The website you are currently reading is now ten years old. If it were a spouse, the traditional anniversary gift would be tin or aluminum. I’d go with the latter; it’s worth very little, and it’s everywhere. Just like cartoonists.
Tag Archives: college
So What, Big Deal
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Nostalgic Obsessions, Site Stuff, Worst Of All
Stabbing Westward
This is an early strip and it ain’t that great. I feel that works thematically with the band in question. I mean, do you even remember who I’m talking about?
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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Worst Of All
The Other No Exit
When retiring his comic strip Bloom County, Berke Breathed remarked “a good comic strip is as eternal as a ripe melon.” Personally, I think that’s bullshit, and reflects more on Breathed’s motivation, or lack thereof. A good comic strip lasts a lifetime. We still pass around clippings of The Far Side and Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, decades after they were printed. A cartoonist who can’t perpetuate over changing times has inked themselves into a corner. Or dried the well.
If a comic strip is still hilarious long past its sell-by date, it is a successful comic strip. That is the acid test.
Before you ask, the “flip book” of Dan Quayle eating a Twinkie actually works. Quite well.
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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Magazine Rack
Thatch
Do you still read comic strips? If so, where?
If you read them in a metropolitan newspaper, you are reading syndicated comic strips. This is the traditional method by which comic strips are published. Syndicated cartoonists can make big bucks because they get a fee for every different newspaper they appear in, and then there’s the merchandising. Seventy years ago, it was not uncommon to see syndicated cartoonists living large alongside movie stars. They were feted as a new style of raconteur. At his peak, the artist of Dick Tracy got a shiny new Cadillac, every year. Syndication is the ultimate goal of the working cartoonist. Continue reading
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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Magazine Rack
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