Newspaper Comics #12

I've been putting this off and given my lack of ANY posts, I think it's time I finish this.

The Newspaper reviews have been few and far between because, well, they're hard to do. Few of them can be followed start to finish and many are decades old, with daily strips the norm. Knowing these comics, their history and their influence gives a great amount of insight into the comics, both newspaper and web, and their history. So it's only fitting, I think, that after discussing the question are webcomics dead, that I get back to the true root of the modern webcomic, probably one of the best ever published. I'm talking about Calvin and Hobbes.

I will say now I have a bias when it comes to Calvin and Hobbes, I think it's the best damn thing ever. This has really what's been holding this up because how can I give it any kind of objective examination when I actively enjoy the comic beyond all reason? The answer is, well, I can't. I can only say that you should read it, reruns are posted over on Go Comics, so go read them, it's worth the time.

It is with this admitted bias that I point out that I think Calvin and Hobbes may actually be the reason webcomics exist in their current form at all. Around 2000, when the first great wave started going with things like Sluggy Freelance and Penny Arcade, webcomics were often the purview of college students stretching their artistic muscle and doing comics in response.

Those college students were children when Calvin and Hobbes was in newspapers. And oh what a different comic it was. It was a comic that appealed to the kid in everyone, exploring the length and breadth of imagination like no other. A kid and his best friend who might or might not have been imaginary, and with whom all manner of chaos was inflicted. The art was top notch, especially the Sunday strips.

Those strips, by the way, were a result of a fight between Watterson and the newspapers. He wanted to take more advantage of the space available, and the newspapers wanted to be able to arrange his comic any way they saw fit. Watterson won, the popularity of his comic far stronger than anything they had come across. It's not much of a stretch that the idea of the “infinite canvas” came about as a result of this victory.

It also did something almost unheard of in newspaper circles: It ended. Watterson wanted to move on to other art, water colors in fact, and had grown tired of the pressure to merchandise his creation. He moved on, but left a mark that runs true and deep today.

From Sinfest to Girls with Slingshots, Calvin and Hobbes has had it's influence felt on the web. Whether it's Pants are Overrated short “squeal,” Hobbes and Bacon, or an animation for a school project, this comic has more fans now than it did when it was running daily in papers, I say as if I did research (hint: I didn't).

Calvin and Hobbes is, to me, the first webcomic, before there was a web to post them on. It has many of the same qualities that webcomics strive for, despite the fact that Watterson, in the exchange that led to him adding some art to Pearls Before Swine, doesn't understand computers at all. Not that he needed too, today or any day.

Webcomic artists owe a great deal to Calvin and Hobbes, and it should be required reading for anyone looking to do a webcomic of their own.

So with that bit of gushing out of the way, next time, MORE GUSHING! Seriously, you'll see. Until then kiddies. And hell, I might actually sleep in my own bed tonight.

Newspaper Comics #11: Wizard of Id

Over the years I've collected various books with newspaper comics in it.  I've got the Complete Far Side books, massive tomes that bend my bookshelves with their sheer weight, a half dozen Garfield books, and an old book of Peanuts comics.  But one of the odder ones turns out to be the first published book a comic, which is wild considering it's been around since 1964.  And of all things, it's the Wizard of Id.

Id was originally the product of the work of two men, Brant Parker and Johnny Hart. Hart is basically known for one of the great old zombie comics, B.C.  I likely won't ever talk about B.C. because, well, I don't read it.  Parker, however, is the main force behind Id, until he died, so Id is kind of a zombie too.  As I've said before, the line between zombie and legacy is very fine, and as of late, it seems it's leaning more toward legacy, but for a while, it was a zombie, just going through the motions.

Of all these older comic reviews, it's really rare I actually get a chance to read the earliest strips.  I've read early Garfield strips (old Garfield is a strange beast, literally), and seen some early Family Circus strips (but only a few), but most of these really old comics are pretty much forgotten.  Having not just some of the early strips, but an official collection of such strips is actually quite a treat for me.  Whether they are the first strips or not is hard to say (I suspect they are), but it is still something to have, and then to be able to compare it to the modern strips thanks to Go Comics (and not my local paper) makes this review kind of a no brainer.

The modern strip is very much a standard comic.  Setup, joke, punchline arrangement is normal and the gags only occasionally link up with current events.  I won't call it a bad comic, it isn't, but it does feel very generic.  It has gotten away from the worse of it by focusing more the Wizard himself as of late, as if the Wizard was always the focus of the comic that they had gotten away from (it's not BTW).  New ideas are good for these kinds of comics, it did wonders for a lagging Garfield which is now actually readable after a decade of mediocrity.  Still, it's very much a "staple" comic, one of those strips that just appears in the funny pages but no one remembers when or how it got there.

