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Aside: When's the last time you even read the the comics on a regular basis? I have family that I had to stay with last year for an extended period. They are o

Aside: When's the last time you even read the the comics on a regular basis? I have family that I had to stay with last year for an extended period. They are older, so they still get the news, and so I read the comics just like what was left of the paper (let's agree to table the discussion of newspapers for now?). Like, the comics have really gone places. Sally Forth has a multi-dimensional Marvel tie-in now with a lot of beards? What the hell happened with Prince Valient? Dilbert is/was still stuck in the early 2000's office culture and had really nothing to do about crypto or any of the other crazy. Garfield got a lot more boring, something I never thought possible. Peanuts somehow is still around 22 years after Schultz died, how!? Where the crap is the modern replacement/spiritual-sucessor comic for Calvin and Hobbes? It's been 28 years guys! For Better or Worse is gone? When?! I know time moves on, and in strange ways, but what the hell happened to the funnies, man?

reaperducer 4y ago
Aside: When's the last time you even read the the comics on a regular basis I do. Every day.
- Balgair 4y ago
  Yeah, awesome! So what happened to the funnies in the last 15 years?
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    Like any other written work, comics are a reflection of their author, the author's views, and society. Combine that with the ability of newspapers to pick and choose the comics that reflect their readers' interests, and it's natural to see change over time. Also, while the characters in comic strips are ageless, their authors do age and change, and this shows up in the panels in subtle ways. Sally Forth is one of a number of comics whose authors have gotten so deep into naval-gazing and re-hashing the same old story lines year after year that they're in a death spiral. For SF, in particular, it seems to have gone off the rails about five years ago. It's neither funny, nor insightful. It's just a lot of words words words with little actual content. I never understood Prince Valiant. Maybe once a month I'll look at it to see if the story is at a point where I can jump in, but I never know what's going on. Dilbert got stale, and its author fell into the naval-gazing death spiral, too. See also: Crankshaft, Luann, and Candorville. Garfield is boring, but it always was. For better or worse, it remains light entertainment, and there's nothing wrong with that. Schultz died, and what you see now are re-runs of his old strips. In some newspapers, the title has been changed to Best of Peanuts, or Classic Peanuts. But some just kept the title Peanuts. I don't think there could be a modern version of Calvin and Hobbes. Society has become too touchy. Too angry. Too opinionated. Too closed-minded. If anyone tried to re-capture what once was C&H, they'd be pilloried on social media for imaginary crimes. See also: Bloom County. Red & Rover could be a contender, but it's more nostalgic than clever. For Better or Worse has been in reruns for a very long time. Its content has always been so milquetoast that I didn't even notice it until you brought it up just now. Also in a death spiral: Ziggy. Same three gags over and over. Breaking Cat News. Zits. B.C. is also the same gags over and over, but somehow it's not so bad. At least it's not angry. Get Fuzzy is good, though it's still sometimes strange. Also, Pearls Before Swine. They're only good, but still the best strips out there. Donesberry has mellowed out, and is more readable than it has been in a long time. I don't think there are any "great" strips anymore. But looking through my Sunday papers today, these are ones I find OK: Baby Blues, Hi & Lois, Baldo, F Minus, Wumo, Rhymes with Orange, Mutts, Argyle Sweater, Drabble, Mother Goose and Grimm, Pickles, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee. Somehow I still find Blondie and Hagar delightful, and it sometimes manages to work in new topics. The problem with comic strips is the same problem that all of comedy has: Society is ruining comedy. Big-name comedians like Seinfeld will tell you that it's just not fun anymore. People go from zero to machine gun in the time it takes to spit out one joke. Nobody has any sense of humor anymore. Everyone has to be offended about everything, or they don't know they exist. Can you imagine what would happen if some of the first or second season of SNL were re-aired on NBC, or one of the Dean Martin TV roasts? People would burn down the Comcast building. Can you imagine Richard Prior or Red Foxx doing a set on a college campus? Mass hysteria. People need to get over themselves. They've forgotten "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."
ModernMech 4y ago
I think you answered your own question. > Peanuts somehow is still around 22 years after Schultz died, how!? In the past, when authors died, a space was created for new authors. Today, even when an author dies, they continue producing content, which has the effect of crowding out space for anyone else. Not only do you have to compete with the best comics of our time, you have to compete with the best comics of all time. What would it mean for today's classical composers if Bach and Beethoven were still making new music (probably with AI they soon will, if they aren't already). If you keep running Peanuts, then there's no room for the next Peanuts to grow. Writing a comic isn't about social commentary anymore, it's about growing an audience to the point where you can lock them in for 50, 70, maybe 100 years+. No matter if what you have to say in your comic is irrelevant and not funny. It's a business and there's money to be made.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  Aren’t they just recycling old comics since there are so many of them? Or did some smart ML researcher create a language/ comic model based on a corpus of comics he wrote when he was alive, and some editors just generate and curate? I’m guessing we aren’t at the latter…yet.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    I taught a senior capstone group who were generating new Calvin and Hobbes cartoons using AI in 2019. They weren’t great, but I’m sure today the results would be 1000% better. What they did was run sentiment analysis on the corpus of comics, and then categorized all the panels by a number of emotions (anger, joy, surprise, confusion, etc.) then they wrote some jokes, specified some constraints about the panels, and then the algorithm assembled a comic. Today I imagine they could generate entirely new panels from the corpus, and maybe ChatGPT could be trained on the text to write jokes closer to the style of Calvin and Hobbes.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      This gives me a brilliant idea: maybe we could make an AI to make new movies based on old ones, and train it on the first 2 Alien movies, so we can finally get a decent sequel to that franchise. Humans post-~1990 have proven that they're completely incapable of the task. Then do the same with Episodes 4-6 of Star Wars.
SamBam 4y ago
> Dilbert is/was still stuck in the early 2000's office culture and had really nothing to do about crypto or any of the other crazy. He actually wrote a comic designed to shill for NFTs, and also keeps writing comics wading into making fun of pronouns, trans culture, race, etc etc.

reaperducer 4y ago

Aside: When's the last time you even read the the comics on a regular basis I do. Every day.

