The Scrappy/Newspaper Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of The Scrappy in Newspaper Comics include:

  • Luann features Elwood, a short, unappealing midget of a young man who appears to be wealthy (but bought a cubic zirconia ring for a girl), but comes across as selfish, stalker-ish and rude. Interjecting himself into the various Love Triangle storylines has made him very unpopular, as well as his having few good qualities. It remains to be seen if this was intentional or not, but Greg Evans has essentially not used him in months, so maybe he's aware of it.
  • The kids from Family Circus. They are the reason the strip has a Periphery Hatedom. Pearls Before Swine writer Stephan Pastis often uses his strip to point out the fact that it's a relic from the 1930s doesn't really endear the comics section to any reader under the age of fifty.
  • Barry from Curtis. The author clearly intended his antics to just be normal kid-brother grade asshattery, but they're usually incredibly mean-spirited and deliberately designed to provoke Curtis, so that Barry can then sob to his mother that big mean ol' Curtis is trying to hit him for no reason at all, whereupon she will give Curtis chores to do for trying to hit his sweet, innocent brother, and Barry ice cream for being a manipulative sack of shit. Diane lacks the pattern recognition to notice that Curtis always has a very detailed description of the transgressions she doesn't believe Barry committed.

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