CSotD: Comic Strip of the Days
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Only hardcore Arlo & Janis fans will get the joke in today's headline, and I'm not trying to address them, so I'll start by decoding for everyone else: Their last-and-seldom-used name is "Day."
Decoding what else has been going on in the strip is a little more complex, but I'll give it a shot because this is the sort of development that Jimmy Johnson can pull off and very few other cartoonists can. Bear with me, because, if comic strips matter, this kind of storytelling needs to be in the toolbox of more people than Jimmy Johnson, Garry Trudeau and Lynn Johnston.
Normally, I try to catch storyline moments more or less at the beginning, and this is pretty far into this one, possibly the end of the arc. (Here's the start.) But A&J's son Gene, who has grown from a little guy to a college boy in the course of the strip, has just come home with his girlfriend, Mary Lou, and there is no doubt things are serious.
Now, there are plenty of strips where that can happen, but, while Johnson doesn't map out his strip in detail, he does draw upon Established Factors, and this arc picks up a well-established, well-considered storyline.
We first met Mary Lou several years ago, as a summer crush for a pre-adolescent Gene. Then, a few years later, he returned to the beach as a teen and discovered that she was still there, still delightful and — gasp — several months pregnant. It was a poignant and important story arc, but, again, it was a one-off that Johnson says he didn't foresee returning to.
Since then, however, we have seen Gene decide to drop out of college to work for Mary Lou's father at the motel's restaurant and, so far as we can tell, become a surrogate father to little Megan as well as a Significant Other to her mom. At this point, I think it's reasonable to suspect that Johnson is beginning to make some long-term decisions.
Arlo & Janis has always been a little more thoughtful than the average comic, but this is storytelling on a level you just don't expect in comic strips, and if A&J isn't on your daily diet, it should be. Meanwhile, if you'd like to know Mary Lou's story a little more, Johnson put it together in a series of posts on his blog two years ago, when she re-entered the strip. It's a little troublesome to string his posts together (no "next" button in the archives), but you can start here, scroll down to August 13 and then scroll back up and at that point you WILL get a "next button" to the rest of that month, though you'll have to start at the bottom of that page. Then go on to September, 2008 for the rest.
It's worth it. In fact, start at August 11, because, on that day, Jimmy Johnson posted an example of the sort of middle-aged comedy that keeps A&J fans coming back. He's not just a good storyteller, but a great, insightful writer of funny gags. That's the combination very, very few cartoonists can match.
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