Tag Archives: comic strips

Out Of Print


Imagine yourself at nineteen years old. You walk down the block on a sunny Sunday afternoon to the green metal newspaper vending machine on the corner. You slide shiny silver coins into the slot on the top, pull down the oven-like door, and retrieve a newspaper from inside. With me so far?

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions

The Pretenders

That’s all folks!

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club

The Breeders

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Girls of BIUL, Late To The Party, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club

When The Turkeys Get You Down

For those who don’t know; drawing these delicious strutting meatball monsters is kind of a pain in the ass unless you simplify all the feathers.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Come on in and grab a plate and a chair, there’s plenty of food and room at the table for all of you. Just chuck your mask in the bushes by the curb, with all the discarded latex gloves, empty sanitizer bottles and other accepted detritus of 2020. I care about coronavirus even less than my neighbors care about litter or landscape pollution.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Eatable Things, Nostalgic Obsessions, Site Stuff

Led Zeppelin

swan song

A final performance, product, or accomplishment before someone or some-thing stops creating work or products, as due to death, retirement, closure
etc. From the ancient belief that swans issue a beautiful song-like sound just before they die.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned

The Dickies

Of course I’m gonna provide clips to go with this mediocre comic strip, I mean, what are we doing here?

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, O'Shloktoberfest, Saturday Movie Matinee

Prince Variant, Seller of Collectibles

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Movies You Missed, Saturday Movie Matinee

Hovercraft

Sometimes in life, we fashion an artistic animus that over time, becomes a cage that confines us. Sometimes we try different things to keep the animus from becoming stale, and redundant. Sometimes we overhear a song that makes us want to kill, kill, kill, until we are hip-deep in blood and viscera.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Girls of BIUL, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club, 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

Comic Relief 1985

For an UNPRECEDENTED three years in the late 1980s, I drew a surrealistic comic strip called Mike the Pod for my high school newspaper. Initially, a buddy of mine scripted it, but once he graduated (he was a grade ahead), I went solo and moved the strip in a more satirical direction. This meant parodies of established icons of the comic page, but in the Age Before Internet, what did one do for proper visual reference?

Typically, I would lug a sketchbook to the library, open one of the huge newspaper compendiums, and double the relevant artist until I got the hang of their style. This was seldom convenient. Then one holiday season in 1988 or ’89, the aforementioned co-writer buddy gifted me a small book that not only provided visual reference for over 100 different newspaper strips, but ironic belly-laughs for decades. For crying out loud, the foreword is written by Kenny Rogers… and it’s about a hunger project.

“Comic Relief”.

comicreliefcover

Here’s the flavor text from the back cover:

Thanksgiving 1985 was a memorable day in the nation’s funny papers. For the first time in history, the entire comics page was devoted to one subject: hunger. The project, organized by Milton Caniff (Steve Canyon), Charles Schulz (Peanuts), and Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury), brought together over 175 cartoonists, and Comic Relief presents their Thanksgiving Day strips and panels. A cornucopia of cartoon commentary and humor, it is the first time such an array of American comic-strip talent has appeared together in one book. The reader can enjoy this great cartoon spectrum while helping directly in the fight against hunger: Sales of Comic Relief will raise money for USA for AFRICA.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Nostalgic Obsessions