I'm sure I'm duplicating any number of angry rants out there on the Web 2.0 Blog-o-sphere, but it's a little upsetting that "Calvin and Hobbes" and "Bloom County" are no longer with us, while incomprehensible midden heaps like "Alley Oop" and "Zippy the Pinhead" just keep on truckin'. [Note: I don't have the patience to follow "Alley Oop" but I think it's about a caveman who travels through time for some reason. As for "Zippy the Pinhead," your guess is as good as mine.]

This "Lio" strip represents my feelings on this important issue quite accurately.

Meanwhile, the issue isn't simply that bad comics continue to exist; it's that good comics actively become bad comics. "Non Sequitur," for example, used to be whimsical and often witty. Now, it's overwhelmed with heavy-handed political demagoguery. Ha ha, comics page superstar "Wiley!" Fox News DOES often fail to live up to their journalistic responsibilities! What a refreshing and original insight requiring an intrusion into my morning that could not at all have been published instead on a poorly-designed Gnarls-Barkley-blasting teenager's MySpace page somewhere!

At this rate, do you want to see the future of the comics page? Do you? Do you really?

THIS is where the comics will be, and the general public seems to be fine with both heavy-handed political tripe (see also: "Mallard Fillmore") and recurring jokes that were played out in the 1950s (see: "Family Circus," "Blondie," etc. [Note: "Blondie" began as a strip chronicling the adventures of Blondie, a flapper with "a ton of boyfriends." In the sexually repressive 1930s, this probably means that Blondie was something of a ho.]).

If you're ever debating against anyone who believes that the free market delivers the optimal result in all circumstances, use the comics page as a counter-example. Seriously, there have only been four or five basic "Family Circus" plots in the history of the comic; can't the geriatrics who keep voting to keep it around just photocopy the two they like and put them on the fridge instead of ruining our mornings?

Update: I just noticed the "Blondie" Web site's claim that 280 million people read the strip. Assuming this is true, it simply proves that bad taste is truly the world's only unlimited resource.