffic in stereotypes. They form a great visual shorthand to help set up a joke. And nothing is funnier than a falling down drunk in the funny pages where kids learn to read and adults commiserate their sad existence. Comic strip drunks are keeping things on the down low in today’s MADD invested political correctness. For many of these strips, I couldn’t find recent examples of their signature lush actually hoisting a glass, so in some cases, you’ll have to use your imagination and your alcohol soaked memory.

Hagar The Horrible

Hagar, the least horrible barbarian ever, is a heavy drinker in all senses of the word. He’s even willing to endure spousal abuse in order to be able to drop in for a drink or twelve. In addition to being a horned drunk, he also traffics in the heavy-set nagging wife stereotypes.

General Amos Halftrack

The drunken lecherous leader of Camp Swampy has been through several rounds of court-ordered sensitivity training and is now rarely seen with a martini glass in his hand. Like all good comics writer doppelgangers, he still enjoys golf. Surprise! He also has a heavy-set overly stern wife. Battle-ax spouses must drive comic characters to drink.

Thirsty Thurston

One of the frequent recurring GoogleStorm hits that infrequently hit my blog is for “Hi and Lois drunk neighbor”. It seems Thirsty is rarely referred to by name anymore and even more infrequently seen with his trademark pile of empties under his hammock. He must be doing all his drinking off camera because he still has his advanced rhinophyma.

Andy Capp

Everybody’s favorite wife-beating drunk epitomizes British lower class substance abuse better than an entire season of Eastenders. While he too has lowered the spousal abuse content, he still likes to bend his elbow plenty.

Leroy Lockhorn

Leroy likes to give his buddy across the pond some competition. Nothing says hilarity more than Leroy three sheets to the wind wearing a lampshade and hitting on some hottie half his age and twice his height.

Bung

The Wizard of Id’s town drunk is everything a dysfunctional wino should be, including it seems, a professional musician.

Remember when voting that “best cliché” means many things to many people. Vote according to your conscious and blame the results on a blackout hangover.


Please be patient with the voting software. Your vote may not register immediately, but it is being counted.

As always, explanations and rationalizations are allowed and expected in the comments.

Update: You may keep voting, but the Dopiest Dad and Perplexing Pet categories are now open as well.

Cliche Comic Character Nominations

Every year about this time I run a series of tournament parodies about the funny pages. Two years ago Gil Thorp stole the crown in the National Crappy Comics Competition™ from top contenders BC and Mary Worth. Last year Bucky Katt ran away with best of show in the National Coolest Comics Character Contest. This year I'm throwing open nominations onto the floor for the National Corniest Cliche Comic Character Countdown or NCCCCC (and yes I do seem to be adding a C every year). The categories that need to be filled in are:

Dopiest Dad
Pick the cartoon father that is the dumbest most clueless foil there is. Think CBS sitcom dad stupid. It's a wide-open field so think hard.

Perplexing Pet
It doesn't matter whether it talks, walks, or humps the furniture, pick the pet that should have been put to sleep years ago.

Alarming Alcoholic
The comics have tried to become more responsible, but let's face, drunks are funny. Or at least they should be.

Kick The Shit Out of This Kid
Annoying isn't always funny. Find the child most deserving of a size 13 enema. If this child were your progeny, he wouldn't make it to middle school.

As always, definitions of "worst", "most" and "is" are left deliberately vague, ambiguous, and contradictory. The only rule is that the character has to be in a currently syndicated comic strip that appears in a major US newspaper and is available online somewhere somehow.

Thanks for the help and we can look forward to a fun-filled week of comics bashing.