I have, in the past, mouthed off about the state of comic strips. An art form near and dear to me. Well, as near and dear as any art that seems in its death-throws. There is one new strip I have been surprised by. It’s called Cul De Sac. It’s probably the best thing I have seen in a newspaper since the buy-one-get-one-free portable hard drive ad from Frys. OK. That’s not true. It’s the best thing I have read on a comics page in a very long time. Check it out. Look for it. Write your papers.
It’s wonderfully drawn. Drawings that are funny to look at. Drawings with character. And it’s cleaver and takes a unique perspective on the traditional ‘kids world’ POV.
Richard Thompson is the cartoonist, and I have seen his work from time to time in the New Yorker and other magazines, but not all that often. He does Poor Richards Almanac as well. I’m glad to see the strip out there. Now if only newspapers would stop running 100 year old strips, when the comic strip SHOULD BE capturing the changing world, and moment by moment reactions to popular culture. It is sad that basically the comics page is becoming completely irrelevant to the world. How can any art form stay vital when in order for a new artist to get an opportunity you’d have to lay off 27 people in the Garfield Production Offices? (Hello. You’ve reached Garfield International. Please enter the extension of the marketing person who can best fill your need for bland, unimaginative pillow-fill comic merchandise…)
Newspapers are paying a high price for becoming irrelevant, as in going out of business. And that is sad, as we do need their reporting and their ability to draw readers and thus advertisers, is what supports their news departments. Let’s hope more great new strips start showing up. The single page of a newspaper that could have the most appeal to young readers, the one page that uses visuals to tell their stories (and this is the age of visuals)…and they run Beetle Bailey and Garfield and Blondie (created in 1930 BTW).
Here is a much better posting, containing lots of facts and such about the strip from ComicsDC, a great site for comic strip info.
-M
Thanks for the kind words, Mark! Though that buy-one-get-one-free portable hard drive at Frys doesn’t sound too shabby either.
No problem, it is a really funny strip, I wish you all the luck with it. As I reread the post now, I realize I spent too much time complaining about the damn comics page instead of just talking about the strip. That’s one issue with this blog, I tend to write them quickly, and sometimes upon rereading, I want to edit them all to hell (as an editor friend of mine likes to say). But the strip is great and it makes me look forward to getting the paper every morning. It’s ben awhile since that happened.
-M
Are there really that many people working on Garfield? O.o
OK. I was being silly. I don’t think it’s a staff of 27. Maybe 5. Last I knew, Garfiled was s staffed strip. Jim Davis doesn’t draw or write the strip, from what I know. If you know differently, let me know. I use it as an example of a different kind of product. Garfield developed as a marketing exercise as much as a strip vs. Peanuts, where the marketing came more organically from the work. I’m not saying Garfield is evil or that Peanuts wasn’t licensed and commercialized. But Garfield is not in the pattern of the comic strip artist who writes and draws his own work. Doonesbury is similar I believe, as Gary Trudeau doesn’t draw the strip, but I believe he writes it.
[...] I’ve been sent this link by several folks. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I have a thing for comic strips. And how bad they are these days (with rare exceptions – Richard Thompson’s Cul De Sac) [...]