CSotD: Choices, freely made or externally imposed
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If Terri Libenson hadn't just won a Reuben for best newspaper strip, today's Pajama Diaries would have been a great argument in favor of it.
As it is, it certainly confirms the votes of her peers, because Pajama Diaries is a top contender in a niche I wish were less of a niche and more of a genre, but that doesn't quite have a name yet.
It's "observational humor," yes, but that's such a fuzzy concept as to be nearly meaningless.
All humor should be observational, though, granted, some humorists observe only that people will laugh about things they have been programmed to know they ought to laugh about, hence cartoons in which women can't drive, golfers throw their clubs in the water hazard and teenagers walk around obsessively staring at their smartphones.
There's a deeper level of observation, however, which can certainly touch on some established topics, including things like getting kids to do chores or that women care more than men about looking good, without wallowing in those commonplace gags, but, rather, using them as springboards.
Best example: The way Jan Eliot plays off Holly, the "typical" middleschool girly-girl against little sister Alex, who is curious and daring and, much as I hate to use the term, tomboyish. There are a lot of little girls like Holly, but they're only funny when contrasted against the Alexes, who also exist in substantial numbers. (How substantial? This substantial.)
Most of these strips seem to be done by women: "Stone Soup," "Between Friends" and "Pajama Diaries" being the three that come to mind quickest, though I greatly miss "Edge City," which was headed by Terry Laban, though his wife, Patty, was also credited, (and it's now in reruns at GoComics).
This is observational humor based not on Dagwood and Blondie but on Carol Gilligan and Deborah Tannen, and, while it is often self-deprecating, the humility is shared within the community, not as an apology to the world at large but as a sly elbow to a pal.
It is trying on a bathing suit with a resigned sigh, rather than with an obsessive, plewd-strewn, ACKing panic attack.
And it means that sometimes you don't need a gag at all, as today, when the observation is a counterpoint, a reminder that we all make choices and that you don't have to accept mine, nor should you assume that I regret it just because it differs from yours.
Delivered gently, firmly, but not in a triumphalist tone.
It's not that my definition of freedom is better than yours, simply that it's better for me, and that it works, and that it's valid.
As we said before Terri Libenson was even born, "There are no levels, there are only places."
She's found hers.
Another sort of observation
Here's a Kickstarter you may want to get in on, if you have an interest in Attention Deficit Disorder and a taste for what I refer to as "graphic lectures."
That term suggests my own dislike of the format, but it's popular and, like most approaches to storytelling, can be done well or done poorly: In this case, he's got plenty of material on-line and you can see how you feel about it.
And, though a bit didactic in places, it really is a memoir of his own experience, which takes the edge off that element.
As he says in the video, cartoonist Tyler Page was diagnosed with ADHD and put on Ritalin or its variants early on, and his story, "Raised on Ritalin: A Personal Story of ADHD, Medication, and Modern Psychiatry," is his reflections both on the experience and on his research into the topic.
A hat tip to Johanna Draper Carlson, who not only features this over at Comics Worth Reading but notes that, since the project has already hit its funding goal, at this stage you're simply buying a copy.
And given that he only wants ten bucks for the pdf, and will give you that plus the printed version for twenty, it seems like a pretty risk-free proposition.
Pop him fifty bucks and you can have five print copies to hand out as presents (shipment scheduled for September; even late, it will work for holiday gifting).
In his place, I'd take all but a sample chapter or two down from the web, but, then, I'd also have raised the levels at which you get stuff. This is obviously a work of passion and not of capitalist ambition, but, in any case, it fits in with yesterday's topic of giving artists some honest support for what they give you.
As for the overall topic, I'm more than a bit curious, because this is very much a generational thing: They didn't have ADHD when I was a kid, so I was simply spoiled or lazy or disruptive in class and a weirdo on the playground.
Ditto with the son to whom I guess I passed it on, which was good for my folks because it meant I got my turn to sit through all the "great potential" lectures they had been forced to endure on Parents' Night at school.
I'm going to jump in on this Kickstarter, because I often wonder how my life might have been different, had someone stepped in when I was eight years old and said, "You're okay. You just have this thing, and we think we can fix it."
Part of me wonders if I'd have had half as interesting a life, had I not been put through all that lecturing and punishment and attendant misery.
The other part suspects that, while it's all well and good to be proud of triumphing over adversity, that doesn't make adversity a good thing.
Pierre Bezhukov not withstanding.
Now here's your moment of zen:
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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