The Broons and Oor Wullie
The Broons are a large working-class family living in a crowded tenement flat in the fictional Scottish town of Auchenshoogle: Maw, Paw, Granpaw, the lanky Hen and Joe, the dowdy Daphne…
The wider medium · 20 entries
The funnies
Newspaper strips and humour comics: the part of the medium that most people have read without ever thinking of themselves as comics readers. This section splits between the American classics, which were collected, studied and put in museums, and a British strand that tends to get left out of the histories, from the Sunday Post to Viz, which was put in the bin after being read in the bath. A few strips with a science or SF bent (The Far Side, xkcd, Tom Gauld) lead back to the genre sections.
The Dandy
The Dandy was the first of DC Thomson's great comics for children, and it was home to Desperate Dan, the strongest man in the Wild West town of Cactusville, who shaves with a blowtorch and…
The Beano
The Beano is the home of Dennis the Menace and his dog Gnasher, Minnie the Minx and the Bash Street Kids, and it has been teaching British children how to misbehave since 1938.
Giles
Carl Giles drew single-panel cartoons for the Express newspapers for almost fifty years, and his cartoons of a chaotic British family, dominated by the terrifying, umbrella-wielding…
Start with Giles 2027
Pogo
Pogo is a gentle possum who lives in the Okefenokee Swamp with a crowd of talking animals, including Albert the Alligator, Churchy LaFemme the turtle and Howland Owl.
Start with Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Volume 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder
Peanuts
Charlie Brown is a lonely, unlucky boy who never gets to kick the football, and his dog, Snoopy, is a beagle with a vivid imagination who sleeps on the roof of his kennel and fights…
Start with The Complete Peanuts 1950–1952
Andy Capp
Andy Capp is a working-class man from Hartlepool who wears a flat cap pulled over his eyes, spends most of his time at the pub, avoids work at all costs and argues with his long-suffering…
Start with Andy Capp at 50
The Perishers
The Perishers are a gang of children in a British town: the thoughtful Wellington, the bossy Maisie, the dim but good-natured Marlon and the toddler Baby Grumpling, along with Boot, an Old…
Start with The Perishers Collection
The Wizard of Id
In the medieval kingdom of Id, the tiny King is a greedy tyrant, the peasants are revolting (in both senses), the knight Sir Rodney is a coward, and the Wizard's spells rarely work.
Start with The Best of the Wizard of Id
Doonesbury
Doonesbury started as a college strip about a group of students at Yale and grew into the most political strip in American newspapers, commenting on everything from Watergate to Iraq.
Start with 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective
Hägar the Horrible
Hägar is a Viking who raids England for a living, but most of his troubles are domestic: his wife Helga nags him, his son Hamlet wants to be a dentist, and his loyal sidekick Lucky Eddie…
Start with Hägar the Horrible: The Epic Chronicles – Dailies 1973–1974
Garfield
Garfield is a fat, lazy orange cat who loves lasagne and hates Mondays, and he lives with the long-suffering Jon Arbuckle and a dim but cheerful dog called Odie.
Start with Garfield at Large, the first collection
Viz
Viz started as a fanzine produced by Chris Donald in his bedroom in Newcastle, and by the end of the 1980s it was selling more than a million copies an issue.
The Far Side
The Far Side is a single-panel cartoon about cows who stand up when humans aren't looking, scientists who make ridiculous mistakes, cavemen, dinosaurs and insects, and it is one of the…
Start with The Far Side Gallery
Bloom County
Bloom County is a small town in the American Midwest, populated by a lawyer, a boy reporter, a neurotic child with an anxiety closet, a penguin called Opus and a cat called Bill who is…
Start with The Bloom County Library: Book One
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin is a six-year-old boy with a vast imagination, and Hobbes is his stuffed tiger, who is alive when no grown-ups are looking.
Start with The Essential Calvin and Hobbes
Alex
Alex Masterley is an investment banker in the City of London, and he is greedy, snobbish and entirely without shame.
Start with The Last of Alex 2025, from alexcartoon.com
Dilbert
Dilbert is an engineer in a faceless corporation, surrounded by incompetent managers, lazy colleagues and a scheming dog called Dogbert.
Start with Always Postpone Meetings with Time-Wasting Morons
xkcd
xkcd describes itself as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language", and it is drawn in stick figures by a former NASA roboticist.
Tom Gauld
Tom Gauld is a Scottish cartoonist whose deadpan cartoons for the Guardian's books pages and New Scientist are full of literary jokes, scientific in-jokes and very small, very solemn…
Start with Baking with Kafka