Those early strips, though, feels much lighter.  It's still an old newspaper comic, strips rarely follow one another in any form of continuity, but there is a great sense of "let's try this and see if it works."  I get that feeling from a lot of young gag strips, and it's here too.  It's weird how refreshing it feels in this early work, and how I would happily read this comic even now.  Don't get me wrong, I don't HATE the current version of Id, but I'd love this version more.  It's rawer, has a much sharper edge than the current comic.  Not that it's particularly sharp, of course, it's still a newspaper comic, but there's a lot more implied death here.  The King does NOT take anything, more than willing to order the execution of children for simple games at the drop of a hat.  No, I'm not kidding on that either.  He is a tyrant, through and through here, where he only KIND of a tyrant in the modern strip.

Are these changes bad?  Well, yes and no.  No, because I really like these early Id strips, they feel like, well, some webcomics I've read.  Yes because it's still being published since it debuted in 1964.  Softening the edges off made it appeal to a wider audience and kept it in the papers for decades.  Did it make the comic weaker?  Yeah, it did, but some changes worked out in it's favor.  For example, the King has COMPLETELY changed from his original version which was more akin to a playing card king and thus more distinctive.  The artwork as a whole became smaller, probably as the space for comics shrunk over the years.  They're still identifiable between the versions, but you can tell there's a difference there.  The personalities, though, are virtually unchanged, so these are the same characters.  And there is a solid core of them, unlike Beetle Baily and it's mountain of characters, there are relatively few in Id and they each have there own roles to play.

Wizard of Id is a pretty generic comic any more.  Nothing special or great about it, but nothing godawful either.  Occasionally it's quite funny, but usually it's just a passing glance.  It's a shame, given it's edgier roots, but even those roots aren't THAT edgy.  There are worse comics out there, and there are better.  The only real thing I can say about it is that it's a great example of people working together to create something new, even if Parker went on to run the comic alone.  Beyond that, it's there, and that's about it.

Next time, I have to do some touching base.

Newspaper Comics #10

Shuffling through the newspaper strips in order to setup for my eventual switch over to full time internet reading has made me really look at the comics I follow in the paper.  Some comics it's obvious why I read them, they're very good, others, well I wonder sometimes.  Like Beetle Baily, do I really want to keep reading it?  Probably not.  Another comic, however, is giving me issues.  This comic is Luann.

I didn't really start reading Luann until I got this paper (so maybe 6 years ago), but Luann has been in papers since 1985, so it's been around a while.  At it's most basic, it's a high school humor comic.  Luann and her friends deal with high school and it's drama/comedy.  It's nothing really that special, especially in the world of webcomics where every other one is based on school of some sort.

There is one thing about the comic that bugs me:  The main cast.  I don't like any of them.  Not Luann, her brother Brad, her two best friends, her parents.  All of them are dull and uninteresting as all hell.  They do nothing for me.  Maybe if I had started reading it much earlier they would be more interesting and fun, I'd have something invested.  As it stands, I really can't stand them.  If I note the comic features them as the driving force of the day's strip, I usually end up skipping it.

So why the debate about reading it?  Well, because I really like the secondary cast.  They have much more interesting conflicts, character arcs, personalities and generally stand out more than the main cast.  Whether it's TJ's ongoing battle with Ann Eiffel in the local fast food joint, or Tiffany trying to be a famous actress without knowing how to act, or the weird relationship between Knute and Crystal, all of them are more interesting than whatever Luann happens to be doing at the moment.  Hell, I know the names of the secondary cast more than I know the names of her two best friends!

I think the reason that happens is the nature of newspaper comics, the status quo.  It must be maintained so that people who slip in and out of the strip aren't completely lost every time.  Even the soap opera comics or story comics have a base line they come back to at the end of every arc.  Luann and the rest of the main cast act as a baseline for the strip, a touch point that never changes.  Meanwhile, the secondary cast can do whatever the hell they want because they aren't as tied down.

Growth happens amongst the secondary cast.  Gunther, originally a shy love interest of Luann, found another girlfriend.  There's some hints that Tiffany, a snobby girl with whose dreams of stardom have been smashed over and over again, might be at least a little smitten with the big, anti-bully Ox.  Knute and Crystal, as I said before, likely will end up with each other despite one being a slacker and the other being goth.  They're breaking out of their old forms and becoming something new.  Luann?  She's probably the same girls she always was, and always will be.

That said, I don't think the secondary cast, as of now, could support a comic entirely on their own, which brings me back to the status quo.  Luann acts as the glue that holds everything together.  Which continues to be a problem as MOST of the comic will focus on Luann, despite her being the least interesting part of her own comic.

I think I probably will follow Luann in the end.  I like the secondary cast enough to tolerate the fact that someone as milktoast as Luann exists in it.  Perhaps I should take solace in the fact her dullness will elevate the others.  There are better comics, sure, but it's not completely terrible.

Until next time kiddies, hopefully I'll think of something to write by then.  Later.

Newspaper Comics #9

The last Newspaper comic review was focused on Get Fuzzy, a comic I promptly said was like a webcomic, with the edge taken off.  I stand by it, it is very much like a lot of webcomics I read, such as Out At Home, which has a similar feel, though as a webcomic it still has its edge.  Get Fuzzy isn't the only webcomic style comic in my paper.  There's at least 2 more, and the one I'm going to talk about today is 9 Chickweed Lane.

