Sci-Fi and Fantasy Funnies
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Notes on Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Shrimp & Grits, Flash Gordon, Crabgrass, Macanudo, Andy Capp, The Saga of Brann Bjornson, Home Free, Heaven Help Us, Crankshaft, Phoebe and Her Unicorn, The Far Side, Thimble Theater Starring Popeye, Wallace the Brave, and including a Ziggy Stardust cameo.
With Ripley’s Believe It or Not characterization in mind let me talk about some recent newspaper comics.
Sunday’s Shrimp & Grits brings a worry to mind – I have run out of my supply of The Giving Tree stamps and am running very low on my Peanuts stamp stash. I may have to dip into my special occasion stamps (Celebrate) before those Chris Ware stamps are available.
“Hazy Cosmic Jive”
Isn’t there some kind of science fiction law about the same person from two different time periods appearing at the same point in time as is currently going on in Flash Gordon?
At least Crabgrass has the two Kevins coming from different universes. The multiverse story started way back in early February! I have been enjoying the adventure so much I hadn’t realized this gag-a-day strip has had this epic tale going on longer than most continuity strips run their episodes.
Future Funnies
Today’s excellent Macanudo comic strip displays a maneuver that would be hard to do in any other medium.
As for the proverb … If you read Andy Capp via The Daily Mail you will see the future drawn as GoComics runs the strip on a couple weeks delay from when it appears in Great Britain. (No, I don’t know why. Contract?)
While in The Saga of Brann Bjornson it is The End of the World As We Know It as Ragnarok begins.
And there is an ending for Tom Toro’s Home Free. After nearly three years New Yorker cartoonist and book author Tom Toro has ended his web exclusive comic strip.
A Worrisome Void
We here at The Daily Cartoonist are concerned about one of our favorite comic strips Heaven Help Us not being updated for a month now. Efforts to contact cartoonist Man Martin have failed. We hope all is all right.
Back Where We Started, Here We Go ‘Round Again
This week saw Tom Batiuk bring back his comic strip simulacrum in Crankshaft to tell the (mostly?) true story of how he began his comics career. Tom did, in fact, meet and strike up a friendship with cartoonist Roger Bollen.
I kept the [Phoebe and Her Unicorn] Sundays because I don’t … I’m not quite ready to stop being a syndicated cartoonist yet.
Dana Simpson spent the better part of an hour discussing her career, past and future, with Duy Tano.
I became adroit at replying to a litany of protests about the cartoon: how it was pro-torture, pro-Satan, and pro-violence against animals. None of this was true, of course, as I tried over and over to explain. I came to understand that what bothered people most about The Far Side was that they couldn’t predict where Gary would find his humor, and that can be disturbing.
With the help of Gary Larson’s The Far Side editor Jake Morrissey‘s introduction in The Complete Far Side Ambrose Tardive explores why some found the popular cartoon panel disturbing.
Going back even further we bring TDC readers the missing Vintage Thimble Theater.
Biggest Laugh of the Day
Likening Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan to Abraham Lincoln is a joke worthy of the funny pages. Alan Herrera for Comic Sands brings news of a new portrait now hanging in the White House’s West Wing.
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
He’s told us not to blow it
‘Cause he knows it’s all worthwhile
He told me:
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie
– – – David Bowie
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