The best single individual comic strip you've ever read?

[Lee Nordling]

Cory Thomas brought up an interesting idea, which leads me to this question:

What's the single best INDIVIDUAL comic strip you've ever read, the ONE strip you feel was as well-written and drawn as a strip can be?

This is incredibly subjective, and answers probably reflect more about ourselves than the strips themselves.

I'll scout around for mine to post.

--Lee

[guy]

Holy cow, man!!! Your asking me to sift through 35 years of comics reading to find one single comic strip I deem the best I ever read?! I think I have better odds of winning the lottery. I won't even attempt this exercise, but I look forward to seeing others' examples.
Guy~

[Lee Nordling]

I realize it SEEMS like that...but it's really not.

I think certain strips stand out in our minds as being the ones that crystallized everything we personally love about comic strips.

So, I'm probably not looking at a Bringing Up Father.

Actually, the ONE strip I come back to is a B.C. Sunday.

For a time, I loved B.C. for its simplicity, its economy. In later years, I drifted far away from it; I hold other comic strips, on the whole, in much higher esteem...but I just can NEVER forget this particular Sunday page (from BC: Color Me Sunday).

Simplicity. Surprise. Belly laugh. There aren't many strips that get a belly laugh out of me...every single time I look at it.

I have MANY fond strips...but this is the one I come back to again and again.

Could I as easily pick Peanuts' Citizen Kane gag? Sure. Or a dozen others.

--Lee

[Lee Nordling]

As an addendum, I don't often write belly laughs, which is perhaps why I gravitated to the one I posted.

I recall a strip I wrote when I was at Disney; it made my boss snort Coke. That was the moment that he realized I'd work out.

It's been interesting having to think about this puzzle.

--Lee

[Josh McDonald]

Lee, you do come up with some great discussion topics! This one, I'm thinking people's methods for coming up with an answer might be as interesting as what they come up with. As you say, there are any number of contenders and at a certain point it's just hard to pick one. But here goes:

from Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac:

I love everything about Richard Thompson's work, but this one just seems to have a little touch of everything. His use of perspective; the composition -- how he ties the first two panels together on the diagonal then breaks away for the last panel; and the writing is just delightful all the way through with that great little twist at the end.

[Lee Nordling]

How'd you get the image in there? I never tried that before, and when I attached mine it turned into a link.

[Josh McDonald]

I saved the image to my own computer and re-loaded it here.

I'd have preferred to do it as a link, actually, but it's deep in the GoComics archives, where you need to be logged in to get to. I wasn't sure how many people here have accounts.

[Lee Nordling]

"Re-loaded" how?

When I used the attachment button, it latched onto the file on my desktop...and gave me what's on the page.

Did you do anything different to get the image?

--Lee

PS. REALLY funny comic strip. "Taunting the inanimate is cruel." Words to laugh by.

[Josh McDonald]

I used the "Add an Image" button -- the little camera-icon at the end of the toolbar.

[guy]

Thats weird, Josh. Thinking about it, that strip you posted was my third choice, and I have that one taped up above my computer. I also love this one:

It sums up my life growing up pretty good.

Probably my favorite strip of all time, I couldn't find a link to anywhere. It's a Calvin and Hobbes where he's furiously pounding nails into his mother's coffee table...something I can relate to on many levels.
Guy~

[Leann Webb]

I have a Photo Bucket account (it's free) where I upload most of my stuff and it gives me code to copy/paste onto websites, and such.

You'll have four lines of code to choose from, depending on where you want to post the pic. The one marked HTML code will work for posting pics here.

[ZingerSteve]

This Peanuts is one of my top faves. I'm not sure it's my SINGLE favorite or if I even have one, but it's the first one that came to mind.

http://blog.zingerding.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/peanuts-72646...

There's also that Pogo one where a butterfly lands on his head and it looks sort of like a bow. Then all the other swamp critters thinks Pogo is a girl. Several strips are based on that gag for a few days and I cracked up so hard with each one. Timing, art, slapstick - great Pogo stuff. I couldn't find it online and I'm not about to dig through my books for it now.

[Norm Feuti]

One that stands out in my mind was the Calvin and Hobbes where Calvin's dad explains that the whole world used to be black and white up until the 30s. When Calvin questions black and white photographs, his dad tells him they were color photographs of a black and white world.

I like the Calvin strips where his dad comes up with phony explainations for stuff in general, but that one stands out for being brilliantly written. The circle of bogus logic was just so flawlessly excecuted.