CSotD: Comics without comedy
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I'm going to stop flogging the current arc in Sally Forth, because either you're into it or you're not, but today's helps set a point I want to make, particularly about syndicated comic strips.
Recently, in a posting about Puck, I noted that, while some comics in that weekly insert as well as some other magazines were thinly-if-at-all disguised advertisements, my young self was aware of it but not offended by it.
It occurs to me that comic strips themselves are a product: If you look back to the opening days of the 20th century, newspapers often had random strips more as filler than feature, and one development in the medium was setting specific strips to appear regularly in anchored spots.
It further occurs to me that, if you decide that a particular strip will be in a particular place each day, you are also deciding that the strip will be consistent in its appeal.
There are two ways of doing that: One is for the cartoonist to have a style and approach so strong that specific topics are secondary. I'm thinking, in modern terms, of artists like Wiley Miller, Dan Piraro and others. Not only is their art distinctive, but so is their general approach to things, so that, whatever the topic of the day, it's clearly their work.
Another is to set up expectations for the piece itself, which is to say, established characters and settings and gags, and the artistic trap there is that "established" very readily morphs into not just "predictable" but "cliched," so that you have certain strips that are on autopilot to an extent that, when one artist dies, you simply get someone else to pick up the pen and keep doing it.
There are a lot of strips and panels that fall in between those, but my point is that, at its worst, a comic may be no more than a comforting repetition, a product with no greater creativity than a TV commercial.
So when a strip like Sally Forth takes it upon itself to head off in a new direction, it's worth noting. Not, as I've said before, that this has to end in divorce, but the fact that it could, and the fact that a strip that once relied on cheerful marital cliches has refused to stay in its box, makes it stand out.
And it's important to note that, while the obvious retort to this, from the current workers on the legacy and zombie strips, would be that they're just following orders, writer Ces Marciuliano and artist Jim Keefe are both "hired hands" brought in to do an established strip.
Perhaps King Features is feeling the pinch and acknowledging that same-old-same-old isn't paying the rent as readily as it once did. But I'll bet they're not alone. More cartoonists should push against format and see where their strips could go.
Or they could just go back to designing candy bar wrappers. A paycheck is a paycheck, after all.
Meanwhile, Pros and Cons demonstrates that social commentary does not have to just be about sagging pants and constant checking of cell phones and (god help us) jokes about cell phones bursting into flames.
I'm kind of ashamed of myself for laughing at this one. I sat on a jury for the trial of a guy charged with assault with a deadly weapon and, after several days of listening to testimony, it took us all of 15 minutes to agree that he was defending himself.
Later, I talked to his public defender, who lamented the number of poor, badly educated defendants who are bludgeoned into copping a lesser plea by the threat of losing a trial to a greater one, and so wind up serving 10 years instead of life for something they didn't do in the first place.
So, yeah, a happy ending for the system. Sheesh.
Which leads to this New Yorker gag and ties us into current politics. We've got a lot of people at or near the top of the ladder who just don't get it, and not a few who almost militantly just don't get it, cocooning themselves in an ignorant, uncurious solitude that rivals anything in the most remote hollers.
To dismiss people as "Bubbas" and "trailer trash" is as ignorant and bigoted as — at the other end of the spectrum — tying them to Judaism or assuming they are gay or that being gay requires a certain set of attitudes and behaviors.
I grew up surrounded by blue collar people and they are not the characters seen in "Deliverance" and joyfully mocked by urban wiseguys.
It's not that there aren't some really stupid, bigoted, thoughtless morons in the group, but, then, look at the stereotypes they throw at city-dwelling liberals and tell me you can't find examples that fit.
The New Yorker humor is based on the idea that you can. And maybe the liberal response to the Blue Collar Comedy Tour would be a Woody Allen film festival.
However, it falls into that thing, like use of the N-word, where it's okay if I say it, but you'd better not.
I don't know the answer, but this David Sipress cartoon at least raises the same issue Jacob Riis raised a century ago. Some people listened then. I don't know that anybody's listening now.
Rudy Park is usually more a matter of social, than political, commentary, but the two cross often and I like today's strip, because I'm growing very weary of people who think it makes them seem discerning to be undecided, and who think it makes them intelligent or fair-minded to declare each candidate equally flawed.
Darrin Bell captures it. As with the above "Pros and Cons," the punchline is true but not particularly funny, and I'm kinda sorry I laft.
But I did.
Laughed at Frazz, too.
Laughed and then shuddered. Then laughed again.
And I want to read the essays, then store them for the future.
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