CSotD: Comics at the pace of life
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Jan Eliot's "Stone Soup" is, quietly, one of the smartest strips out there. It's not exactly based on her life, but she went through some rough spots and, as in the folk tale for which the strip is named, got by with a little of this and a little of that. Jan reports that, to this day, her art work hangs in some dental offices and auto repair shops. We should all have such swappable talents.
I've been watching the strip lately to try to find a good day to lead into it, but the pace is so lifelike that there hasn't been a moment when I could just stick it out there and expect readers to jump right in, so stand by for a little recap:
Val is a widow, which puts a very different spin on her single parenthood; sister Joan, a divorcee, lived with her and their mother for several years in the strip but then married the guy next door and has had another child, as seen here.
What you're not seeing here is that Val and Joan's mother has left to work with a charity that builds houses in Third World countries. Eliot herself went on such a trip a few years ago, then put the mother into the situation. But now the mother has decided to make it her life and is apparently not coming back. She has also fallen in love.
Now Val is running out of excuses not to make a deeper commitment to her long-time boyfriend, Phil, which is where the widowhood, intelligence and realism of this strip come in. I've dated a few widows and it has never worked out because the last guy didn't leave voluntarily. That unfinished business makes for a gap between widowhood and divorce that is more than a gap — they are two different matters entirely, and it's like dating someone from another culture.
For all that backstory, Stone Soup is a light, funny strip, not a soap opera, and Eliot is not above a little "middle-school meltdown" humor or strips in which the characters play "pass the kid with the dirty diaper." But she has also attacked some tough subjects — she went after health insurance coverage years ago, before it was on the front burner. She manages to mix real issues into what is generally a breezy strip without preaching or turning it into an Afterschool Special.
It's worth a daily visit. This strip flies well above the crowd.
NOTE: Sunday, I'll be running a 2003 interview I did with Jef Mallett about "Frazz." Speaking of intelligent cartoons.
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