Comic Strip News & Reviews
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Steenz with Heart of the City spent the better part of September with the character Charlotte getting her first period and dealing with it. While it remains a controversial subject for a lot of daily newspapers GoComics reminds us that the topic was first broached 35 years earlier in Luann by Greg Evans.
Juliana Roth for the GoComics blog:
“Over decades of the series, Greg has named the menstruation plot as his favorite storyline. But his syndicate during the run did not agree. ‘They immediately said, ‘Yikes, I don’t know, Greg, what are you doing here?’ But I finally hammered out a couple of weeks where I never used the word period or menstruation,’ he says.”
Separated by decades and genders the Luann and Heart of the City cartoonists take vastly different tracks.
We mentioned this as part of a “Future Funnies” item but since the week is here we will once more report that Patrick McDonnell‘s MUTTS has been new all week. This the first all-new week since – checking my handy dandy notebook – the week of June 23-29, 2024.
Antithesis
My pick for “Comic Panel of the Week” goes to the opening panel of the Wednesday Dick Tracy strip with the star walking toward us and the trench coat flapping in the wind, though I prefer the black and white version Howie Noel gave us on his Facebook page (which we cribbed for our feature image).
That panel was followed by a Noel habit I am not a fan of.
I could handle the face blackouts in medium and long shots but the frequent use of the shadow shot in close-ups is unnerving. I understand the need to get the strip drawn quickly at a minimal wage but cut and paste some illuminated Tracy faces from previous strips as is the habit with this and other strips.
On the subject of profiles and disappointments…
Dick Tracy certainly has a higher profile with the public than Gil Thorp yet Tribune Content Agency has yet to produce a press release touting Noel as the new Dick Tracy artist as they did with Rachel Merrill two years ago.
Close runner-up for “Comic Panel of the Week” was the wonderful Day of the Dead Baldo comic.
Lalo Alcaraz continued the annual tradition of a week of “La Cucaracha’s Dia de Los Muertos.”
Though Tuesday’s strip had me thinking that it fed into the MAGA conspiracy theory of dead people voting.
Don’t Get Around Much Anymore…But If I Did
Stephen Pastis spent the week promoting the 25th anniversary of Pearls Before Swine, the Pearls Jubilee book celebrating the same, and his upcoming book tour. I certainly don’t begrudge his doing it and always enjoy his self-deprecatory strips. Also: his annotated book collections are some of my favorites.
There are two events that are in my neck(ish) of the woods – where Pastis is kicking off his tour and a National Cartoonists Society meet and greet in Santa Cruz, California tomorrow.
Hey! There’s Luann and Karen Evans again. So let’s check in with Juliana Roth at GoComics again who yesterday posted a profile of the writer of the Luann comic strip with some input from Luann creator Greg Evans.
“Karen became an official co-author of “Luann” in 2012, first teaming up with her dad on storyline generation, then evolving into full script generation. By 2014, she stopped working full-time in education to devote herself entirely to the strip.”
“[Greg and Karen] meet every few months to brainstorm big-picture ideas for the upcoming months, which Karen develops into story progressions. Each week, she sends Greg a script with a story goal that advances the larger narrative arc. Greg might return with notes or suggestions. Once they’re in alignment, he gets to work on creating the visuals.”
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