Nickelodeon Magazine is recognizing their readers favorite comics by creating a Comics award to honor the best comic book, strips and graphic novels. The categories related to comic strips include: Cutest Comic Character: Snoopy (from Peanuts), Bartleby (from Bone), Super Diaper Baby (from Super Diaper Baby) and Manny (from Diary of a Wimpy Kid); Favorite Comic Strip: Foxtrot, Mutts, Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, and Peanuts; and Best Hair in Comics: Calvin (Calvin and Hobbes), Kakashi Hatake (Naruto), Storm (X-Men) and Veronica (Archie).
Voting is online and runs through the end of December.
Considering the target age group of Nickelodeon, I’m wondering why the chose Calvin and Hobbes, as it ended before the kids who watch Nickelodeon were born. Are kids even aware of C&H? It could easily be the favorite of their parents, but how would kids know about it?
I have three kids ages 9,9 and 11 and they all love Calvin and Hobbs. They found it at the school library. My oldest has all of the C&H books now. Don’t tell Chad.
My kids (ages 6 and 3) love Peanuts, Daffy Duck and Superman.
Quality transcends generations. Or something.
It’s case by case depending on what their parents are like. To give an extreme example, I was familiar with “Krazy Kat” when I was 10 (I found a book of old comics on my dad’s shelf).
Ditto me, my dad and “Pogo.”
I think it’s interesting that, of the comics nominated, MUTTS is the youngest at 14 years old. It’s a testament that newer comics, that is, ones created within the last 10 years or so, are not on the collective public radar.
It seems pretty clear that syndicated comics can no longer rely on newspapers alone any longer, and the Web in and of itself isn’t the answer.
I see lessons to be learned from comic book cartoonists.
Ditto me my dad and Charles Addams, MAD, and Jules Feiffer.
(Yeah – I’m a little messed up!)
I’ve got three kids 12, 14, and 16 who are huge comics fans. Standard breakfast reading every day: Peanuts, Frazz, Foxtrot, Bone, Pearls Before Swine, just to mention the books scattered in and around the kitchen. What books we don’t have, they order up at the library. Here’s hopin’ the Nick awards get more kids to find out about comic books!
Diary of a Whimpy Kid, and Captain Underpants have done very well with kids. Peanuts will always be popular with kids. It’s right there next to the cat and the hat and the little golden books.
Those of us slaving away drawing a comic strip that’s going nowhere might want to take a look at what kids are actually reading. I’m a believer in taking your audience into consideration… to SOME degree.
I’ll bet $10 on Garfield being the favorite comic strip of kids.
Well snoopy will win the best comic character easy. (Been the most recognised cartoon character of all time and the best cartoon character of all time the others stand no chance).
For the best comic strip it will be either calvin and hobbes or peanuts. The others stand no chance against the greatest 2 comic strips ever created.
Interesting topic. But are we tainted by our own choices ? Snoopy has always been popular, especially this time of the year, the trio holiday pack of tv classic cartoons. I have yet to meet anyone who is down on ‘the beagle’. It was interesting to see most of the nominees are older then the readers who are voting. But why no “Nancy” it is consistantly funny and Guy Gilchrist does a heck of a job staying faithful to Ernie Bushmiller’s version.
It’s interesting that kids keep discovering Calvin and Hobbes. My nephew had that discovery some years ago when finding a C&H book on the shelf in school. He thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, which of course it is.
I guess to me it’s fascinating that a strip that has not been in papers for years, has no current strong marketing other than the books quietly available in bookstores and on library shelves, is able to gain a huge following of younger readers.
A testament to the strip’s timelessness.
My daughter, who’s 10, likes:
Bone comics
Archie comics
Scooby-Doo comics
Baby Mouse comics
She’s just discovered:
Garfield comic strips
Calvin & Hobbes comic strips
She hasn’t shown much interest in:
Asterix
Tintin
“Iâ??ll bet $10 on Garfield being the favorite comic strip of kids.”
You know I laughed out loud at a Garfield strip when I was a little kid. It had something to do with Garfield shaving John’s head in his sleep. I watched Garfield and US Acres every Saturday morning too, one of my top shows on the Saturday morning cartoon lineup. And the Garfield Christmas special is topped only of course by A Charlie Brown Christmas.
The Garfield Christmas special is better than that whole 3D animated movie. I miss the original voice of Garfield too..Lorenzo Music-also the voice of Peter Venkman in the Real Ghost Busters.. which I watched all the time too.
The CBS “Garfield” series was probably one of the very few good cartoons to come out of the ’80s…also one of the longer running Sat. AM series, with new episodes airing until 1994.
Nickelodeon aired it for few years until 1999. One of the FOX affliates in my area also aired it every weekday mornings during that time-frame.
Of course, its probably nostalgia talking, but even today I still laugh at some of the jokes in the show, courtesy of Mark Evanier, who wrote about 90% of the materials for the show.