The newspaper comic is a dying art, no longer interesting to read in your kitchen table in the morning before you head out to work or school. The papers are shrinking the size of most of them and other papers abandoned them, save the political themed cartoons. Would be nice to see the dailies in color not just the sundays. I put the blame on internet comics releases, some Dilbert fans for example can load the comics and read them on the screen, and not buy an ink-and-paint newspaper.

...FWIW the San Francisco Chronicle here runs all it dalies in color now .

Since we're talking about comic strips...

In my opinion the five greatest humor comic strips are:

1). Peanuts. No question about this one. Charles Schulz is the one true genius of the American comic strip. From the security blanket to Lucy's psychiatric booth to the Red Baron, no other strip has given as much to American culture as Peanuts. Schultz literally rewrote the rule book for the comic strip. Just imagine opening your newspaper in the newly optimistic post-WWII days of 1950 and seeing the new comic strip with the punchline "Good old Charlie Brown--how I hate him!"

2). Pogo. Walt Kelly was by far the most accomplished artist of the American comic strip and not far behind that as a writer. Mixing sight gags, dialectic humor and slapstick with biting (and in some cases dangerous) political humor, he too helped rewrite what was acceptable content for a comic strip.

3). Doonesbury. Takes politcal humor to the next level. Plus any strip that has a chemically altered Duke freaking out over having to give a speech to a room full of savage winged lizards has to make my list.

4). Calvin and Hobbes. Reminiscent of both Peanuts and Pogo. It also adds both a hard edge and soft side that neither of those two strips had. By far the prettiest strip since Pogo.

5). Dilbert. You've all seen Scott Adams' artistic talents. That's how good his writing has to be to make this list! And I don't even work in a cube...

For current strips, Pearls Before Swine is the only one I read regularly. Get Fuzzy is OK, but I prefer to read it in the collected form rather than day by day.