Comix for SM78 -- <font size = "4">The Drunks Bar </font size "4">

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Date Posted: 20:01:08 04/15/01 Sun
Author: SteveH
Subject: Comix for SM78

(Dons mortarboard)

Glad you enjoyed your stay at TCJ SM. I would have to say that at this point I consider daily newspaper strips to be pretty much the dregs. Dumbass greedheaded syndicates have pretty much ensured that newspapers are rarely infected with quality or originality. (Which is a shame, because that used to be where the real aaction was.)

Weekly alternative papers usually carry the best strips. A couple of examples would be Tony Millionaire's "Maakies" strip:

http://www.maakies.com

This one seems especially good for drunks as one of it's reoccuring characters is "Drinky Crow"...an alcholic bird who sucks down liquor with an amusing sound effect ("Dook! Dook! Dook!)

Another would be Kaz's "Underworld" which features various unsavory characters inhabiting a world that's sort of "Popeye goes gothic".

http://www.boneville.com/library/excerpts/underworld1.shtml

There's a lot of great comic books too, even if they tend to get crowded out by superheroes and such nonsense. For one example, there's my personal fave Peter Bagge who had a great comic book called "Hate" which featured the misadventures of the cynical slacker Buddy Bradley. (So true to life I often thought it was about me) He's done some online stuff lately which can be found here:

http://www.peterbagge.com/comics/online.html

Of special interest would be his reporting pieces for suck.com which combine comics and straight text. The coverage on Alan Keyes would be right up any Drunk's alley.

For just straight laughs, there's Sam Henderson's "Magic Whistle" which uses crude but hilarious illustrations to assualt the funnybone with silliness to spare:

http://home.earthlink.net/~bottomlessstudio/whistle/magic_whistle_start.html

Getting to your questions:

1. Why is Peanuts still syndicated and carried? Is Schulz's work considered timeless? Is Schulz really considered the best cartoonist of all times? Peanuts is still front page, first comic in the Sunday LA Times. Doonesbury is the other front page comic.

Schultz is considered one of the all-time greats. His work of the last decade was rather flat, but in his heyday he was cranking out pure genius. However, if he's still being reprinted at this point, it just goes to show that the syndicate doesn't give a rat's ass about his wishes. (He didn't want them to keep running it after he quit.)

2. What is Mary Worth all about? It is so boring and yet has been around forever. Who is its audience? What is its purpose?

Having already enjoyed Al Capp's merciless parody "Mary Worm" in Little Abner, I never much bothered with the actual strip. It's about a (Supposedly) loveable old busybody who dispenses advice to distraught younger people. I can only suppose that ther is a secret cabal of rich elderly dowagers who petition to keep this afloat.

3. I think the artwork in Blondie (& Dagwood) is fabulous! Did the drawing we see in Blondie break ground when it first came out? The motion in Blondie is so easeful and elegant.

Well the drawing you see now is somewhat different than when it first began (70-plus years allows plenty of time to get the kinks out.) and the original creator is long gone. When Blonie debuted it was actually a "Flapper" strip with a single Blondie being courted by a young (And rather shiftless) Dagwood. Artistically it was overshadowed by "Polly and Pals" which featured amazing sunday pages influenced by modern art. (For an example go to: http://cccw.adh.bton.ac.uk/schoolofdesign/MA.COURSE/LCC09.html) Still, it has always been HUGELY popular and spawned a succesful series of films as well.

4. What happened to Calvin & Hobbes? Did the creator die?
I thought C&H was amazing.

No, Bill Watterson was just too much of a committed artist to stick with the hand newspaper syndication was dealing. He was ferociously ethical as can be witnessed by his refusal to license Calvin and Hobbes merchandise (As he put it "My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships. Who would believe in the innocence of a little kid and his tiger if they cashed in on their popularity to sell overpriced knickknacks that nobody needs?") He quit out of frustration with the limits of the medium. "I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels, I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises" was how he put it. We breathlessly await some new venture.

Hope that helps.

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Replies:

Re: Comix for SM78 -- SM78, 22:13:38 04/15/01 Sun
- Can do sinful sir! (NT) -- SteveH, 17:22:38 04/16/01 Mon
Two of my favorites are... -- Jay Hovah, 14:01:24 04/16/01 Mon