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Comic and Rant for Tuesday, April 23, 2002
If you can read this you don’t need glasses |
Well, I’m back after my week’s rest! Actually, it was a week spent trying to get ahead, thus avoiding any more late strips and rants. As I’m writing most of this on Tuesday, April 16th I wonder if I’ll be right or not by the time this updates. About today’s strip: It’s largely inspired by real-life events (and some speculation), but I just wanted to let you know that, so far at least, Jeff has been spared the indignity of working as a telemarketer. BTW, I considered changing the names of the cities (towns, really) to either fictitious or better known ones, but decided to keep the real names. Any continuity nit-pickers should note that so far I haven’t decided exactly where the Fanboys live (and may never do so), so they don’t necessarily live in State College, PA, they’ve merely worked there. They might actually live thousands of miles away. After all, the situation is funny enough to use the matter transmitter. I also need to point out the silhouetted cameos. Read Mega Tokyo, Little Gamers, Dex Lives and, once again, M.O.R.O.N.S. so I won’t get sued. At any rate, remember the rant I did about Sunday comics and “throwaway” panels? I knew I had a book somewhere with diagrams detailing the requirements, and that it was probably either Garfield’s Twentieth Anniversary Collection or The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book. It turned out to be the latter, and here’s the diagram:  Check out most Sunday comics, and you’ll see they fit into this format. Not all do, however. Garfield (as it is now) and some others use the following format:  I’m not 100% sure why Watterson didn’t mention this. One possibility is that his syndicate, Universal Press, didn’t offer it. More likely, Watterson just wasn’t interested in an even more limiting format, so why mention it? Anyway, to the best of my knowledge (and despite several attempts) this does not break down into 1/4 page format, but it does do something even better, at least in the eyes of newspaper editors who like to cram as much as they can on a page:  Running the strip vertically not only conserves space, but also allows one to shrink other strips, thus fitting more on a page. Of course shrinking reduces legibility and a vertical format forces the artist to only use six evenly sized panels (plus throwaways), but I’m guessing Jim Davis feels it’s worth the sacrifice to have your comic appear in more newspapers than any other. On a related subject, I found it fascinating to read the very different philosophies of these two people who are both successful in the same field. I don’t fully agree with either of them - I disagree with Watterson’s 100% anti-merchandise (books excepted) stance, and wondering how he justifies this - but I definitely lean more towards BW than JD (and not just cuz of his cool initials!). I think a comic strip can be a medium through which one can express personal opinions (as long as they’re in character and funny), and that quality is more important than marketability. In contrast, Davis, by his own admission, comes no closer to social commentary that this, and nearly didn’t use this one for fear that foreign readers wouldn’t get it. I also think that it’s a bit iffy to have cat food endorsed by a cat who doesn’t really like cat food (at least he hasn’t endorsed raisins yet!), and that while most of the specials were good, the Saturday Morning series, though initially good, got real old real quick. Of course people are shaped by their backgrounds, and I don’t think it’s insignificant to note that Watterson was (and maybe still is) a political cartoonist - used to stating opinion and provoking controversy - whereas Davis’ background is in advertising - used to appealing to the widest possible audience and (aha!) selling things - plus he worked as an assistant (on Tumbleweeds) which may explain why he has no qualms about his own stable of assistants. Bernadette Yarnot of Dex Lives made a good point when she said that Garfield went from character-driven to charicature-driven, but I think the different directions in which the two strips have gone can best be summed up by the following sentences: Davis: “Originally Jon was a cartoonist, but eventually I dropped that from the strip.”I just wonder what Watterson would make of my use of machine fonts...?
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