CSotD: Hale and Farewell

Comments ⁵

1. Rick Stromoski

   I think there are better ways to honor the ending of a great comic strip than by denigrating the work of your colleagues.

2. Mike Peterson

   Well, it’s hard to make progress if you keep the wagons circled, y’know?
   I won’t speak for Mark, but, of the strips he chose to represent, only one — Beetle Bailey — is still in the hands of a living creator, and Mort Walker has quite openly handed over much of the work to his sons, as Bil Keane did with Family Circus before his death. Andy Capp and Fred Bassett are true zombie strips, having been given to new artists.
   The issue of strips-not-done-by-their-creators is certainly worth discussing, particularly when something very innovative has passed from the scene because the creator did not want to put it in other hands.
   I have mixed feelings. I’ve seen some strips re-invigorated by new talent, with wide-ranging examples from “Rip Kirby” to “Elderberries.”
   But I’ve seen far more that are simple same-old-same-old, and they might as well be Borden’s Elsie-the-Cow ads as comic strips. (Disclaimer: As a kid, I liked Elsie. But, even then, I knew she was an ad for Borden’s and that Ted Key’s Hazel panel on the next page was a “real” cartoon.)
   If comic strips are a commercial product, then there’s no reason why a popular strip shouldn’t just go on forever, under whatever hired hand wants to turn it out.
   If they are a serious art form, then they need to be the work of a specific creator.
   And that’s a discussion worth having. After all, if you look at prime time TV, there’s a lot of profitable stuff on there that doesn’t qualify as artful, and ditto with movies.
   As an investor in movies, I’d rather see my money in the next remake of Batman than hand it over to Francois Truffault or Erich Rohmer. As a viewer of movies, however, I certainly wouldn’t trade “Afternoons with Chloe” or “Jules and Jim” for “Rocky XIII” or “Adam Sandler’s Greatest Farts.”
   I don’t have an answer, but it’s a discussion worth having. Yes, even if it hurts somebody’s feelings.
   (But the very idea that anyone should have feelings to be hurt suggests that it is individual art to be kept in its original hands, not a commercial product to be re-assigned. Does anyone really have a reason to feel wounded if I suggest that Geico needs to reconsider its Caveman commercials with Brian Orakpo?)

3. Mike Peterson

   PS — I didn’t mention Hagar, also in the array. It falls into the realm of strips passed on to a son, though Chris Browne was involved with the strip pretty much from the start.
   Also worth observing that there are a number of strips still signed by their original creators but which are the product of gag writers and hired artists. But that’s an argument for another day.

4. Rick Stromoski

   Choosing to honor a colleague on the the ending of one of the freshest strips in the past decade or so is a nice thing to do. Doing it by putting down the work of other colleagues dilutes that tribute and adds an element of nastiness to it. The effect of patting someone on the back and then slapping others in the face in the same motion.
   The viability of Beetle, Hagar, and Family Circus (features still going strong in around 1,000 markets) is a separate discussion.

5. Mike Peterson

   Obviously, we disagree on that — As I said in my response, I think the question of whether comic strips are purely commercial enterprises or works of art is very much at the center of this. As I said, I don’t have a firm answer.
   We also disagree on whether such things are fit subjects for public discussion.
   *shrug*