What ever happened to comic strips? Strips, not books -- that's a whole other issue. A read through the Austin American-Statesman's Sunday comics pages this weekend netted me one or two chuckles and maybe one brief instance of thought provocation.

I realize now why I stopped reading the comics pages regularly years ago. Old standards and new strips alike are almost uniformly bad these days.

Where does a guy have to go to find a decent comic strip these days? Where is the mind-altering brilliance of a Little Nemo In Slumberland? Where the slightest hint of truly clever humor? Where any noticeable frame of reference to the world and times we are actually living in?

They're out there, of course. The answer is that, with rare exception, they're not in the pages of your daily newspaper. They're in the back pages of weekly "alternative" papers, and on websites like Salon.com that regularly run alternative comics. And an increasing number of them are either created or archived online, where you, gentle readers, can experience them.

In the coming days, I'll be profiling some of my favorite "strips for the thinking person", including: Peter Blegvad's Leviathan, Aaron McGruder's Boondocks, Tony Millionaire's Maakies, Lynda Barry's Ernie Pook's Comeek, Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World, and more.

My focus will be on strips that are currently either syndicated in print on a weekly or daily basis, or updated that frequently online. There will however, be a few exceptions (e.g. Leviathan, which ceased publication in 1999). Meanwhile, I invite you to begin experiencing some of the best in modern comic strips from those that have websites linked above.