I'm not going to tell you it is like a webcomic, because it IS a webcomic.  That edge is still there, sharp as ever and is a delightful addition to the army of zombie and legacy comics that dominate the funny pages.  Or it would be if it wasn't stuck in amongst the classified ads.  Why is it there?  Well, a while ago they did a storyline about one of the characters as she was during World War II.  To add to the atmosphere, they made the comic black and white.  There are no black and white comics in the funny pages of my paper, so they pulled it from the funny pages because, well, they're dicks.  The comic is in color again, BTW, but it's still in the classifieds, buried amongst ads for used cars.

This hasn't stopped the comic from being it's own thing, if anything it's enhanced it.  There is something very, adult about the comic.  There's implied sex throughout, adult situations, the jokes, even the weird ones, aren't made for children to understand.  That might be part of the reason the comic hasn't returned to the funny pages either (this region is so backwards, honestly).  There's no outright nudity, no porn (soft or otherwise), and no violence either.

Artwise, the comic is good, and the artist has a lot of skill in drawing bodies.  Often there will be entire pages devoted to showing a single position of one of the characters (two of the main characters are ballet dancers) or of the cat who's owner I'm not clear about.  Faces, however, are all, well, pretty much the same.  Especially the females who all have the same structure for the head and face, which often makes identifying them difficult, though clothing helps a great deal and when it's in color, the color of the hair helps as well.  The guys don't suffer nearly as much, but they often feel far stiffer than the ladies, and when stripped of things like beards and glasses, they also look pretty much alike.

The stories though, are not alike, or even similar to many I've come across in other comics.  The first one that I remember reading is when about a nun and a priest who fell in love, left their church and had a baby.  While I'm sure this story has been out there before (it would almost have to be), I don't recall ever seeing it in a newspaper comic of any kind.  Especially not in a paper in this shockingly conservative part of the country.  The story set in WWII featured the grandmother character (when she was young) acting as a spy and falling in love (and getting pregnant) with a German prisoner of war.  The most recent story, currently has the granddaughter confronted with the fact that she is pregnant and. . .

Suddenly I see a pattern here.  Probably just happenstance, honestly, as there have been other stories that don't involved people getting pregnant, these just stand out because how often do stories like this actually show up in comics?  I know Blondie did it, they wouldn't have kids otherwise but that was 50 years ago, and has For Better or Worse done it, but recently?  Within the last 20 years?  I can't think of one.  9 Chickweed Lane did 3 in the last 6 years.

And it's not taken lightly, or as if the entire thing is a joke, though small jokes are made.  It's serious, life changing, life shattering things.  At the same time, they continue to live.  The most recent story does feature the main character, a ballet dancer and model, becoming pregnant, but there's also some evidence that she's about to be fired from both jobs.  Her life will completely change, and she only knows half of it.  When the other shoe drops, it will hit with a shattering thud.

The comic will change, and change hard.  What happens next, I don't know, it's a comic that can't be predicted as easily as the rest of the comics.  Get Fuzzy will still have Bucky and Satchel next week.  For Better or Worse is almost in zombie mode at this point.  Even one of the other quasi-webcomic newspaper comics is reasonably predictable.  9 Chickweed Lane is not, and that's part of the fun and interest it holds for me.

So there it is, a webcomic in print form.  I hope it's not alone (there is another that is kind of a webcomic).  It should be noted that 9 Chickweed Lane does have a spinoff/cousin that IS a webcomic, Pigborn.  I have never read it, and likely never will.  After all, I have the print version, and that's good enough for me.

Next time, um, I'll do something.  Until then kiddies.

Newspaper Comics #8

Okay, so it's been over a year since the last time I dealt with newspaper comics, but I need an article and I haven't read enough comics for another batch of reviews.

Now I've covered a lot of old newspaper comics, like Blondie (82 years) and Peanuts (50+ not counting reruns), so let's cover a relative newcomer at a mere 12 years, Get Fuzzy.

Get Fuzzy appeared in the funny pages right as Garfield was hitting it's low point, and provided a nice breath of fresh air.  In a sense, it's Garfield 2.0, with the same basic 3 characters, an owner, a cat and a dog.  Bucky and Satchel are similar in personality to Garfield and Odie, but are also quite different.  It also makes the owner role (Rob here) far less of an dope than Jon.  It felt fresh and new, and I liked it.

The comic is far more political than one might think.  Bucky is often portrayed as a right wingnut, with Rob being very left, and poor Satchel caught in between.  This often leads to the comic being very, VERY wordy, typically when Bucky goes on some rather insane rant.  These are not the best the comic has to offer, and often seem to drag out and make Bucky seem far more insane than he was ever intended to be.

