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.