In general comic strips try to have two attributes: funny and makes-you-think -- sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both. Comic strips are, after all, witticisms in pictures. And setting aside soap and adventure comics, which by their nature have only long story arcs over a number of strips, it has to be done, of course, in a few panels. This is a pretty difficult thing to do consistently, and yet amazingly there are strips that consistently do it -- the two grand masters, of course, being Watterson and Schulz. You can pick almost any Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts strip and it's one of the two, usually both. I was browsing some classic Peanuts recently and was struck by how funny they were -- not usually rolling-on-the-floor-laughing funny, but somehow funny. There was one (this one, in fact) which was very simple -- it consisted almost entirely of Snoopy being hit repeatedly by a water sprinkler -- but nonetheless just tickled me pink. It was funny precisely because it's the type of funny thing you might see a dog do in real life, and the strip just summed up that whole type of experience. And there are just endless numbers of things one could say about this Calvin and Hobbes.
There really should be some philosophical work done on comic strips in the way that people have done philosophical work on novels or horror movies -- not, I mean, philosophy inspired by them, but the philosophy of them, looking in more detail at what makes comic strips funny and thought-provoking. But I don't think I've ever come across it.