Outside of the political slant, the comic has some genuinely funny moments, often built around Bucky trying and failing to do something that is, well, kind of crazy.  From attempting to buy a monkey (so he can eat it) to his completely one sided war against the ferret neighbor (he lost, just hasn't admitted yet), the various jokes at his expense are quite funny.  At the same time, he often gets the short end of the stick far too often for my taste and it does get a little old after a while.

When it isn't focusing on Bucky, it does dip into a massive cast of secondary and one note characters.  Like Beetle Baily, most of these characters have little beyond their name and base personality, but are switched up often enough as to not get stale, at least for now.  The fact that the main cast is strong enough without these extras around helps, and gives the comic less of a repetitive feel.

The average joke, though, is hard to pin down.  Usually it's about Bucky saying something quite mad, but perfectly logical to him.  This requires a LOT of reading to get the joke, and often enough the joke utterly falls flat and misses.  I think Darby Conley (artist) invests too much in his jokes, not given them room to breath, and tries to fill the panels with far too many words for the joke.  Of course, if it cuts down too much, it'll end up little better than the strips it's running against, so there's something to be said for wordiness.

Compared to a lot of comics, Get Fuzzy feels more like a webcomic than the older strips.  Perhaps it's because it is so much younger, but it has a lot more edge to it than other comics.  That edge, though, seems wasted on jokes that are quasi-poltical in nature and over wordy.  I would say it represents a kind of middle ground between the funny pages and the internet, and I suspect that a comic like Sinfest might have ended up very similar if it had ended up in newspapers.

I do still read Get Fuzzy, but often find myself scanning through the longer diatribes to hopefully get to the joke.  There are much worse comics out there, so I'll tolerate it once in a while.

Next time, probably a Touching Base as I do some cleaning up of links and such.  Got a comic I have to pull from the read list and put in the "probably dead" one.  Makes me sad.  Later kiddies.

Newspaper Comics #7

Open up the Sunday comics page of nearly every newspaper and you'll likely be greeted by two comics on the front page:  Peanuts and Garfield.  Well, there is a third comic, that varies, but usually those two are there, and have been for every paper I've read, except one, Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper.  Last time I saw it (and it's been a while now) the first comic on it's page is Beetle Bailey.

Ah, Beetle Bailey, I've read a lot of it.  It's one of the few major newspaper comics that covers the military (I'm sure there are others, there has to be), but it didn't start out that way.  When it premiered in 1950, it was actually about college, but less than a year later the star, Beetle Bailey himself, dropped out and joined the army.  And he's been there ever sense, never promoted nor retired.  Poor guy.

Even compared to Blondie, Beetle Bailey is the quintessential gag a day strip.  There are never any long running stories (in it's current form at least), just one joke after another.  This also means the comic is frozen in time.  Originally it was based on Mort Walker's (the artist) experience in the military, particularly a basic training camp, it just never got past that point.  Today, despite Beetle being a private, he's at the same camp he was when he joined the military, with the same superiors and friends.

There has been some changes.  General Halftrack had to undergo a series of sensitivity training as he constantly ogled the only single blond female on the came (who also happened to be his secretary).  There have been characters who were retired and a few new ones added, but the changes are mostly superficial and do nothing to grow the comic in anyway.

And here in lies the comic's biggest problem:  The characters are the definition of one note/one dimensional.  They are literally defined by their one characteristic. Beetle is lazy, Zero is dumb, Sarge is hungry and angry, etc etc.  For a gag a day strip that's not a bad thing, but it also makes the comic extremely predictable and also ensures that the character will only come up if the joke calls for them.  Wikipedia lists 26 active characters, and but I think only half a dozen show up with any regularity.

For webcomics it is the example of what to try to avoid, even in a gag a day strip.  One note characters should always be avoided as they often create an endless cast list, most of which will never appear in the comic more than once or twice in a year.  A more compressed cast provides more opportunity to develop a joke or even short joke story and maintain the humor over the long term. Beetle Bailey suffers so desperately from the lack of joke material at this point that they created a new character a few years ago (Gizmo) to try to introduce more gadget based jokes and I can't remember the last time I saw the character at all.

I'd say most of the young gag a day strips on the net suffer from this problem initially and those that survive often evolve beyond it.  Beetle Bailey is not a great comic, I wouldn't even call it a good comic.  The jokes are flat, repetitive, predictable and worst of all dated.  It is a comic even worse off than other legacy/zombie comics because the original artist is STILL working on the comic and there's little chance it will develop beyond what it is ever.

Well, enough about newspaper comics.  I've got to go do more snowblowing/shoveling.  I'm looking so forward to that.  Until next week kiddies.

Newspaper Comics #6

When I started this string of articles, there were four comics that stood out as being most influential on webcomics.  The first two are Peanuts and Garfield, and I have already covered those.  The next two are probably more influential in the long run, even if their lifespans were far less than the first two.

Which brings us to today's comic.  This comic was so influential that it spawned many imitators in newspapers, let alone the innumerable attempts to replicate it in webcomic form.  In my paper alone there are at least 3 comics that can be called imitators, though each isn't nearly up to task for one reason or another.  Amongst the webcomics, I have continued to hunt for a replacement for this comic, but only one has ever truly come close, and it has been dead for a long, long time now.  What comic could do this?  The Far Side.

