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Comic and Rant for Thursday, April 4, 2002
...and Rabbits and Wolves, Too! |
As you can see, I’m continuing to experiment (including minor cosmetic changes to the logo that no one but me would nitice)! The gag is a reference to Kevin & Kell, another webcomic I read regularly. mikeegee just informed me that his webpage is back up! Ah, mikeegee, mine own little Safety Monkey (it’s a Penny Arcade reference, Mike, not an insult - really!). For those who remember the “Sunday Comics/Throwaway Panels” part of Tuesday’s rant, Hound’s Home did (IMHO) a spot-on parody of the subject (I’d have mentioned it yesterday, but couldn’t find it ...). This actually brings me to a point I never brought up yesterday - though Garfield is now a bland try-to-please-everyone shadow of its former self, Id be remiss if I didn’t point out some of Jim Davis’ (“Davis’s?”) contributions. Let’s not forget that his was the only comic strip other than Peanuts to have animated specials made on something resembling a regular basis. More importantly, he pioneered (or at least popularized) the idea of reprint books containing all the strips, in chronological order, including the Sundays, and run horizontally as opposed to the space-wasting vertical format too many books used (remember the Fawcett Crest Peanuts books?). On a more personal note, Garfield introduced me to the idea of running a particular story or theme for a week. Sure, Charlie Brown and his friends showed me that a humor strip could tell a story, but it wasn’t until Garfield that I saw, thanks to the aforementioned book format, the time frame in which those stories tended to run (plus I finally understood the mysterious hyphenated numbers!). Dilbert would later teach me that if an idea is good enough for a couple of strips but not for a whole week, it’s best (and more importantly okay) not to stretch it. The week of September 4, 2000 (page 63 of When Did Ignorance Become A Point Of View?) is a good example (maybe not the best, but the rant’s late!) - Monday through Thursday were about a new co-worker being an amoeba, then Friday and Saturday were unrelated one-off gags (I’d link to the strips but the web archive only goes back a month - grrrr!). Admittedly, I only do half as many strips (I’m not counting Sundays in the equation as they’re rarely related to continuing stories), but the principal’s still the same (plus how many DDR for GBC jokes can you make before it becomes redundant?). Getting back to Jim Davis, though, I should also point out that the entire (nearly) 25 year archive of his strip is online. Dilbert and Peanuts aren’t, nor is For Better or For Worse (speaking of which, does anyone know how to access past “Monthly Letters to You” on that site?), and don’t get me started on King Features! Thank goodness for Calvin and Hobbes and Doonesbury! At last night’s PSSFS meeting we watched some episodes of Rocky Jones: Space Ranger What I wanna know is, what’s William Hartnell doing there (look on the left in the picture)? One last thing before I leave you in peace - check this out! |
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