CSotD: Pairings rather than juxtapositions
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The pairing here is an artistic juxtaposition, "artistic" in the broad sense, not just of the graphics but of the total piece.
With Mr. Boffo, the gag works because we see the scene and anticipate a logical conversation before we read the absolutely ridiculous dialogue, which then touches off a response to all the times the same equally foolish remark is made in earnest. I almost fell off my chair.
Adam@Home is just the opposite, though it got the same response from me: The graphic setup is simply Adam talking to a nice little old lady, so we bring no expectations to the moment and have to read through several lines of dialogue before she springs the trap and reveals that she's actually pretty hip and that it's her cat who has no critical taste.
I'll bet ol' Gerty loved the one where he ran around with a dead bird on his head.
In this pairing, I'm interested solely in the graphics. Stan Drake does something in that last panel that I don't think I've ever seen before and I wish he were still around to talk about it. Are we going to see this again a few times in the coming months, or was it a one-and-done experiment?
It's hard to offer a lot of perspectives in a three-panel strip and this is an interesting approach that I'm not sure works, or would work very often, but I like it here for the adventurousness it suggests.
I'd also point out that, back in 1959, there was no Ctrl-Z, much less any Alt-Ctrl-Z and, had Drake inked in those foreground figures and decided it didn't work, he'd have had to redraw the strip.
Granted, he may have been working from a sketch and a lightbox, so that he'd only have half as much work this time around. But the fact remains that experimentation had a steeper price in those days.
By contrast, and nearly half a century later, Sandra Bell Lundy has been using these fuzzy, frosty snowflakes throughout this story arc, and I really like them.
I also suspect I know how she's doing it, and it's very, very simple in Photoshop, but so what? There's nothing wrong with a simple effect that works so well.
I even know the particular type of large, multi-flake snowflake those big fuzzier ones represent and how they feel coming down, which is a big deal.
People don't spend a lot of time on a single strip each morning. When you can get them to stop and say "Wow!" or even "Huh!" you've accomplished something.
In both cases, the artist is still working at the craft and not just cranking out the next day's strip in a drab game of "Time to make the donuts."
This is the closest to a juxtaposition rather than a simple pairing today, as two cartoonists create collages of the year past.
What interests me — aside from the cartoons themselves, which I like — is that Gargalo, who is from Portugal, takes a much broader view of the news than the American, Horsey.
You could take that as an example of American parochialism, and it's true that Horsey generally comments more on domestic issues, or on foreign issues as they are impacted by Americans.
But his head is not in the sand: He generally addresses national topics because that is an appropriate focus for the LA Times, which wants to be a national paper.
By contrast, for instance, Jack Ohman, cartooning at the Sacramento Bee, comments far more often on California issues, because he's at a major regional paper with modest national goals. Again, an observation rather than a criticism: You have to know your audience.
Now, while Gargalo's cartoons at Cartoon Movement are international in scope, he may do a lot of "What's up in Lisbon" cartoons as well.
But the intermediate step for him would be to comment on European, rather than Pacific Rim, issues, because Portugal isn't large enough to firmly distinguish between "local" and "national" audiences.
Europe is the next step up from "local" for cartoonists there.
Horsey also could have expanded the national viewpoint and tossed in David Bowie and the floods and so forth, but I think focusing on the elections was a logical decision, given not only the percentage of oxygen they sucked out of the room but given the on-going impact they'll have in coming months and years.
Discuss amongst yourselves. As said, I really like both approaches.
That Was the Year That Wasn't
And, finally, Kevin Kallaugher pairs with himself, this being the first half of a look back at what might have happened but didn't, with the other half of the conversation here.
If we really are living the post-truth era, I prefer his non-truth to the stuff that appeared to have actually happened.
Now here's your moment of International NSFW zen:
(No, it's not funny. Or maybe it's hilarious. Your response may well
indicate how well you're gonna handle 2017, because, let's face it, it
sure seems like Mississippi has found itself a country to be part of.)
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