Gary Larson's The Far Side is not unique in terms of it's format, the single panel strip, but it's content is so different from what was found in strips before or after it that it remains a cultural milestone and practically unforgettable.  The uniqueness of the Far Side starts with the sheer lack of any regular characters.  Oh there are animals, especially cows, that all look the same, even the people often look the same, but none are given a name and are adjusted, as needed to fit the joke.

And the jokes were the reason for this lack of a regular cast.  While I don't have a picture perfect memory, I can't remember a single joke outright replicated only by changing a few words or lines (maybe a trouble brewing comic or two).  There are no running gags, aside from the afore mentioned cows I suppose, so each strip is different.  The result is what many call 'surrealistic' humor, but I just call funny as hell.  The unexpected became the norm with Far Side, and in the process it became memorable.

The Far Side was only published for a mere 15 years, starting in 1980, and yet is deep in the memories of many of the current crop of webcomic artists (the younger ones discover it early on anyway).  This creates a long standing influence as people try to replicate the experience with their own work.  The problem, of course, is that the Far Side had no set rhythm or beat, each strip was often very different from the previous one and with no characters to speak of, finding that element that made the Far Side great is, well, damn near impossible.  What it was, of course, is that Gary Larson has one hell of a twisted sense of humor and could spin almost anything into a joke, a talent most people do not have.

In newspapers, as I said, there are many imitators that try to latch on to some element of the Far Side thinking it will replicate it.  Of the three in my paper, one latches on to puns, another goes for the "weird" angle and the third kind of goes it's own path, but you can still see the influence.  The latter of the three is the best because it doesn't try to stick to whatever formula the Far Side is supposed to have, but still goes for the surrealist bent that Larson used.  At other times it replicates the last of my four most influential strips, but that's a subject for another time.

In the webcomic world, only one comic has ever managed to match the Far Side in my eyes:  The Parking Lot is Full.  It does the same thing the Far Side does, but never actually replicating the same joke twice (well, except for the last string of strips, but there was a joke of a different color).  It is still the first webcomic I ever read (and reviewed) and I still hold it as the standard that all comics must meet.  At the same time, it's still not quite as good as the Far Side.  I think it's the edginess that fails it in the end and the forced messages, something the Far Side never really got into.

Aside from PLiF, comics like Cyanide and Happiness and Edible Dirt come closest to the Far Side, but each never quite gets there, each going more for shock and edginess than even PLiF, and that was already beyond the Far Side.  Still, that doesn't mean others haven't tried to replicate the Far Side, and likely will continue to do so.  It is truly one of the great comics of all time, and it's influence will be felt for years to come.

I'm not sure what comic I'll do next time, but it certainly won't be my most influential comic because, well, I like holding on to those.  Of course if you haven't figured out which one it is, you need to smash your head against a wall for a while, because at this point it should be obvious.  Until next time kiddies.

Newspaper Comics #5

There are two terms you hear when people talk about newspaper comics:  Legacy comics and zombie comics.  Don't let anyone fool you, these terms mean almost exactly the same thing.  They refer to comics that have gone on long past their prime and whose original creators are dead, yet new strips continue to be made.

The difference is how people perceive them. Legacy comics are viewed with respect for their years of entertaining people while zombie comics are declared "not funny" or worse "never funny."  And what is funny for one person is not for someone else.  I, for example, think of Blondie as a legacy comic, while BC is a zombie.

And then there's Family Circus.

It's not a legacy comic, I don't enjoy it.  It's not a zombie comic, it's not not funny.  No, it's worse.  Let me get back to that.

Family Circus started in 1960, on a leap day.  Does that hold any significance?  No, it just means the comic just SEEMS to have lasted forever.  Really, the comic is about one joke:  Kids say the darnedest things.  Well, that was the joke, now it's "kids say the cutest things."  There is a difference.

It's possibly the largest circulating comic on Earth.  Why?  Well, I think it's because it aims at a very specific and vocal audience:  Grandmothers.  They read the paper (because they can't get the computer to work) and they write letters to newspapers.  And finally, they get this tickle from reading kids saying the cutest things.

They'd never accept the darnedest things, though, because those imply real human things, like the fact that raising kids is really hard, that parents struggle to make ends meet, and that they have ways to "get away" from it all via *gasp* drugs and sex!  How horrible.  Grandmothers can't stand that stuff because, well, they never had sex until they were married, and only to have children, and they certainly never used drugs.

Grandmothers are also horrible liars.  Meaning they don't lie very well at all.

Family Circus was once a better comic, but as the years went by it was molded to the grandmother demographic, which stripped it of what little edge it had and whitewashed the rest.  The result is a comic so soft and unoffensive that it actually turned the corner and became a horrible comic.  It's not not funny, that would imply that the jokes merely missed their marks.  No, the comic is what is referred to as "unfunny."  A funny black hole in newspapers that sucks humor out of nearby comics.

