CSotD: Breaking the Mold(y)
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Sandra Bell Lundy breaks through the moldy Mother's Day cartoons with this Between Friends salute to non-average moms.
Obviously, it helps that she had already created a non-average parental situation which had previously addressed a real-life issue, rather than simply settling into the Mom-Dad-Bud-and-Sis pre-fab cartoon model.
My feed is full of strips that offer up gags each day, and I like them, though I don't demand LOL humor each time out. I read them for the benefit of the days they rise above the usual pie-in-the-face, as the best often do.
But I don't carry a lot of social-issue-of-the-week strips on my feed, and, with those I do, my expectations tend to be pretty low. It's like going to a church where the priest has a compelling, if not necessarily persuasive, preaching style.
The take-away being that I'd rather sit through a gag that isn't inventive than a sermon that isn't engaging.
Between Friends is one of a handful of wild cards that offer both humor and social substance, and today's is a good example of how creating actual characters — neither rote, plastic comic strip interchangeables nor equally one-dimensional social justice warriors — pays off: It gives you the depth to rise above the norm when circumstances warrant it.
I'm going to cancel a rant on the hurtfulness of things like traditional Mother's Day art projects in a classroom where some of the kids don't have traditional mothers and some have double-plus-ungood situations in that regard.
Those who don't get it will never get it, those who do get it already get it.
And there is a cartooning matter here that, since this is a cartooning blog, is more relevant.
I went down to the Center for Cartoon Studies for their 10th Anniversary block party celebration yesterday and had a chance to talk to Hilary Price, who had come up from Massachusetts to be part of the artistic entertainment.
While all was fun and frivolity in the street — and I truly regret being seconds too late to get a shot of her on her hands and knees with a small child standing on her back so he could reach one of the easels — the Center itself had a display of the current crop of master's thesis comic books, with a piece of the original art on the wall and, in most cases, the finished book on a chain for people to leaf through.
I commented to Hilary that, while the draftsmanship itself varied, as you would expect, and while, as in any artistic graduate program, not every student was clearly slated for future greatness, what struck me was that there wasn't much in the way of individual styles.
Not that you looked at each one and said, "Oh, that mimics so-and-so."
It wasn't as simple as conscious mimickry, though, in several cases you could pin-point the stylistic influence, either to a particular artist or a group of similar cartoonists.
But only one or two lept out as creatively unique.
Which she shrugged off, saying, "Well, sure, but that takes time."
As I rolled that instantaneously-obvious response around in my head later, I thought about how, even among established artists with syndicated strips, you see stylistic growth from the first strips to the current day.
It's not just that they get better at re-creating the same characters and settings, but that they become more familiar with them in an organic sense, more comfortable with how they move, how they express various emotions, how they stand in relation to each other, and can sketch them without having to consciously plan those things.
I've heard graphic novelists (for instance) say that, by the time they finish a piece, they have to go back and redraw the earlier pages, not simply because a nose looks different but because everything about the characters has evolved and changed.
Imagine that over a number of years, rather than months.
The best strips have an ongoing evolution, not just of art, but of conceptual style, of meaningful backstories that not only impact how characters look and move and react, but influence the internal logic of plotting and the emotional ways in which they exist.
Realistic growth and response is hardly a requirement. We accept that Wiley Coyote and Sylvester the Cat can be blown up by dynamite, flattened by a truck or crushed by a boulder at one moment, and be back in full health and original condition the next.
We also accept that the majority of cartoon characters will never learn from their experiences.
For that matter, neither did the vain, foolish Sir Kay in the Arthurian legends, nor the clever Jack of the Cornish folk tales, and, while he often refers back to his previous misadventures, Don Quixote still blundered into new ones afresh, and was able to re-grow broken-out teeth as readily as any cartoon character.
Still, it's a lovely thing to have a few strips in your feed that go beyond that.
Especially at moments like this, when breaking free of the same-old same-old is so refreshing.
And speaking of unrealistic recoveries
The Republican establishment isn't the only ones who are rethinking their opinions of Trump, now that the joke is no longer funny. Antonio Rodriguez Garcia comments on Mexican President Vicente Fox's apology for his earlier response to the idea of a border wall. And to a buffoon's proposal that he pay for it.
This unbelievable recovery being less a matter of re-growing your teeth than of losing them completely, along with your spine.
At least El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha had madness as an excuse for his absurdities.
Juxtaposition of the Oh-To-Hell-With-It
Ah, well, never mind: I'm heading out to the beach with the son, if not, perhaps, the sun.
Machs nix: Neither the ocean nor its denizens mind a little rain, and gorgeous days are not always judged merely by the weather.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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