Ted Rall’s Top Ten Comics of All Time

The Hooded Utilitarian website asked me to list my Top Ten Comics of all time for a survey.

Here are mine, what are yours?

The cave cartoons at Lascaux, France, because cartoons invented Art

The obscene political cartoons about Roman officials found on walls at Pompeii, the oldest known editorial cartoons and bawdier than anything a newspaper would run today

The postwar editorial cartoons of Bill Mauldin, roughly 1945-1955 (many are collected in the book “Back Home”), which are constructed using modern tropes and bravely call out American cultural hypocrisy

“Peanuts” by Charles Schulz, the first truly modern comic strip, and consistently entertaining and philosophical

“The Far Side” by Gary Larson, often forgotten today but still the most consistently funny comic I’ve read

Jules Feiffer’s cartoons from 1955 to 1975ish, which established the genre of alternative newspaper comics

“Life in Hell” by Matt Groening, particularly the 1980s era that opened the field to new artistic approaches

“Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel, the first graphic novel to fulfill the form’s potential as literature

“Weird War Tales” comics of the 1970s not because they’re objectively great. I just love them. So trashy, so fun. I wish there was a reissue.

“Tom the Dancing Bug” by Ruben Bolling, the best syndicated cartoon in the US

Honorable Mentions:

Stephanie McMillan’s experimental environmental comics

Matt Bors’ editorial cartoons and graphic novel(s)

Tom Tomorrow

Ward Sutton’s Onion satires