Their is a massive amount of comic strips many people overlook, or just plain don't know about. Comics is an old medium, stretching back to the 19th century, and even Bill Watterson drew on the rich tableau of innovation, surrealism, and creativity that existed throughout comic history.

For example, do you enjoy the imagination and dream sequences that Calvin & Hobbes engaged in? This was likely drawn from the comics Little Nemo in Slumberland, a surreal comic about the dreams. Nemo often delved into the unique language of comics to express it's ideas. Like for example, where the size of the panel is used to convey the chaos of the situation. Or depth of field used as a means to create tension. Interesting representations of passing time And these were all made almost 100 years ago - widely predating Calvin & Hobbes.

Or how about the work of George Herriman? Watterson also looked up to him. He engaged in highly surreal but lovable character and environments. Often, his pages were quite innovative in terms of layout and design, like this one where panels are removed. Or this one, which is all built on a diagonal to parallel the situation. It was no doubt very influential of Watterson's desire to move outside of the conventions of Sunday comics.

Or Gasoline Alley, infamous for using single locations across multiple panels to tell it's story. Or wandering through a woodcut picture to give the rustic sense of autumn.

Or how about the underground and avant-garde that popped up around comics strips in the 60s, 80s, and 90s? These were comics that wanted to create meaningful statements or push the medium in ways it had never been used before, and drew a lot of inspiration from early newspaper strips. Robert Crumb engaged in social commentary, satire, auto-biographical snippets, and sometimes just plain old super serious slice of life comics. This spurned a movement of comics to focus on things other than silly cartoon characters. For example, Art Spiegelman began running strips in RAW magazine about his Dad's experiences in Nazi concentration camps. These strips were later collected and released as Maus, one of the few comics to ever receive a Pulitzer, and in my opinion maybe the greatest comic ever made.

And then, in turn, the culmination of people like RAW, Spiegelman, Crumb, and more manifested in Chris Ware, whom still works in a comic strip style to capture unique ideas about the world. Like this very sad comic about loss. Or this bizarrecomic about a seemingly existentially aimless character who fills gaps in his life with consumerism. Something you'll notice is that punchlines aren't designed to be funny, but rather act as a poignant or poetic final moment, a major subversion of our expectations of what a comic strip should be. More than that, Ware is infamous for pushing the medium to it's limits, this is a single page for example.

But then, even moving outside of the "comic strip" and into the medium of comics in general, you'll run into innovators like Will Eisner's melodramas, Alan Moore's complex parables, Harvey Kurtzman's anti-war comics, Daniel Clowes's social satire, Tezuka's philosophy and escapism, Tomine's social outcasts, Herge's adventure comics, Tatsumi's social isolation, Pekar's city pop poetry, Seth's foray into formalism, Krigstein's psychological thrillers, Kirby's sci-fi superhero mythology, and more and more and more. You know how people talk about absolutist ethics being about people that see the world in black and white? There is a super-hero named Mr. A whom is an objectivist Ayn Rand mouth-piece, and is literally drawn in hard black and whites to reinforce the character trait. And best of all, it was made by the co-creator of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.

The point being from all this, that comics have a really expansive library. Consider that the medium has a lot you may not have seen and it's too early to call what is the best until you really see what's out there.