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First, there was the newspaper. It was and is my preferred method of reading the comics. Despite the fact that I am a big computer nerd and spend most of my day on the Internet, and the fact that on-screen comics are often larger and more legible, I really prefer reading the comics on newsprint for sentimental reasons.

Then, just over a year ago, came the Baltimore Sun’s great comics purge. In order to maintain my Mary Worth fix, I set up a custom comics page on the Houston Chronicle’s Web site with the purge victims and a few extra soap operas for spice.

Now, however, I’m feeling a little bored with my repertoire of daily strips. I mean, how many times can I make fun of the big-headed freaks in the Family Circus? Well, honestly, I could do it every day … and, in my head, I do do it every day … but surely you’d be bored with it eventually.

Thus, I’m taking suggestions on additions to my reading list. Here are the rules:

• The comics listed under “Pick a Comic” in the left-hand nav bar are the ones I already read every day, so don’t bother naming one of them. The only exception is the Wizard of Id, which I read once when I was in New York City and felt the need to comment on. But please, don’t make me read the Wizard of Id every day. I’m begging you.
• The strips you suggest should appear on the Houston Chronicle comics site. Since I already have a custom page set up there, it’d be easy enough to add any of these strips to the list. But the last thing I need is to feel obligated to zip back and forth between various comics Web sites.

Anyway, there are a lot of strips there, so do chime in with your suggestions, and please provide some rationale on why it’d be good for me. Maybe the strip would make good fodder for mockery; maybe I would actually enjoy it non-ironically; maybe those two categories are not mutually exclusive.

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Get Fuzzy, 1/18/06

It has come to my attention that some of my readers do not find Get Fuzzy amusing. These people are, for lack of a more subtle word, wrong. Let us count the things that made me laugh about today’s installment:

1. The phrase “he would reject it as being unrealistically squalid.”
2. Rob’s spindly legs.
3. Bucky’s palms-up outspread paws.
4. Bucky’s pot belly.
5. Bucky’s sly look. Imagine if Sally Forth used the phrase “shoebox full of dead rats” when she deployed her sly look. That feature would be improved thereby.
6. The phrase “a shoebox full dead rats.”

If you are not convinced, there is no hope for you. Now if you’ll excuse me, my cat is demanding to be let in from the back porch. Hopefully she doesn’t have another rat to add to the shoebox.

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The Phantom, 1/17/06

Apparently the Phantom people have been carefully studying Spider-Man, their arch-rival in the daily-adventure-soap-opera-comic space. The latter strip has over the past few months completely abandoned traditional superhero fare, with its crime-fighting and excitement and such, in favor of tedious domestic drama that serves mainly to illustrate the incompetence and overall unlikeability of its protagonist, and that’s clearly a star to which the Phantom ought to hitch its wagon post haste. I’m sure all loyal readers of this feature join me in looking forward to seeing what the next few weeks have in store for the Ghost-Who-If-Pressed-Probably-Couldn’t-Tell-You-How-Old-His-Kids-Are. Potential highlights:

• Bedtime stories read out of rows of identical leather-bound books, full of thrilling tales of Phantom’s past, which the kids will listen to for 45 seconds before picking up the PlayStation controls.
• Groundings at gunpoint.
• “You are not going out dressed like that, young lady.” “Why not, dad? I mean, everyone can see your package in your outfit! That’s a double standard! I hate you!”
• The children accidentally walking in on Mr. and Mrs. Walker, and their trauma subsequently mollified by the timely application of “Bandar medicine.”

Eventually, of course, the Big Purple Guy will realize that his half-assed attempts to be involved in the lives of his offspring will never get any more assed, and will go back to punching out villains and ne’er-do-wells, leaving the kids once again to the care of his wife — or, since his wife is apparently some kind of UN bigwig, to the care of the nannies or jungle tribespeople or feral cats or whoever the hell’s been raising them. Then they won’t surface again until it comes time for the Phantom to pass the job onto his son, who in his absence has become a graphics designer.

Anyway, what’s intriguing about this particular strip is the look of confusion and interrobanged betrayal on the look of cone-hatted pygmy sidekick Guran in panel three. My guess is that Guran is hurt because the Phantom’s sudden overdue interest in his biological offspring will cut into their own relationship, which can best be expressed by the following analogy, in standard SAT format:

Guran:The Phantom::Arnold:Mr. Drummond

The fact that Guran is an adult does not invalidate this analogy. It is a well-known fact that Emmanuel Lewis was 32 years old during the first season of Webster.

Meanwhile, in Apartment 3-G, we get a full sense of the mettle of Margo’s mega-evil bride client, Nina Blake. We all knew she was Margo’s rival in sheer bitchosity, but today we get to behold awesome power of her killing grip!

Work it like a claw, Nina … and for God’s sake, don’t anybody call her Randy.