CSotD: Saturday Short Takes
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One of the small frustrations I face on this blog is trying to figure out when to point out a promising arc, and Piranha Club is one of a handful of strips that repeatedly triggers it by having "suck you in" pacing, such that you don't realize how good a story arc is until you're deeply involved.
That's great for regular readers, but, for me, it means that, by the time I recognize it as something to be shared, it has gone on for so long that catching people up would be pointless.
However, in the current case, the plotline is pretty obvious: Ernie is contemplating a nose job. And it only started Monday, so you can go there and quickly catch up.
By the way, here's an innovation strip cartoonists should consider: On your website, add a navigation button that would take the reader, not back to the very start of the strip, but simply to the start of the current arc.
And here's why it won't happen: A lot of syndicated cartoonists have no control over the format of their webpage. They should, but they don't.
Which doesn't mean that the Powers That Be couldn't add the device, but then someone would have to tend it, and a lot of these pages run on autopilot, simply uploading the day's strip.
(Hint: When the most recent blog entry from the cartoonist is eight months old, it's a pretty good indication that the lights are on but there's nobody home. Worse Netiquette yet, there are cartoonists who also post strips on Facebook without ever going on Facebook, using bots to avoid the kind of social interaction inherent in "social" media. A cartoonist who depends on the syndicate to maintain things is like a fisherman who cannot swim, and however seaworthy your boat, it probably wouldn't hurt to get a little audience interaction going, just in case.)
That rant aside, web cartoonists, whose success depends on interaction between artist and reader rather than between syndicate and editor, could do it, and it would be a very cool innovation.
Speaking of new technologies
I really enjoy Judge Parker — the art is good, the pacing is solid, the writing is also good — but I'm featuring today's not because you should leap into the arc, but because it struck me as an interesting riposte to a frequently made point.
Plenty of people — myself among them — have noted that old-time mysteries and thrillers often had significant plot points based on corded phones. If the person wasn't home, it was hard to warn them of impending doom, which meant plenty of stories where Our Hero or the Damsel in Distress was headed towards danger and there was no way to stop them.
With cell phones, bingo. You call and say, "Big Louie is waiting at the cabin to bump you off." And the story fizzles. Unless the cabin is in deep wilderness, but you get my point.
In this case, Rocky isn't answering his cell phone and I really like the idea of checking his Twitter account to see if he has posted recently.
Though, since he's such a big star, he's probably got some underpaid dweeb in Nashville tweeting for him (See rant, above).
Still, it's an interesting wrinkle and I expect to see it emerge as more writers become hip to how things work in the current century.
By the way, Rocky isn't dead. Yet.
The deal is that Sam Driver's semi-adopted daughter has a huge business deal being financed by superstars Rocky and Godiva, based on some financial agreements that have far less to do with her clothing design company than with their attempt to keep their marriage together.
And Rocky did not wander away alone, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
I'm glad Godiva is simply a movie star. If she were running for President, I wouldn't have been able to feature this until my Lenten political fast is over.
What? I'm talkin' 'bout Godiva.
What might have been
Sean Kleefeld has a must-read post, featuring the Man of Steel as few have ever seen him.
Siegel and Shuster first proposed Superman as a comic strip, and Kleefeld got his hands on, not the complete sample packet, but about two-thirds of it, enough to give you a delicious look at how it would have unfolded.
The variations between strip and book are interesting and I'd like to know which were editorial and which simply evolved as the creators re-cast the piece. I'm fascinated that they saw Kryptonians as possessing super powers, or, at least, the few that Kal-el arrived with in the comic book.
The later idea that his powers come from living in what is, to him, an alien atmosphere is the only thing that makes those other powers logical, though it's worth noting that, in both strip and book, he began by leaping tall buildings in a single bound, not flying over them.
Speaking of his origins, Marc Tyler Nobleman, who has written a book on Shuster and Seigel, as well as one on Batman co-creator Bill Finger, was at a conference I attended last month and, while I didn't get to his presentation, I sent one of my own Jimmy Olsons and here's what she had to say about it.
And as long as I'm on that topic, I've also got a kid assigned to cover Denver's Comic Con in June.
After some birth pains in its early years, this Con is shaping up to be pretty cool.
Scam Watch
Johanna Draper Carlson reports on a crackdown on bogus reviews over at Amazon.
Crowd-sourced commentary has always been unreliable, but Amazon has a particular problem since it undermined its own credibility before deciding to rebuild and act like a for-real grown-up business.
I'm sure this is one of those things where the goal is not to actually stop it so much as to keep a step ahead of the scam artists.
For god's sake, Vikki, cut the cord and get a life
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