Zippy the Pinhead, the "non linear" cartoon with a creator who is totally nuts!
Zippy certainly has its moments, I definitely like it.
In my mind the best of the modern strips that are still being produced is Curtis. It can be very funny, and there is a lot of good imagination in that one. Dilbert also deserves mention.
While not a strip that I would call great, a currently produced strip that I find that I looking forward to read everyday is Funky Winkerbean.
My favorite strip is Calvin and Hobbes. Really, nothing comes close to it. The 1980's were a great time for the newspaper comics page, with Calvin and Hobbes, Doonesbury, Bloom County, and the Far Side all at their height.
Before that time, Peanuts was a great strip in the 50's and 60's, but the quality started to fade as the 70's wore on and Snoopy and Peppermint Patty started to dominate the strip too much. While I was in college I ended up reading my roommate's Pogo collection. Absolutely tremendous stuff.
In general I don't care for many of the strips that the original creator passed on to other artists, often relatives. That would include strips like Hi and Lois, Hagar, Beatle Bailey, and Shoe. For me these have all become really stale. There are so many of these passed on strips, that I find they crowd out emerging potential talent out of the comics pages. The two exceptions to this rule for me are Blondie and Prince Valiant. While these strips often repeat themselves, they also maintain a certain freshness to them that I like.
