Columbus Dispatch Debuts Lame New Comic Strip

This is what you get when you let people vote: George W. Bush's second term and horribly unfunny, crudely drawn crap like Pearls Before Swine replacing Fox Trot in the daily comics section of the Columbus Dispatch beginning this past Monday. And, for the love of God, do NOT even get me started on the People's Choice Awards.

Of course, it didn't help that in the cases of the new Dispatch strip and the 2004 election, the alternatives from which the voters had to chose were fairly lame. Apparently, there just aren't any funny or well drawn daily comic strips, or Democrats qualified to be President of the United States, out there any more.

According to the article that accompanied Swine's debut, Dilbert "cartoonist" Scott Adams is a fan of the strip and endorsed it on his web-site. I can understand that, as Swine creator Steven Pastis' childish doodles make Adams' own mindless scribbles look like Rembrandt by comparison.

Pearls Before Swine is further proof, if any were needed, that the American newspaper comic strip is an artform that is on its last legs and, furthermore, that the Dispatch editors, and apparently a plurality of its readers, wouldn't know a good comic strip if it bit them on the ass.