Around the Comic Strip Scene
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With Cathy by Cathy Guisewite; a Dick Tracy Halloween and cosplay; the quasquicentennial anniversary of The Weatherbird; a peek at the future of funnies and coming cartoonists; Dean Haspiel’s Comix Block comic strip section; and a brand new Gary Larson The Far Side paying tribute to Jane Goodall!
“It was born out of that confusion”
Timed with the release of the Cathy 50th Anniversary Collection Vogue magazine talks to Cathy Guisewite, the cartoonist who created the comic strip in 1976. From Emma Spector’s feature article:
For Guisewite, Cathy posed a means to parse a complicated sociopolitical moment. “Women of my era lived through such change, and the expectations for women were so different and challenging and new that when I started this strip, it was born out of that confusion and feeling like I had a foot in the old, traditional world and a foot in the new world,” she tells me. “Of course, as I started hearing from women about Cathy, I realized that I was not the only one; a lot of us felt that way, whether it was out loud or secretly.”
… it’s worth noting that she didn’t stay single forever; Cathy and Irving finally married in 2005, and in 2010, Guisewite’s final Cathy comic revealed that Cathy was pregnant with a girl.
Does Guisewite, now 75, ever think about bringing Cathy back as a mother, or even a grandmother? “I don’t think I can take a daily deadline anymore,” she says, laughing. She does think she’ll eventually write something about this current stage of her life—“but it probably won’t be a regular comic strip.”
A Dick Tracy Halloween (Future Funnies)
Daryll Robson at Monkeys Fighting Robots reviews the soon-to-be-released Dick Tracy Halloween Special:
Opening on the docks at night, the story starts with the violence that has become synonymous with Dick Tracy: the Kid is getting slapped around by Steve the Tramp over the younger one’s inability to con money from their chosen marks. The fight escalates but is soon joined by a third person: the titular detective. Or is it?
From this point onwards, the Halloween Special becomes another chapter in the excellent Mad Cave Studios continuity of Dick Tracy. By this point, nearly two years into the run, the writers have a sturdy grip on the main characters and their personalities.
Mad Cave has become the comic book publishing house for comic strips with Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, and The Phantom among their titles. Even Mandrake the Magician and Luthor get involved.
But the comic strip itself is getting into the Halloween spirit as this coming Sunday kicks off a two week “Minit Mysteries” story by Eric Costello and Dave Beaty that has Dick Tracy cosplaying a Scotland Yard inspector.
Related: A rumor that The Phantom is being developed as a live-action series. From Joey Paur at Geek Tyrant:
It looks like The Phantom might finally be getting another shot at live-action glory. A new rumor is spreading online claiming that Netflix is developing a series based on the classic comic strip hero.
St. Louis Weatherbird get into the pages of The New York Times (not page one)
Months from the quasquicentennial anniversary of its February 11, 1901 debut The St. Louis Post Dispatch Weatherbird gets an exhibit at a St Louis museum and a write-up by Valerie Schremp Hahn in The New York Times (or here).
The Weatherbird, who has appeared on the front page of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch every day for nearly 125 years, is a bit of an equalizer, even in divisive times.
“You know, people will always disagree with an editorial,” said Dan Martin, who has been drawing the Weatherbird for 39 years. “People will say a news story is slanted, or the photograph should have been of something else.”
But the Weatherbird?
“People have been complaining about newspapers for 250 years,” said Martin, a soft-spoken man with the same occasionally cheeky humor as the bird. “And this is the one thing they generally don’t complain about.”
The Weatherbird, considered the oldest, continuously running daily cartoon [emphasis added] in American journalism, is the subject of an exhibit, “Behind the Feathers: A Century of Weatherbird History,” which opened in June and runs through Feb. 15 at the Field House Museum in downtown St. Louis.
The exhibition includes drawings of the Weatherbird over the decades, profiles of the artists who have drawn him, Weatherbird collectibles, fan art and instructions on how to draw the Weatherbird on your own.
Cartoonist in Our Future
The (Liberty, Ohio) Journal-News has revealed the winners of their “Just Humor Us” comic strip contest.
The Lane Libraries and Journal-News invited cartoonists from 7-years-old to adults to submit original comic strips for the Just Humor Us contest … The winners in each category are: Adults: Stormy Bailey, for Library Checkout; Teens (12-17): Trevor Banks, for The Hot Dog Vendor; and Kids (7-11): Alivia Zheng, for Chair Tales.
Dean Haspiel’s Comix Block
The Red Hook (and Village) Star Revue has a regular comic strip section – and it is available online.
This is part of our new center section featuring comics pages curated by Dean Haspiel from the neighborhood, Marc Jackson from England, and the rest of them, including two greats – Stan Mack and Michael Arthur. This is the first of an ongoing committment to the comic arts by the Red Hook and the Village Star-Revue.
“‘The Far Side’ is not funny”
Keegan Kelly at Cracked reports on a statement that is receiving feedback.
Fans of The Far Side aren’t about to let some uncultured critic get away with slandering their sacred cow.
When one Far Side detractor went semi-viral on Twitter late last week, the entire Far Side fandom jumped into action to prove that Larson’s iconic, surrealist comic series is just as funny as the fans are ruthless…
Gary Larson Pays Tribute to Jane Goodall
After nearly two years of no “New Stuff” from Gary Larson the cartoonist posted a new panel at his The Far Side site in memory of Jane Goodall.
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