Could it be possible? The terribly unfunny comic strip "Mallard Fillmore" appears to have become even less funny in recent months. Recently, the strip spent the entire week trying to draft an obscure economist for president. And above, the strip is making some sort of muddled point about people in China eating dogs (?!) Huh?
Look closer at that strip above. It's virtually all words, save a drawing of a dead dog and a tiny pic of the comic's namesake star. So not only is the strip unfunny, but it's not even visually appealing. Why, why, why does the Los Angeles Times insist on running such an amateur operation?
This isn't the first time I've ranted about the strip. In 2005, I wrote:
Ultraconservative strip "Mallard Fillmore" (seen here both in the L.A. Times and Daily News) remains consistently bad -- and I'm not even talking about its politics. The strip violates the cardinal rule of political humor: Above all, be funny.
I think even most conservatives would agree, they deserve better than "Fillmore." Even "Prickly City," the L.A. Times' other right-leaning strip, has its moments and is at least character-driven. "Fillmore" claims to have characters, but in reality contains no hearty cast of characters and no ongoing storylines (and very, very rarely transcends politics). "Mallard" simply has a rant of the day, either tweaking a headline in the news or going for a cheap "liberals are stupid" joke. Yawn.
By the way, this week "Mallard" dusted off an always-fresh Bill Clinton-is-a-philanderer joke. Ahh, it's like it's still 1998 in Mallard Country!
I'm obviously not the only one who can't believe "Mallard" has scored the kind of distribution it has. One of my favorite new blogs, Whats Wrong With Mallard Fillmore, does a much better job than me explaining why "Mallard" is possibly the worst comic strip of all times.
The blog's tagline says it all: "A daily analysis of the comic strip which manages to be less funny than Mary Worth."
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