The comic is the COMPLETE opposite of every webcomic I've read, even the bad ones!  It's static in a way that can not be easily set into words.  When the biggest change to your comic in 40 years is one of the characters getting a slightly different haircut, you're in trouble.  It plays to a demographic that is CONSTANTLY dying (but never quite gets there) and has all but rejected anything that could be called modern.

No comic should EVER be like Family Circus.  If it is, then it and the artist should be put out of our misery.  While dozens of really GOOD comics come and go, Family Circus not only stays, but is everywhere.  An ever present icon of blandness and terribleness that the world can not get rid of because grandmothers can't get enough of it for some bloody reason.

The only good thing to ever come out of Family Circus is a web parody that you'll have to search for on your own.  Find the "Dysfunctional Family Circus."  The archives I'm sure are still floating around the web somewhere, and read them.  It's very satisfying and pallet cleaning, but you'll never, EVER be able to read Family Circus again, mostly because you'll know how horrible it truly is.

Next time, I think I'll do a comic I love, if only to wash this taste from my mouth.  Later kiddies.

Newspaper Comics #4

Finally.  Why did this one take so long?  Well, mostly it was time, because I don't hate this comic or anything, I just needed time to sit down and work on this.

So what comic is it?  For Better or For Worse.

It's so different from, oh, 99% of comics in papers, at least the first run (we'll get to the second one in a bit) that it's hard to believe that it is in newspapers.  You see, it aged, in real time, through the course of some 28 years.  That's something few comics EVER do, and if they do it, they eventually stop.  Nothing lasts like that for 30 years.

Yet FBoFW did.  It's like a family soap opera, but without melodrama (mostly) and puns and jokes every strip.  This makes it stand out verses the static comics like Blondie or Family Circus, who had similar set ups, but not be as bizarre as the true soap opera comics that I mostly skip because, well, I just don't care.

And it also managed to be memorable.  Whether you liked or disliked the choices made by Lynn Johnston over the years, readers could remember them, and the characters grew up before your eyes.  She even killed a few of them off, something none of those other comics would even consider doing in most situations.  The death that stands out for me is the passing of Farley, the family dog.  It was ballsy, but understandable (the dog was 14 years old at that point) and it stands out as one of those comic moments that few strips ever get and it worked.

Of course, Farley was replaced by his own son, so really, the dog didn't "leave" as much as get a make over.  But I'm fine with that.  Other situations and dramas occurred, and while none had the impact of Farley, they still made the comic stand out in a sea of blandness and sameness.

Then the end came.  In August of 2008, For Better or For Worse came to an end.  Kind of.  The main, original storyline that had graced newspapers for 28 years came to a close.  And was immediately followed by a strip reboot that started from the beginning.

I understand why she did it, after all, you can't make money on a strip that isn't published any more, and she had a staff of people who helped with the comic at the end.  Still, why couldn't it have just ended and be gone?  I suppose I can't say much, I don't mind Peanuts still being in papers, but that strip is timeless and classic, while FBoFW had a single story, and that story was over.  Should it really be told again, from the beginning?

I do still read it though, but it's more like a habit than anything else.  Still, I remember the comic for doing what so few (meaning none) newspaper comics do, tell a long term story.

Webcomics can learn a lot from For Better or For Worse, especially in long term story telling.  No comic is as long lived as Johnston's strip, but a few are getting on in years now.  Characters in webcomics can grow and change because they aren't limited by the comic syndicates or the demands of daily publishing, and the fact that a strip like theirs can succeed should stand out.  It also should show that sometimes being bold with character development can pay off.

And it should serve as a warning that sometimes it's best to just let it go and not create yet another zombie comic to dominate the papers.

Next time, a comic that is nearly as universal as For Better or For Worse, but is the complete opposite of it in every significant way.  And I wish it would die.  Until then kiddies.

Newspaper Comics #3

When I got the idea to do these articles, a few comics in particular stood out as needing to be described.  Peanuts and Garfield were obviously first, and I've got a couple others that are probably more influential on webcomics than even those two.  But today I'm going to cover a comic whose influence is probably greater than either Peanuts or Garfield, probably because it influenced those comics and the entire industry itself.  I'm talking about Blondie.

Wait, what?  How's that influential?  There's nothing special about it, just a sitcom type comic seems to be in every paper.  Of course, the reason it becomes a subject is a little fact about it most people don't know:

It was started in 1930.

1930.  That's 80 YEARS ago.  Peanuts didn't start until the 50's, and Blondie was already 20 some years old.  It's likely Schultz grew up reading Blondie.  Perhaps the greatest comic of all time might have been influenced by Blondie.

1930.  The age of flappers and prohibition.  In fact, Blondie herself started life as a flapper.  Dagwood's laziness and eating habits were formed when he grew up in a family of wealthy industrialists.  Who then promptly disowned him for marrying Blondie (wonder if they've ever thought about healing those wounds, it has been 80 YEARS).  The company he now works for is a CONSTRUCTION company?  Who knew that?  I sure as hell didn't.  I had to look it up on the wiki page.

