The Funny Pages

I have always been amused by the comics in the newspapers. No, silly, not the Op-Ed pages, the comic strips. Especially on Sundays. You see, when I was a lad back in the latter stages of the last Ice Age, Sunday was the only day they were in color and the only day some of them appeared at all in the newspaper my father preferred. I don't recall which paper that was, probably the New York Times since we lived on Long Island in a tiny (and charming, I'm sure) little hamlet called Farmingdale.

Each Sunday morning I would grab the "funny papers" from the kitchen table (after Dad had read them, of course), lie down on the living room rug next to the radio (which was the size of a medium chest of drawers) and scan the cartoons as the voices on the radio read them in character.

Nobody reads the "funnies" for me anymore. I can now do it all by myself. Usually. And I do not have to wait until Dad is done with them. They are delivered to my computer via email from GoComics.com for free. I don't even have to worry about getting that newsprint ink all over my fingers. I hate that stuff.

My list is simple:

The Born Loser
Drabble
Frank & Ernest
Get Fuzzy
Andy Capp
B.C.
Wizard of Id
Luann
Pickles
Broom Hilda
Momma
Rose is Rose
Herman
Calvin and Hobbes
Non Sequitur
Shoe

These are my favorites now. I miss a few that were available when I was a child: Alley Oop, the Katzenjammer Kids, Gasoline Alley, There Oughta Be a Law, Li'l Abner, the Phantom, Terry and the Pirates, the Little King, and a few others. Some are still available but they just aren't the same... or I'm not the same... doesn't matter. And, really, you just have to move on at some point, don't you?

It's nice to start the day with a chuckle or two, isn't it?