CSotD: About those 120 comics …
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It says in the right rail that I read about 120 comics a day. That's pretty old information and I should probably update it. I should also update the pricing on DailyInk and GoComics subscriptions (A small rise, nothing that should discourage you from supporting the artform).
And maybe that will happen in the next two weeks, not because I am a big believer in New Year's resolutions but because, Christmas and New Year's both falling on Tuesdays, I've got two weeks off from my regular editing gig.
The only thing I have to accomplish is to write a teaching guide for the latest kids' historical novella that Christopher Baldwin and I have just finished and which will be appearing in newspapers in New York State starting in the new year.
Here's the logo Chris came up with:
The story is about a young girl in Elmira, NY, during the Civil War, whose brother is a POW at Andersonville. Those who know their Civil War history can probably anticipate some of the plot complications and crossovers: Elmira was home to a notoriously not-good POW camp of its own.
The title comes from a phrase in the brief letter he was permitted to send when he first arrived at Andersonville, a letter which has become the family's only touchstone:
We'll eventually make it available beyond its status as a newspaper serial, and at some point I'll get a few more samples up at the web site. If you're in New York, watch for it. It's sponsored by the New York News Publishers' Association as part of their educational program.
Meanwhile, as said, I'm going to check into those 120 strips. I don't know what the number is anymore, and, of course, it's only the strips I see on purpose and doesn't count the ones posted to Facebook or that I just happen to stumble across.
I feel like the "Turk," the assistant coach in the football preseason whose job it is to go to a young rookie's room and say, "Coach wants to see you. Bring your playbook."
I want them to all make it, but they're not all gonna make it. On the other hand, you hate to give up too soon, because it can take awhile.
There are some strips that start out strong but then just kind of peter out, sort of on the same principle that used to make the first Saturday Night Live of the season special: They had all summer to write that one.
More commonly, however, a strip starts out "okay" and then either stays there (see previous entry on "mediocrity") or else it begins to find its feet, which is what can take awhile.
Case in point: Hubris, by Greg Cravens.
According to his website, the strip has been around for two years, but I only came across it over the past year and I think it was new to GoComics then. Cravens also does the Buckets, which is a more established strip.
When I first saw Hubris, I liked the art and found the characters appealing but a little unfocused and not really distinguished from whatever they call "Yuppies" these days. And I don't know if he has sharpened focus and found his legs with the strip, or whether I've simply read it long enough to have gotten into the flow.
Probably all three. Whatever the reason, Hubris has made the "maybe" list for CSOTD several times in the past two months or so and deserves a spot on the roster.
But, meanwhile, I've kissed a lot of frogs every morning that are still sitting there on their lilypads staring back at me, and it's time to mix my metaphors and ask them to bring their playbooks down to Coach's office.
Not a huge slashing. I wish it were that simple.
There are a lot of comics that stay on the page because, while they aren't apt to show up at CSOTD very often, they amuse me. Not everything I do is for work.
Many others are really quite good but are in a flow that makes it hard to pick out one particular day's entry and say, "This! This is the exemplar!" I'd put "The Lost Side of Suburbia" at the very top of that list.
And some are very good, but a little esoteric.
For instance, Madam & Eve is a great strip, but it's been heavily invested in South African politics since World Cup, which was awhile ago now. And its greatness in a time of crisis is in that, while more pointed political cartooning may reach political activists, Madam & Eve has, since apartheid days, managed to walk in the front door and stick some very sharp pins places where sharp pins needed to be stuck, in front of the entire country because of its endearing, reader-friendly style.
Still, joyfully snide remarks about Julius Malema and gags based on internal government scandals are going to be largely wasted on anyone who isn't on the scene and has no idea what an ESKOM is.
Though we all know about that damned Mayan calendar:
And then there are cartoonists like Ted Rall, with whom I disagree almost every time, and not just in a casual, meh, sort of way but in a "dear lord, now what?" kind of way, but then who turns around and pops out a goodie:
Which by the way reminds me that, in all the talk about saving money by increasing the age for Medicare and/or Social Security, has anyone calculated the impact on unemployment? Because, if you make it impossible for anyone to retire …
Ha ha! Just kidding. They're not going to replace us when we retire! They'll just make the people who already work there do our jobs, too!
Anyway, the blog turns three in February and I'll probably space out the actual date and not mention it then, so consider this the annual wrap-up. Watch the rail and see if I actually follow through with any of this tidying up or just sit for two weeks streaming episodes of "Potsie Builds A Railroad."
Wait, what? That's not Potsie? Oh, Anson Mount, not Anson Williams. Never mind.
But the villain is Ralph Malph, right?
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