Classic

As I've said before, there are several different ways to do crossovers and references to other strips. Obvious, subtle, mocking, respectful, etc. Today's Zits strip gives us a reference to a classic motif from a classic strip. It's a respectful tribute, and also so blatant and in-your-face that it outright announces that it's doing a tribute. This sort of thing wouldn't work if it was used often, but I think it works fairly well here.

squickage

Aside from a few titles known for dark humour, it's pretty rare to see a corpse in a newspaper comic strip, and I don't know if there's really any effective and appropriate way to work one in. Even Gary Larson, who (unintentionally) offended people constantly with the bizarre and sometimes dark The Far Side, stayed away from corpses (the only thing close was a very cartoonish head in a jar that showed up at show-and-tell once). So yesterday's Bromm Hilda surprised me, to say the least.


There are several problems with this.

First of all, it's not that funny. If there was a decent joke here, one might be able to overlook the incongruity of a dead body suddenly appearing in the funny pages. As it stands, it seems to be a cartoonist complaining that cartoonists have a rough life and nobody understands them. At least when Bill Watterson griped about the profession it was tasteful and reasonable. This is just "poor overworked cartoonist" whining.

Second, I don't think Broom Hilda has ever broken "the fourth wall" before. Some strips like Overboard and The Piranha Club (formerly known as Ernie) will occasionally have the cartoonist in the strip itself. When you've learned to expect it, it's an interesting device to use now and then. The world of Broom Hilda, however, is usually pretty linear. This strip is completely out of left field. This sudden decision to totally break the established rules of the title makes me wonder if Russell Myers is planning to retire soon and wants to make sure the whole world knows he's getting cranky and doesn't like doing the strip any more.

Third, whether or not Myers is commenting on how he feels about his job, doing a story line involving a dead cartoonist less than a month after the passing of Bob Thaves just seems tasteless.

Anyway, this story has continued today, and so will probably be the story all week long. Weekend at Bernies didn't need a sequel, and this story didn't need to continue. Big thumbs down all around.

buh?

So on Monday Sally Forth had a very bizarre "random" conversation. I predicted that by the next day it would by tidily explained, which would in effect ruin the wondeful randomness of it. I was wrong, sort of. It turned out to be an office politics thing, Ralph is making decisions (such as hiring that guy) without getting the proper input from Sally. But that doesn't really explain who that weird guy was, what position he was supposedly hired for, and why Frank would even hire someone like that. Although, to be honest, I'd probably hire someone like that just for fun if I ran an office.

Anyway, the whole reason for this rehash is that today's strip contains another piece of slightly random dialogue.



I'd never claim that Sally Forth contains the most brilliant and innovative writing in comic strips today, but little blips on the radar like this do make it a refreshing bit of oddness now and then.

When the well runs dry

On Monday I said that I could forgive Stephan Pastis for recycling Sunday's joke in Pearls Before Swine due to the nature of the way that some newspapers distribute their titles. Unfortunately, he recycled the same joke again Tuesday and Wednesday. I was going to leave it alone and bitch about it at the end of the week, since running a single joke with minor variations through an entire week is practically a tradition in this realm (as any long time FoxTrot fan can tell you).

So imagine my surprise when today's PBS strip continued the "comic strip characters aging" theme, but discarded the Family Circus satire in favour of a Blondie gag. If there's one thing worse than being lazy enough to stretch a one-beat gag over an entire week, it's not having the conviction to follow-through. I'll tell you this now: if tomorrow's strip goes back to riffing on Family Circus I'll be quite irked to say the least. And for the record, I don't think Blondie Bumstead would ever say "gonna".

In other news, see if you notice anything unusual about yesterday's Adam @ Home:


At first glance it appears to be a variation on the tired back-to-school "kids are so hard to shop for" gag, but anyone who's old enough to vote might notice the reversal of gender stereotypes. Usually at that age, boys are thought to be content to wear just about anything, and girls are portrayed as impossibly picky. It's not the most ground-breaking role reversal, mind you, but it's refreshing in contrast to, let's say, today's Baby Blues.

What's the difference between a duck?

Two posts in one day? Well, today's Sally Forth was just too damned random and "wtf" to escape my notice.

No doubt this will be explained tomorrow and played with for the rest of the week. In fact, I predict that learning what this is all about will greatly reduce the "wtf" impact of today, but for now, this is pretty awesome.

