CSotD: Saturday’s Catch of the Day
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Filling in for Mike Peterson while he’s on assignment in dismal Lower Slobbovia, I’m Brian Fies.
The comics industry held its Eisner Award ceremony at the San Diego Comic-Con last night. My friends who authored the Graphic Medicine Manifesto lost, as did the luminous Carol Tyler for her excellent Soldier’s Heart. Sorry.
However, I was very happy that Craig Yoe won an Eisner for his Walt Kelly’s Fairy Tales. I haven’t actually seen the book but I love Kelly and Pogo. More important, Craig is a small publisher who selects his projects with passion and very little apparent business sense, and has done a lot to preserve and promote old comics work that would otherwise be forgotten. He deserves to be rewarded for it. Craig’s also been kind and helpful to me. In addition, I'm happy to see Derf Backderf win with Trashed for my publisher Abrams.
Mike Peterson’s motto is “Plaques are for Haques,” but having gotten a couple of plaques I’ve gotta say it can feel pretty good. I once asked someone in the publishing industry what recognition like an Eisner told her about a creator and she said, “It tells me I should pay attention.” That’s worth something.
Saturday Funnies
Saturdays are traditionally where syndicated cartoonists dump their weakest gags, or strips that don’t significantly advance a story line, because many smaller newspapers don’t publish on Saturdays. Given that, I thought these comic strips were darn good.
Hilary Price’s Rhymes with Orange is reliably smart and funny. Today’s is, as they say, funny because it’s true. Price's law also works for hot tubs. I was tickled by the circled “A” and “B,” which I don’t think were strictly necessary for the gag to work but put it over the top in a Rube Goldberg sort of way.
Rex Morgan MD has been fun lately. I can’t say it’s all due to artist Terry Beatty taking over the writing chores in May—maybe previous writer Woody Wilson had it all plotted out before he left—but everything’s kind of hitting the fan in a very entertaining way.
The Brylcreemed doc’s daughter Sarah, who until recently has been portrayed as an insufferable “indigo child” artistic prodigy, may have just been an unwitting stooge of a crooked mob widow all along. Old Dolly Pierpont turns out to be the only person buying Sarah’s paintings and her resulting bestselling coffee-table book, and today her art teacher Rene, whom we already know is a skilled forger, goes on the lam when a couple of tough guys show up.
I’m glad to see continuity strips like Rex Morgan, Dick Tracy and Prince Valiant do well with new creative teams that bring fresh vigor to them. Those types of “story strips” are a big part of comics history that deserve to survive. (Whether a comic strip should survive its creator is a debate for another day. My opinion: it depends.)
It used to be that cartoonists had to work a couple of months ahead of their publication dates to allow for editing, production, printing, etc. The digital era has shortened that time considerably, allowing the comics to be much more topical and responsive to current events. It’s a good trend that will help keep syndicated comics relevant. When Doonesbury was in daily production, Garry Trudeau notoriously pushed his deadlines to the limit to keep up with the day’s news, sometimes turning around a strip in a couple of weeks. These days, Darrin Bell seems to be able to get a Candorville from idea to newsprint in five or six days.
Today we learn that the lead time for Guy Gilchrist, who writes and draws the venerable comic strip Nancy, is 25 days. Rock and roll pioneer Scotty Moore, who played guitar for Elvis and other early artists, died on June 28 at age 84.
Guy’s been cartooning for a long time. He and his brother Brad did a Muppets strip, he’s done several of his own strips and a lot of book illustration. I visited him in his former Connecticut studio once and he couldn’t have been nicer or more generous with his time, bringing in pizzas and entertaining my wife Karen and me for a couple of hours on his day off. He also worked me into Nancy one time, which was a thrill to find.
Aunt Fritzi is reading my second book,
Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow.
Guy’s a good egg.
Back on Monday!
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