The Comic Strip I
find Problematic
Hello to all of the comic strip fans. As you know there's a comic strip that is still continuing to this day in 2021. In one of the newspapers from the Daily Herald from Provo Utah and in the USA is a comic strip called "The Born Loser" as seen in the Go Comics website link Today on The Born Loser - Comics by Art and Chip Sansom - GoComics
The Born Loser comic strip has started in 1965 by the comic strip artist Art Sansom. This comic strip was originally created by Art Samson in 1965 he made comic strips and won the 1987 National Cartoonists Society Humor Comic Strip Award and the 1990 Newspaper Comic Strip Award which I'm very surprised since it's one of the worst comic strip of all time by many comic strip readers including myself. Art Samson continued this comic strip work until his death in 1991. Then his surviving son Chip Sansom took over and is still drawing the repeated comic strips to this day.
He created this comic strip to focus on the main man named Brutus Thornapple who has bad luck in his everyday life, he is lousy at golf and his coworker is a jerk to him, he gets bad customer service in the restaurant. He whines and complains about life all the time and tries to get out of work.
Chip Samson the current author. He is keeping the comic strip going for his fathers sake. If feels this comic is insensitive to overweight people and making jokes about fat shaming and fun of people which I think is not nice.
Brutus has a lousy office work job with a greedy selfish man named Rancid W. "Rank" Veeblefester who yells at him and puts him down and is never grateful. He is like Ebenezer Scrooge from a Christmas Carol. He always gets away with bullying his workers especially Brutus and always talks about himself and only cares about hoarding bags of money.
When Brutus is home it isn't much better for him, as his wife Gladys Thornapple always bosses him around and complains about life and always argues with him. Yet they somehow quickly make it up.
Glady's mother in law Ramona Gargle is mean and she is super bossy to Brutus, she fat shames Brutus and is critical about every little thing and her hair is a mess and she looks like a witch.
Brutus son Wilberforce Thornapple is a good boy, but he also has bad luck like his dad. He doesn't like homework and wish it would disappear forever and complains about life from time to time. He is friends with Hurricane Hattie O'Hara who they fight with sometimes. And Hurricane Hattie always picks on Brutus and she dresses up like she's from Anne of Green Gables. Uncle Ted is easygoing and can deal with life problems.
That's the premise of the comic strip. Now I don't know how many people are actually reading the comic strip in newspapers or online but it has about 72,615 followers. I wonder why are people reading it? I don't see any news articles about people following The Born Loser. The Born Loser was created during the baby boomer, hippies era.
There are now many of the rising generation don't know what The Born Loser comic strip is and they are more into popular culture involving superheroes like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Power Rangers, Pokemon, Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, Spiderman and many more superheroes.
Nobody in the rising generation really knows or really cares about what the 1950s or 1960s comics are. The Family Circus is out of touch with reality and the audience since it focus on the white family and doesn't focus on different families, Dennis the Menace isn't relatable with the times anymore as the boy problems of the 2020s are different than in the 1950s and it doesn't touch on the darker subjects of childhood like Calvin and Hobbes did which is a better comic strip.
It's true that The Born Loser comic strip is still somewhat relevant but it's becoming more out of touch with reality. It doesn't focus on cultural diversity, it only focus on white people, it doesn't show the actual problems of society, and cringing jokes people don't like.
I'm surprised Chip Samson is still making The Born Loser comic strip panels. He is over 70 years old and he's making comic strips, he needs to retire from his comic strip job. Nobody reads newspapers anymore except for the older generation. There are still some people who read comics online but I feel that with the 72,615 followers they think it's funny to make fun of people.
Because the younger audience wants positive uplifting progressive stories and that are upbeat, happy and relatable. Current People don't like The Born Loser because they are constantly whining and complaining about life and never solving their problems. Also the title The Born Loser makes it sound like they won't fix their problems.
To the current author, I would suggest that you empower your characters to change and fix their problems so that we can inspire readers that they can change their own lives too.