1930.  A daily comic, printed everyday, including Sunday, for 80 years.  I complain when there's a couple thousand strips in a webcomic archive.  Blondie has over 29,000 strips.  AND a movie series AND a radio drama series.  There was also a sandwich shop chain, but I think it went under.

1930.  The original artist is dead, of course.  And the comic didn't stop aging until the 60's, but even then there have been changes.  Blondie started her own business at one point.  Family Circus (a comic I'll cover another time) had exactly one major change since it's debut in 1960:  They changed the mom's hair style.

1930, wow.  Oh, there are older comics (Gasoline Alley has been around since 1919), but I doubt any of them has held the sheer popularity and ubiquitousness of Blondie. And the best part?  Blondie's still pretty good.  Oh, it's not great, few of the "legacy" comics are, but it's reasonably funny and worth my time to read.

There isn't a single comic on the internet that can compare to the sheer scope of Blondie, and I seriously doubt any will ever even match it.  I'd lay odds that Blondie will eventually become a webcomic itself, produced past the theoretical end of newspapers (I don't think they're going away anytime soon) and lasting 150+ years at this rate.  And it's influence?  Blondie has probably created the modern daily comic, becoming what newspapers expect out of their comics and that is probably enough.  It's not the greatest comic, but it is THE comic, leaving others to pick up the pieces.

Newspaper Comics #2

Well, I'm back again for another edition of Newspaper Comics.  Last time, I covered Peanuts, one of my all time favorites and probably one of the most popular comics ever produced.  So what shall I cover next?  How about one of the few comics that ever directly challenged Peanuts for the top spot of all time:  Garfield.

There was a time, not all that long ago, that I was a massive Garfield fan.  Of course, I also lived overseas at the time and there wasn't much else to read, but still, I had Garfield and I enjoyed the hell out of it.  I've got several books, editions of the Garfield Magazine and at least one poster on my wall featuring the fat orange cat.  I still read the comic, though I'm not nearly as much into it as I once was.

The differences between Peanuts and Garfield are pretty obvious.  Garfield went for the gut laughs, sarcasm of the funniest kind and eating lots and lots of food, while Peanuts was frequently more subdued.  So in a way, they really never competed with each other.  Still, Peanuts gets the accolades, and what does Garfield get?

Merchandising!  The amount of stuff with Garfield's name and face on it is insane and grows all the time.  Peanuts, despite it's long life and high popularity, never even covered a fraction of the territory the cat has.  While Peanuts will always get the accolades, Garfield will have to make do with the money.

Jim Davis is one of the other great newspaper comic artists, and at one time I think there were at least 3 comics in papers with his name:  Garfield, US Acres and some Mr. Potato head comic that I never read.  I think US Acres died off a long time ago (could be wrong), and to be honest, Garfield nearly did too.  For a bit there in the late 90's and early 00's, the comic was abysmal.  At least one paper actually stopped printing it.  For a comic built on mass consumption, this was a bad sign.

So what happened?  A change in direction that utterly backfired.  Through most of the 80's Garfield grew a substantial cast of characters, nearly all of which were pushed into the merchandising market.  None surpassed Garfield himself, except maybe Odie (but Odie had been the first), but none did particularly well either.  The change was apparent quickly:  The characters vanished.  When was the last time you saw Nermal in the comic?  It's been so long I don't remember it, and the bulk of the rest of the cast was dumped and the focus was drawn back to mostly Garfield and his owner Jon.

It failed.  The comic became dull and lifeless.  Weird when you think about it, since this was what made Garfield popular in the first place, right?  Well, yes and no.  Yes, the interactions between cat and owner were the core of the comic, but it built up from there, because honestly, you can only do so much with it.  Breaking up the monotony by throwing in a cute rival for Garfield keep the jokes "fresh," as did the many other characters that dotted the comic.  Change was good, and when the change ceased to be, the comic became worse than even the most terrible zombie comic in the paper today.

Many webcomics fall into the same trap, changing what shouldn't be changed because they missed the point.  The absolute best example is Sluggy Freelance's Ocean's Unmoving story, which removed all but one normal character and tried to tell a different story.  As a stand alone, Ocean's Unmoving worked, as a Sluggy Freelance story, it bombed.  Garfield's change was just as dramatic, cutting away the ability to spread out the bachelor jokes so they didn't become stale and uninteresting.

The fix Sluggy was simply to go back to where the main characters were.  For Garfield, it was giving Jon a girlfriend.  Wow, Garfield is such a different comic than it was only a couple years ago because of that.  It's more interesting, funnier and overall better.  Is it as good as it was?  Oh hell no, but it's not nearly as BAD as it was, and I'll take that any day.

