I don't feel like I'm going too far out of my way to suggest that a lot of newspaper syndicated strips are objectively bad, because the artists complain about the same issues themselves. They've been boxed in to such a small literal physical area that it becomes hard to do anything "artistic".

A few of them still manage to do some good work, but great work is almost physically impossible now.

And if what you want is merely good work, there's probably a dozen "good" webcomics now for every "good" syndicated comic out there. In fact I think I stumble on a "good" webcomic every three months or so, only to notice that it has 5+ years of archives available. (I do this on purpose; in many cases, the webcomic that is "good" when I find it really wasn't particularly good in the first couple of years.)

Calvin and Hobbes's creator really liked Schulz's work: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB119214690326956694

Yeah, I know, but I guess I don't share his view on that.