Comics I Want to Set on Fire

(This feature hasn’t had updates since 2007. It may be deleted soon. Comics Curmudgeon does everything this page does, and does it better.)

Hello, welcome to Comics I Want To Set On Fire, or CIWTSOF for short, inspired by Comics I Don’t Understand. The idea is to make fun of comics that suck and should be ashes rather than ink on paper. This is and always will be just a small sample of the comics that I find unfunny. After all, if I put up every single comic that I found unfunny, I’d hardly have time to do anything else.

Newest entries at the top.

I have never seen a shampoo that looks like toothpaste or vice versa.

Babies who can’t even speak don’t know synonyms! HAHAHAHAHA

Wouldn’t a drug joke be much more fitting and ever so slightly funnier? (If only because people in the comics don’t normally talk about drugs.) I don’t think anybody uses “joint” to refer to a place anymore, except for humorous effect. The worst thing about this is that Shoe is often a decent comic. Seldom brilliant, but I usually don’t want to set it on fire…

OK, this might be the last Marmaduke strip I feature here. For one, if I posted every single Marmaduke that I want to set on fire, I’d be posting enough of them (namely, all of them) that I’d be infringing on the copyright. For another, I have finally realized that what most sane people say about Marmaduke is inaccurate. They say that the writer keeps recycling the same five or six jokes. No. I have finally realized that the writer simply recycles one joke: “It’s funny because he’s a dog.” Every single Marmaduke can be summarized with “It’s funny because he’s a dog.” (OK, that’s not true — mainly because Marmaduke isn’t funny.)

If for some reason this hasn’t been enough Marmaduke for you, just go to Marmaduke Explained for all your future Marmaduke satire needs.

So Dagwood eats a lot. This is different from what he normally does how, exactly?

“Brevity” isn’t a horrible comic, though it often fails to make me laugh. But come on, the Playstation 2 came out five years after the Playstation, and the Playstation 3 came out six years after the Playstation 2. Playstations don’t go obsolete as quickly as computers often do (and jokes about computer obsolescence have been played out). For a joke to be funny, it needs to be grounded in some kind of reality.

Oh boy, another “bling” joke. I expect the newspaper will soon be saturated with comics using the word “bling,” with all the cartoonists apparently thinking it’s the hot new word.

CEL FONES R FUNY

Um, I have a question. Is there any way that the last panel could not have been a card joke? Who the hell uses the word “solitaire” except in reference to the card game?

Oh. My. God.

I don’t want to turn this into the Marmaduke page, but that was horrible even for Marmaduke, so I had to post it…

Well, if it isn’t Mr. I Forgot To Write A Joke! Not to mention that, as this is the strip for January 22, Christmas was almost a whole month ago.

Here’s some pointed commentary on the “War on Christmas” from Bill O’Reilly—I mean, Johnny Hart. I really don’t like the pointedness…I think this is the first time I ever read the word “hell” in the comics (other than perhaps Biblical usage, which is uncommon as well), so Johnny’s saying “sit up and pay attention!” And hey, it’s a great thing that Johnny is able to do that; I won’t deny that. I’d be the last person to boycott B.C. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it…

I never understood this “War on Christmas” controversy to begin with. OK, so corporations choose to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Is that supposed to be an attack on Christmas? Is there some dichotomy where you either embrace Christmas or you deprecate it? People say “Christmas” is politically incorrect now, but I don’t think that’s true. Just because some people choose “Happy Holidays” doesn’t mean that “Merry Christmas” is suddenly verboten.

In any case, this is supposed to be the season where you forget about stupid, petty things such as this. Lighten up.

I don’t even get the joke. My friend Vega suggested that the football was chewed beyond recognition, but it looks perfectly footbally to me. What I also don’t get is how Marmaduke’s artist thinks his art style is even bearable. I mean, say, Scott Adams of “Dilbert” isn’t a great artist, but his strip’s art is still coherent, and his strip is actually funny. In the Sunday papers, the only comic (other than the soap opera–style serials) I ever skip over is Marmaduke. Even The Family Circus is more bearable. It’s that bad.

(Oh, and who’s the moron who resized the image? Check out that moiré pattern on Marmaduke. I didn’t know his coat was checkered. Not professional, guys!)

Obvious pun + game console that has been around for only a decade + old man = comedy gold!

Actually, is that really even a pun?

Whatever semblance of a joke there is here is struggling to get out from under the massive pile of unfunny.

Wow! That joke is so original! In fact, I think that’s the most original joke ever! We’re talkin’ big OMGLOLROFLMAO time. Man, nobody’s ever made a joke about fathers only giving gifts to their wives after they screw up! Give these guys an award, already!