Maybe I take comics a little too seriously.

But Fort Knox is still the crappiest newspaper comic out there. Take a look at this Sunday strip:

Seriously, what’s the joke there? The gumball machine broke, spilled everything, and…? He’s chewing gum. OK. I don’t see a punchline. Is he supposed to be chewing a LOT of gum at once? Perhaps, but that’s definitely not the right way to draw it. You’ve gotta exaggerate things in comics. Make his cheeks about twice (or three times!) that size and you’ve got a REAL punchline, Mr. Paul Jon. As it is now, it looks like he’s chewing a normal amount of gum for a cartoon character.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. This comic has some of the most uninspired character designs out there. The guy in the red hoodie here is Wes, an asthmatic, introverted, bullied kid. His brother Donald is basically a bland remake of Jason from FoxTrot, except with a teddy bear named Castro and no real intelligence. The father and mother have virtually no personalities—the only striking feature of the father is that he’s in the military. The mom is just you’re basic, canned comic strip mother. Also? All of the characters have the exact same face, especially if they’re related. Friends of the main family have minor differences—such as a different nose shape.

The majority of strips are like the one I’ve posted here. No real punchline, no buildup, RIDICULOUSLY bland, and copy/paste drawings. There was even one strip for Memorial Day where the comic “artist” had someone else draw tribute art of WWII soldiers rushing into battle. He then added some crappy, semi-sentimental panel where the father is reading some book about WWII to his sons and saying something “heartfelt.” But really—if Memorial Day is SO IMPORTANT to you that you’d dedicated an entire Sunday strip to acknowledging it, the LEAST you could do is draw your own damn art for your own damn strip. (Now, don’t misunderstand me. Memorial Day is important, but it’s rarely acknowledged in the funny pages anymore. Thus, it’s strange to see a whole Sunday strip dedicated to it, and when you do see it, it usually means that the cartoonist cares deeply about its significance.)

Even Tom Preston’s comic, So, You’re a Cartoonist? is better than this drivel. And that’s saying something.