CSotD: Holiday Shopping Tips #1
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While I'm off playing the wistful wallflower at a vendor's table, here are some comic collections you may want to put on your list. Any list you like.
I'll even suggest who might like it:
For your older and still obnoxious sibling:
Rick Stromoski's Soup to Nutz is not the only syndicated strip that serves up nostalgia for the joys of childhood. But, while Brian Bassett's "Red and Rover" is set in an indefinite somewhat early 60s past of playing in the park and letting your best friend be a space traveler and not just a dog, "Soup to Nutz" is more imbedded in the world of wedgies, noogies and rude jokes.
I guess if you find Jean Shepherd's saga of b-b guns and tongues stuck to flagpoles too edgy, you pick up "Red and Rover." If you scoff and say, "I only wish my childhood had been that idylllic, reach for "Soup to Nutz."
There are strips in this second collect, appropriately called "A Second Helping," that made me laugh and there are some others that made me say, "Okay, I shouldn't be laughing."
The takeaway with this one is that it's kind of like "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in that, if you assume that any story with kids as the characters was written for kids, you will very likely find a lot of inappropriate material here.
Then again, as I've noted before, by that logic, "Black Beauty" was written to be read by horses.
For that aunt who has to be home in time for her "stories"
A college friend landed a job on a network soap opera a few years after we graduated, so I began watching, and somehow I got hooked on it. The stories were glacial and the dialog was repetitive in order to keep people up-to-date in case they had missed the previous day, but it was addictive.
Yes, I scheduled errands with the knowledge that I had to be home at 11 a.m.
Until she got a role in a Broadway play and they hired a new actress and I watched for about another week and said, "Why am I watching this?"
I say this because, for all that Mary Worth is mocked by the wiseasses of the Internet, it's basically a soap opera and not a bad example. It doesn't have the suspense and drama of Judge Parker, but then again it isn't trying to be a mystery show. It's a soap.
One thing I did notice in reading "Love and Other Stories of Mary Worth" is that the squeezing of comic strips has impact on a strip which, like its broadcast counterparts, is mostly based on people standing around talking. To get the dialog in a legible format, it's only two panels a day.
This, obviously, doesn't increase the pace. But they at least have the courage to take advantage of those two panels by not doing a lot of recap, which happens on Sundays. By comparison, the Phantom has three panels: the first is a recap, the second is today's action, the third sets up tomorrow. So Mary Worth moves at twice the speed of the Phantom. (Old Jungle saying)
The connection with my friend is this: There was a particular storyline that got a lot of attention because it was so campy that even the Mary Worth-haters were reading it, if only to roll on the floor and compare notes, particularly since the sinister character, an alcoholic stalker who may have killed his first wife, bore a striking resemblence to Captain Kangaroo.
And after that story arc ended, I read for about another week.
Well, bless their hearts, they've included that story in this slim collection. Here's a sample, just to get you hooked:
So get it for your aunt, but then read the "Aldo Kelrast" story for yourself. Win-win.
And for your cousin who keeps saying "Git-R-Done!"
I hadn't read "Snuffy Smith" in forever, so maybe I was just misremembering it or maybe it has a different feel when you have the book and are reading them one after another instead of just one strip a day. But this old zombie strip, now collected in "The Bodacious Best of Snuffy Smith," is a lot more, well, sweet and funny than I remember.
It could be because Snuffy, like Andy Capp, has quit smoking and beating his wife. And, since that was only one part of the strip, it's pushed up the other facets, so that Snuffy Smith is now kind of what Larry the Cable Guy would be like if Larry the Cable Guy never worked blue.
Whatever the case, John Rose has got a strip going that is full of the sort of affectionate Hee-Haw level country humor and philosophy that ends up on refrigerators and taped near cash registers, and I don't remember it being like that.
Here's a couple of examples:
And, yes, Barney Google puts in an appearance.
Finally, for that middle-school kid who already has every videogame:
Zits Chillax is part of a new style of book for young but not tiny readers, in which text and illustration blend.
Rather than tell you what some old guy thought of it, here is an excerpt from the review I ran in my day job, from an 11-year-old who normally reviews fantasy novels:
I really love this book and would rate it 5 stars. I love it because it
explains the other corners of Jeremy’s life, like that his mom is
writing a book about taking care of teenagers and their antics, and that
once, Tim’s car blew up and he put a video of it on YouTube. I also
like this book because the illustrations run with the text, not him
telling everything in words and having pictures help it out. This is the
authors’ first book, and it comes out on June 13. I would recommend
this book from 10 and up, because of some spotty language and disturbing
scenes. I would still recommend this to people who have not read the
comic, because it gives you all you need to know about the characters.
What I love is that he subsequently went to a book signing and got to talk to Scott and Borgman and show them his published review. Better grab some ice before you click here, 'cause, if you long for the days a kid could be starstruck by a couple of cartoonists, this is gonna warm the cockles of your heart.
And, as Tripp said, while it is a text novel, the illustrations are actually comics that advance the plot, and the easiest way to explain what I mean is to show two adjoining pages, thusly:
Tune in tomorrow for a look at some Fantagraphics reprints. Different day, very different category.
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