Comic Quality

I read the comics in the daily newspaper whenever I get the chance, and while I'm certainly entertained, I rarely find myself actually laughing at a comic. Out of the thirty or so comics on the two-page spread, there are maybe three or four that I look forward to as probably being funny. I'm sure that other comics appeal to other people's senses of humor, but it also seems very possible that, given the requirement to produce one comic a day, it's impossible for the average cartoonist to think of a great idea for every strip.

I can't really think of a good solution for this-- rerunning a few pages of Calvin and Hobbes each day would be fun, but even that would get old after a while. In a lot of ways, it seems to me that the comics with the most longevity are the ones that focus on characters over jokes. Anyone can run out of punchlines, but comics with well-developed characters are more self-sustaining, and a lot of humor eventually comes from the unique actions and perspectives of these characters. The best of example of this that I can think of is Peanuts: most individual strips are not particularly funny, but overall it is one of my favorite comics. Humorous personalities developed over years of daily strips carry the comic past a collection of jokes to something much more meaningful.