I don't like Mondays

Bob Thaves, creator of Frank and Ernest, passed away two weeks ago, and I just heard about it today. Frank and Ernest was never one of my favourite strips, so I won't go into a eulogy or anything, but today's Candorville is a really cool tribute.


Also, as a follow-up to yesterday's piece about Pearls Before Swine referencing Family Circus, today's strip basically recycles the same joke. It's easy to complain about comic strip artsts being lazy and redundant, but Pastis has a good excuse for this, and anyone who's read the Calvin & Hobbes 10th Anniversary book knows all about it. Some newspapers will carry certain titles only through the week but not on Sunday, and some will carry certain titles only on Sunday but not through the week. As a result, artists have to make sure that the Sunday strip can stand on its own, and that if it's incorporated into a story happening in the dailies, that it's not essential to that story. In other words, there's never a guarantee that someone reading today's PBS in the paper saw yesterday's (for example, the Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail, which started carrying PBS a few months ago, doesn't have a Sunday edition and doesn't include the Sunday strips in their weekend edition like some papers do).

So, there is a legitimate excuse, but the end result is that today's strip completely falls flat for anyone who saw yesterday's, which basically carried the entire weight of this joke. I predict/hope that reading strips online will eventually become popular enough that artists will begin to obey this Sunday-standalone rule less and less, thus preventing irritating things like this.

Nice beard.

It's been awhile since I did a post about strips referencing other titles, and today's Pearls Before Swine is the perfect opportunity.



Two things I want to comment on:

First, most of the time when a strip has a character from another title appear, it's an unexpected punchline. A large part of the reason that the humour is effective in some of these strips is that "wtf?" mild shock factor. In this strip, however, we're practically told what the punchline is going to involve from the second panel. It's still fairly effective, but almost too blatant.

Second, Family Circus seems to be a favourite "mutation" target of comic strip artists. FC is the epitome of tame, lame, clean-cut, "safe" comic strips, so artists experience an undeniable delight in perverting the ethos. It's often hard to tell if it's good-natured satire, or outright mockery. Either way, it's fun as hell.

Don't ping my cheese

I'm four days late talking about this, but it's been a weird week for me. Anyway...



So we get a bizarre story arc that ends with Liz revealing that she likes Jon, and later giving him a kiss goodnight. Then, as if it never happened, we get a week of generic strips with Jon doing something stupid around the house and Garfield reacting in his trademark almost-funny way. This had initially led me to believe that the Liz thing wasn't the start of a new paradigm, but simply an isolated night. Not so, it turns out that they're officially dating. And they're about to go on their first official date as a couple.

For starters, I'm almost tempted to be resentful that I'm actually devoting any of my brain energy to caring about what happens in this damn strip. For many years Garfield has been the poster boy of stale, mediocre, only-sometimes-funny comic strips. I'd glance at it every day, and sometimes chuckle. Now I'm giving a damn about the fate of Jon's love life. It's wrong, I tell you!

Second, now that I do give a damn, I'm really wondering how this will turn out. Is this actually the genesis of a new paradigm (in other words, will Jon and Liz be a couple from now on, perhaps getting married), or is Jon going to screw this up? Only time will tell, I suppose.

Anyway, on to other things.

Yesterday's Dilbert made me laugh way more than Dilbert usually does. Not only because Dilbert's line in the last panel is funny in itself, but because there's a certain shock value. Using the word "retarded" in nearly any context these days is extremely un-PC. I have to admire Scott Adams for taking the risk. It turns out that some newspapers edited the strip, replacing the phrase "mildly retarded" with "an idiot" in at least one case. So I wonder how they're going to edit today's installment.

Aside from the occasional addition of eyebrows to indicate anger, Dilbert is always drawn exactly the same, but somehow in that last panel I can't help but think "the look on Dilbert's face is priceless".

Anyway, I predict that "don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth" is going to be an instant internet catch phrase.

Vindication!

My prediction turned out to be correct after all! Not only did he get the wrong house, he got himself. Wait a sec... if he got home and went to bed after doing the deed, wouldn't he have noticed then? So, is this poor story writing, an example of stupidity beyond even Drabble's normal state, or a prelude to another plot twist? Maybe he didn't TP himself after all...

In other news, the world of Garfield currently seems to be mostly unaffected from last week's little "romance" story arc. This week the gags have been Jon doing something stupid off-panel, and Garfield commenting on it. I guess my hopes and expectations were premature.