The comic Love Is is perfectly fine. Certainly a hell of a lot more successful than Over the Hedge. When I was younger I would disparage comics I didn’t like or didn’t think were worthy. Which was and is stupid. Apparently a lot of readers enjoy Love Is. And the reader’s are always right. No matter what.
Except for the reader who once wrote, “Reading your comic is like having open heart surgery performed on yourself with a rusty nail and no anesthetic.”
I choose to think he’s a serial kitten killer. A clever serial kitten killer. But a remorseless killer of multiple kitties nonetheless.
But did you notice?
Yesterday’s “Love Is” was “Love Is A Pull My Finger Joke”
And last week they had “Love Is Like Having Open Heart Surgery Performed On Yourself With A Rusty Nail And No Anesthetic”
The way I see it, if you don’t have an angry rat threatening to kill you every time one of your characters makes a bad pun, you’re doing okay.
Love Is . . . tired. repetitive. Unlike its subject. Trying to be clever and pithy in very few words, without repeating oneself, is even harder than the longer text of Family Circus; and some of these things only survive because people forget after a few years.