This blog is generally chicken one day and feathers the next. This was definitely a day of chickens, with such a banquet of good stuff that I had to eliminate some that would have been the only focus on another day.Let’s start with some interesting beginnings: “Mark Trail” is not generally known for incisive storytelling […]
About five years ago, I was editing a twice-weekly newspaper in Farmington, Maine, and the publisher left, which meant I now was also editing a biweekly (other kind of biweekly) newspaper in Rangeley, which meant I was also writing three or four articles for each issue. There was a marina-and-boat-shop-and-snowmobile-and-ATV-shop expanding, and I needed to go […]
I’ve spoken before of how much I loved the Sunday Mark Trail strip as a kid, and how much I wish more papers would carry it now, if only to keep kids somewhat rooted in the world outside.That rant is worth going back to, but today’s strip is a good example of (A) lore, (B) […]
When cartoonists and cartoon fans talk about their early influences or the ones that really got them interested in comics as a medium, the strips you hear about tend to be the groundbreakers, like Barnaby, Pogo, and Peanuts. I liked those strips, though I only saw Barnaby in a collection my parents had and Walt Kelly’s […]
Today’s Stone Soup stands up well enough on its own, but to absorb the full effect of the bathos, you have to have been following the saga of “Holly’s boyfriend” since it began nearly a full month ago. We’ve not only gone through the sturm und drang alluded to here of Holly’s mom insisting on […]