Balgair 4y ago
Yeah, awesome! So what happened to the funnies in the last 15 years?
- reaperducer 4y ago
  Like any other written work, comics are a reflection of their author, the author's views, and society. Combine that with the ability of newspapers to pick and choose the comics that reflect their readers' interests, and it's natural to see change over time. Also, while the characters in comic strips are ageless, their authors do age and change, and this shows up in the panels in subtle ways. Sally Forth is one of a number of comics whose authors have gotten so deep into naval-gazing and re-hashing the same old story lines year after year that they're in a death spiral. For SF, in particular, it seems to have gone off the rails about five years ago. It's neither funny, nor insightful. It's just a lot of words words words with little actual content. I never understood Prince Valiant. Maybe once a month I'll look at it to see if the story is at a point where I can jump in, but I never know what's going on. Dilbert got stale, and its author fell into the naval-gazing death spiral, too. See also: Crankshaft, Luann, and Candorville. Garfield is boring, but it always was. For better or worse, it remains light entertainment, and there's nothing wrong with that. Schultz died, and what you see now are re-runs of his old strips. In some newspapers, the title has been changed to Best of Peanuts, or Classic Peanuts. But some just kept the title Peanuts. I don't think there could be a modern version of Calvin and Hobbes. Society has become too touchy. Too angry. Too opinionated. Too closed-minded. If anyone tried to re-capture what once was C&H, they'd be pilloried on social media for imaginary crimes. See also: Bloom County. Red & Rover could be a contender, but it's more nostalgic than clever. For Better or Worse has been in reruns for a very long time. Its content has always been so milquetoast that I didn't even notice it until you brought it up just now. Also in a death spiral: Ziggy. Same three gags over and over. Breaking Cat News. Zits. B.C. is also the same gags over and over, but somehow it's not so bad. At least it's not angry. Get Fuzzy is good, though it's still sometimes strange. Also, Pearls Before Swine. They're only good, but still the best strips out there. Donesberry has mellowed out, and is more readable than it has been in a long time. I don't think there are any "great" strips anymore. But looking through my Sunday papers today, these are ones I find OK: Baby Blues, Hi & Lois, Baldo, F Minus, Wumo, Rhymes with Orange, Mutts, Argyle Sweater, Drabble, Mother Goose and Grimm, Pickles, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee. Somehow I still find Blondie and Hagar delightful, and it sometimes manages to work in new topics. The problem with comic strips is the same problem that all of comedy has: Society is ruining comedy. Big-name comedians like Seinfeld will tell you that it's just not fun anymore. People go from zero to machine gun in the time it takes to spit out one joke. Nobody has any sense of humor anymore. Everyone has to be offended about everything, or they don't know they exist. Can you imagine what would happen if some of the first or second season of SNL were re-aired on NBC, or one of the Dean Martin TV roasts? People would burn down the Comcast building. Can you imagine Richard Prior or Red Foxx doing a set on a college campus? Mass hysteria. People need to get over themselves. They've forgotten "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."

ModernMech 4y ago

I think you answered your own question. > Peanuts somehow is still around 22 years after Schultz died, how!? In the past, when authors died, a space was created for new authors. Today, even when an author dies, they continue producing content, which has the effect of crowding out space for anyone else. Not only do you have to compete with the best comics of our time, you have to compete with the best comics of all time. What would it mean for today's classical composers if Bach and Beethoven were still making new music (probably with AI they soon will, if they aren't already). If you keep running Peanuts, then there's no room for the next Peanuts to grow. Writing a comic isn't about social commentary anymore, it's about growing an audience to the point where you can lock them in for 50, 70, maybe 100 years+. No matter if what you have to say in your comic is irrelevant and not funny. It's a business and there's money to be made.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Aren’t they just recycling old comics since there are so many of them? Or did some smart ML researcher create a language/ comic model based on a corpus of comics he wrote when he was alive, and some editors just generate and curate? I’m guessing we aren’t at the latter…yet.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  I taught a senior capstone group who were generating new Calvin and Hobbes cartoons using AI in 2019. They weren’t great, but I’m sure today the results would be 1000% better. What they did was run sentiment analysis on the corpus of comics, and then categorized all the panels by a number of emotions (anger, joy, surprise, confusion, etc.) then they wrote some jokes, specified some constraints about the panels, and then the algorithm assembled a comic. Today I imagine they could generate entirely new panels from the corpus, and maybe ChatGPT could be trained on the text to write jokes closer to the style of Calvin and Hobbes.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    This gives me a brilliant idea: maybe we could make an AI to make new movies based on old ones, and train it on the first 2 Alien movies, so we can finally get a decent sequel to that franchise. Humans post-~1990 have proven that they're completely incapable of the task. Then do the same with Episodes 4-6 of Star Wars.

SamBam 4y ago

> Dilbert is/was still stuck in the early 2000's office culture and had really nothing to do about crypto or any of the other crazy. He actually wrote a comic designed to shill for NFTs, and also keeps writing comics wading into making fun of pronouns, trans culture, race, etc etc.