As it turns out, Garfield is brilliant

[A Black Falcon]

Sure, true, it rehashes the same jokes over and over. And yes, I agree that it used to be better; the Garfield cartoon in the late '80s/early '90s was particularly great. But really, the way that most newspaper comics work is by having a static world and then telling the same jokes over and over in it. Only a very few don't use that formula... Doonesbury, most prominently. But a lot of very popular comics just repeat the same things over and over, and people like them because they've come to expect it, and maybe because some of the jokes are funny.

I mean, Blondie has been in the papers since 1930. 1930! That's an incredibly long time for a comic strip! And yes, it has made some changes over the years to keep some of the humor fresh, like when Blondie got a job as a caterer. But the core jokes, about Dagwood sleeping or running into the mailman, the giant sandwiches, etc... those have been similar for a very long time. But even so, it's a good comic. Peanuts was good too. Its best and most creative years were earlier on, certainly, but even so, it was a good comic for most of its 50-odd year run...

Garfield isn't one of the best comics in the paper now (it's no Doonsbury, Non Sequitur, etc), but it is entertaining.

There are better comic strips out there, but it'd be nice if there was more flexibility involved for the artist instead of having to cram everything into a tiny space. Bill Watterson was able to fight a bit for that to introduce the half-page comic that doesn't have to be conveniently reformatted to 1/3 or 1/4 page or smaller panel. Unfortunately, newspaper sales are plummeting, and the funnies are (for good reason) seen as something secondary that should be subject to the convenience of the editors. A lot of good comics are released online for this reason, which is a good alternative.

It's not Calvin & Hobbes equal, but I would say that Non Sequitur is one of the more artistically interesting comics around today. There are some others, but that's one of my favorites... it has a somewhat distinctive vertical sunday strip, as well as the usual horizontal alignment of the weekday one (though it generally does not use panels, just a box).