CSotD: New arcs and fresh topics
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There are a number of strips I'm going to be watching more closely for the next little while, and the easiest one to explain is the vintage Mandrake, a new adventure from 1944. There are so many, many ways a story arc called "Doctor Congo" about a witch doctor could go wrong that it's not worth beginning the adventure by being offended.
I remember at one point, in the days before this blog, making a comment on-line about Lee Falk's writing and pacing and so forth and being slammed by a horde of people who, by yomin' yiminy, most assuredly do not follow his work for its camp value but take it quite seriously. So maybe you won't have the same perspective I have, which is "Hold onto your hats, because this story arc is going to make Lothar look like Stokely Carmichael."
Speaking of which, that's got to be one damn tall taxi cab, that you don't have to take off your top hat in it. But cars were taller then, so maybe.
Anyway, I wouldn't miss a moment of what is to come. If nothing else, I want to see if Mandrake runs into the King of Bongo-Congo, who is, I am reliably told, a hero lion of iron.
People accuse our educational system of focusing too much on white, Western history, but they forget how much we were exposed as children to other lands and other cultures.
What did Bill Hinds know and when did he know it?
A more puzzling story arc is launching over at Tank McNamara, where Bill Hinds dangles the "What if?" of "What if Donald Trump ran the NFL?" which, for those of us over 45 or so raises the question, "Is this going to be a fantasy segment or a history lesson?"
That is, the prospect of pitting two of the larger egos in public life against each other promises some good laffs, but hanging over the entire venture is the fact that Trump already had the opportunity to all-but-run a professional football league and he managed to add it to the various enterprises in which he has avoided success and driven a lot of other people's careers from success to failure.
I don't see how Hinds can avoid that. It would be like having a story arc about Abraham Lincoln and his wife going to a play and then showing them coming home afterwards and talking about what a good time it was.
Or this could be a one-off and not the start of an arc at all. I've gotten my tail caught in that crack before.
Speaking of Great Expectations
I keep expecting Gary Johnson to fall away and be forgotten, and yet here he is, still among the running. Whether he is still among the viable depends on how viable you thought he was in the first place: We don't hear much anymore about Jill Stein, whose greatest achievement seems to have been establishing herself as the less credible of the two doctors in the race for the White House.
But Johnson hangs in there despite his utter lack of capacity.
Clay Jones takes a swipe at those who embrace Gary Johnson's call for legalizing marijuana without the slightest notion of what else he stands for, using that as a jumping off place for more serious criticism of editorial boards who have endorsed Johnson because they can't endorse Trump but haven't the courage to cross party lines and endorse his opponent.
He's right: It's cowardly and irresponsible. Take a stance or don't, but don't insult our intelligence.
I may have this sentence from his commentary embroidered on a pillow:
While I also support legalizing weed (and ending the war on drugs) there are more important issues to consider when voting for president, like should the candidate be in an insane asylum and kept away from sharp objects?
And then there's this
Nothing humorous in Sally Forth, as a theme that has been bubbling beneath the surface for the past few months begins to become inescapable.
The worst part – or the best, depending on how you judge such things – is that I don't think anyone in the strip is sure of what is wrong or what needs to change, making this way too realistic to be dealt with in normal comic strip fashion.
And I would note that we've seen a kind of trial balloon subplot in the character of Ralph, who went from a two-dimensional office antagonist into a more fully-realized minor cast member, then married a younger woman, had a baby and became a teacher only to find himself mired in a bog of regret and unfulfilled wishes.
Not so funny, but certainly worth reading and, if that's where Ted and Sally are headed, I'll be interested in following it.
But, boy, Ces is biting off a huge hunk of storytelling.
Elsewhere in the real world
Kal has the advantage over Ces in that his cartoons can be filled with ridiculous characters who bear no resemblence to reality.
I'm kidding: That's actually a drawback.
It has become a commonplace to talk about how Trump is such a gift to political cartoonists, but it is a challenge to make a coherent point about someone who is so over-the-top that "coherence" doesn't figure into anything he does.
Another commonplace is that truth is stranger than fiction because fiction is required to make sense, and it's probably easier these days to work in fiction or, when that fails, to simply turn truth into fiction, as Clint Eastwood has reportedly done.
Jimmy Margulies plays with the movie "Sully," comparing it to Gov. Christie's ongoing bridge scandal, and I would suggest that the fact that "Sully" appears to have a heaping helping of anti-regulator propaganda mixed in with the facts helps the filmmakers create a fictional story with a point, which isn't always the case in real life.
Governor Christie is being required to do pretty much the opposite: Create a story in which things just happen for no particular reason.
One more fascinating story arc worth following, if only for the amusement factor.
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