While I mostly agree with you, I have to say that Hagar the Horrible is still infinitely worse than Zits.
I'm not a huge fan of Hagar myself, actually, but it's what Zits replaced and I still think it was a poor trade. At worst, Hagar was simply unfunny; it was never annoying.
Always expect the worst and you can only be pleasantly surprised.
The thing is, swap around the son and the dad stereotypes and transplant the series into the past and you've basically got Hagar.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
True that. I'm not going to say that teenagers are oppressed or anything, but I feel like media like Zits are one of the reasons why everyone has such a bad option about teenagers.
"Oh shit, I'm not ready"
The strip suffers from 60-Year-Old-Man-Syndrome, a common affliction in the comic pages. When it first started out, the writer (whose name I can't be bothered to Google), probably had teenaged children of his own, and the tone towards Jeremy was much more sympathetic. There were story arcs, genuine character development, and at its best you could almost believe Jeremy was Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes), a decade older. But years of flanderization, authorial laziness and cultural drift have taken their toll, and now the strip is nothing but a husk stuffed with "kids today!" gags and the same lame stereotypes the writer probably rolled his eyes at when Kennedy was President.
Interesting observation, Bobchillingworth. I didn't know that. From what I'd seen of the comic, it seemed to portray Jeremy and everyone else humorously, mocking all of them. I wasn't aware of what it was like in the past.
What REALLY gets me about Zits isn't just that Jeremy is portrayed as a complete and utter loser, but also that he's a total douchebag, especially the total contempt with which he treats his parents even as he shamelessly leeches off them. And this is supposed to be funny?
Always expect the worst and you can only be pleasantly surprised.
I think today's strip was the absolute nadir of the series. Jeremy's father comes to his room to ask him to do something, but we don't find out what because Jeremy rudely interrupts him and tells him that he's "not on the list" of people allowed to come into his room. When his father (quite rightly) points out that he owns Jeremy's room, the little shit smugly replies "Tell it to the list" as he turns his back on his father.
I feel like I was robbed of a proper punchline in the form of a 4th panel where Jeremy's father smacks the smug, arrogant, rude, selfish, ungrateful, juvenile, inconsiderate little fucker's teeth out.
Always expect the worst and you can only be pleasantly surprised.
Phew. Fortunately, after yesterday's debacle of a strip, it got an actual follow-up today when Jeremy's long-suffering father refuses to allow him access to the fridge when he's hungry because he's "not on the list" and then threatens to call the bouncer on him when he complains (his mother wearing a pair of boxing gloves, apparently eager to beat her worthless son up). Looks like even the writer has finally realised whan an absolute shit Jeremy is.
Always expect the worst and you can only be pleasantly surprised.
Obviously you\'re allowed to dislike the comic, but I feel that you\'re overreacting. I wouldn\'t say not letting your dad into your room is that awful. Everybody\'s got a right to privacy, and it feels like you got a bit of something like confirmation bias going—you don\'t like Jeremy, so everything he does is the worst thing ever.
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I lost Hagar the Horrible for THIS?
Zits is one of the worst comic strips I've ever had added to my local paper (The Sydney Morning Herald). It's boring, unattractive and worst of all, mean-spirited. The only reason the comic strip isn't a one-note gag is because there are 4 main characters and each of them is their own one-note gag. The series has only 4 jokes. The first one is that teenage boys are thick, selfish, reckless, lazy, irresponsible, short-sighted, uncaring, dirty, slovenly slackers who do nothing except leech off their parents and do dumb things and that's somehow funny... just because. The other 3 jokes are: teenage girls are shallow, ditzy, overemotional, clingy, oversensitive and vain, mothers are overreactionary, demanding, smothering neat-freaks and fathers are clueless, dopey, out of date, old-fashioned dorks. The characters are so shallow and dull that it took me WEEKS of glancing at the comic while I was doing the crossword to even find out that Jeremy and Sarah actually had names. Worst of all, it's not funny. It's not funny, it's not topical, it's not interesting. It's a waste of paper.