I would have to say that the webcomic that most wants to be, and probably is the closest to the goal of being Garfield is Penny Arcade (still no link).  I don't like the comic, I really don't, but it's ubiquity, the money that simply pours into it, the fact that they have a boxed, published GAME, probably says more about the cash generating powers it has that only Garfield itself can easily outdo (with at least one terrible NES game, several movies and countless TV specials).

More intriguing is the string of comics that are edits of original Garfield strips.  Garfield minus Garfield, Silent Garfield and the Random Garfield Generator.  Davis himself was so amazed at Garfield minus Garfield that he published it!  That's a hell of an effect.

I still like Garfield.  The poster on my wall has followed me to college and every place I've lived since I got it.  It's Garfield's version of "Foot prints on the sands of time."  Of course, it says pawprints and has a picture of the fat orange cat himself.  Garfield will likely have those paw prints in the newspapers as long as they exist, and all the way out into the web itself.  I don't think I mind that so much.

Alright, next time I'll see about posting an actual webcomic article.  Or it'll be old reviews.  Whichever comes first.  Until then kiddies.

Newspaper Comics #1

Newspaper comics?  This is a webcomic review blog-thingy, isn't it?  Well, yeah, but as I said way, WAY back in my Webcomic Categories article, newspaper comics are one of the prime motivators for webcomic artists.  And I need to write some different articles to pad out my regular webcomic reviews.

Unlike my webcomic reviews, this will be less about multiple reviews and more about the influence of individual newspaper comics on webcomics, sometimes specific strips, sometimes on the industry as a whole.  Well, as much as I know about them anyway.  And who do we start with?  What newspaper comic more perfectly encompasses everything the typically webcomic wishes to be?  Why, Peanuts, of course.

There are probably only a handful of truly great newspaper comic artists in history, and amongst them Charles M. Schulz is god.  There are older strips (Blondie started in the 30's) but none of them even hold a candle to the sheer influence of Schulz and Peanuts.

I love the comic, pretty much always have, so excuse me if I gush any.  Yeah, it's good, and it seems to me that a lot of webcomic artists can find in Schulz a kin to them.  He did the entire thing (not sure on the coloring, can't find anything on that) himself.  He drew it and wrote the jokes alone, and let no one else do it.  So much so that his retirement meant the end of new strips and all that's currently in the paper are reruns.  A one man show, and something most webcomic artists can relate to.  Of course, he also did it for more than 50 years (not counting his proto-Peanuts strip), I don't think there's a webcomic more than 15 years old that's STILL updated.

There's a timelessness to the strips.  Most of the strips require little, if any, knowledge of the era in which they were draw, and almost never include modern technology or topics.  You'd never hear Charlie Brown and Lucy argue over cell phone ring tones.  This helps keep the strips from ever feeling dated and the jokes can be felt even from the eldest of strips.  I actually have a book of old Peanuts strips printed in 1963 and featuring strips from the 50's (it's a small book) and the jokes in that are still funny after all these years.

Which isn't to say Peanuts doesn't visibly age.  The art changed from those early years until the end (Snoopy is unrecognizable from early on, almost to point of looking like a character from a more modern comic, Mutts), and the jokes got flatter as time went on.  But hey, after 50 years, what do you expect?  The last 10 years were probably the worst for the strip, and considering that it's still better than 90% of what ends up in my newspaper, that says a lot about the comic.

And it's sheer popularity allowed it to build up a massive collection of TV specials, books, a play, and more merchandising than can be easily matched by any strip (Garfield probably wins the race, but only JUST).  I suppose it's no surprise that even 10 years after Schulz's death and the end of new Peanuts strips, the comic is still one of the major draws of the funny pages.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that Schulz died not long after ceasing production of the strip, and a kind of symbolism that the last strip was published the day after his death.  A great comic and it's artist had passed on just as they should, together.  Which is more than I can say for a lot of strips.

Every webcomic artist wants to be the Schulz of their genre.  To be revered by everyone and to get the acclaim worthy of such an artist.  But I haven't run into one that truly deserves that title yet.  I suppose it is because of the youth of the industry and the lack of a way to truly measure the greatness of a strip in any direct way.  The Washington Post poll shows much of this as it lacks strips that should be there, and places strips that should NOT be there because of a popular nomination process.  Of any of those, I don't think any could match Schulz for sheer universal appeal.  I'm not sure if that's good or not, after all Peanuts probably helped maintain the funny pages in newspapers for decades, but also created an environment where papers EXPECTED comics to last 50+ years and change hardly at all.

I suppose I would be remiss to not mention Weapon Brown, a comic that takes the character names and foibles direct from Peanuts and the rest of the funny pages.  It places them in a completely different environment with only slightly different, if harder, personalities and is actually very fun to read.  I suppose the greatest honor is that at the bottom of every new strip, the artist puts a panel from the original Peanuts to act as a kind of alt-text to his work.  That's a hell of an influence.

Well, that went on a while, and rambled a bit.  Oh well.  Next time, I think I'll tackle another of the great comics, and one comic I used to absolutely love beyond reproach, though not so much any more.  Until next time kiddies.