See you in the funny pages!
An interesting thing has happened in recent months.
I’ve long been a fan of comics. Not the weird sci-fi serial books, but the daily strips that line the back pages of my newspaper (or the bookmarked sites of my browser). This stretches back years and years, to when a young and bookish kid pored over For Better or For Worse and The Far Side in the London Free Press. As I grew older, my interest waned—I’d still read the funnies if the paper was handy, but never went out of the way to look it up. It seemed my devotion to the artform was dormant, or had at least plateaued.
Well, dear readers, it’s back, in full force. Nary a morning goes by these days without a scan of at least half a dozen comic strips. The rotation varies from time to time, but there are some I never, ever miss:
• Get Fuzzy, for its bizarre storylines, beautiful artwork and painstaking attention to characterization.
• Dilbert, because I work in a cube now and it’s kind of mandatory, innit?
• Doonesbury, for its enduring (if increasingly cantankerous) commitment to pointing out US policy gaffes.
• Mary Worth, because the Comics Curmudgeon’s snarky comments make me care about it.
• Family Circus: see above.
• The beloved Calvin and Hobbes, appearing via rerun in my delightful Mac desktop widget.
• For Better or For Worse. For hell’s sake, For Better or For Worse. Every day. I know it’s awful. It’s saccharine and sanctimonious and the characters behave in increasingly obnoxious and/or oblivious ways, and yet I can’t get enough. It’s an addiction, a vice, this awful, awful adored-by-grannies Canuck creation, and yet I’m seriously bummed that it’s ending next year.
Anyhow. It’s just dawned on me that the comics are something that I value a good deal, but don’t often think about (regular perusal of www.joshreads.com aside). These daily three-or-four panel snippits of weird alternate universes are pretty swell, and surely I can’t be the only one out there who appreciates them. I know Howden does (or used to) but is there anyone else? For the love of all that’s holy, let me not be the only one who cares about those damned Pattersons.
I’ve long been a fan of comics. Not the weird sci-fi serial books, but the daily strips that line the back pages of my newspaper (or the bookmarked sites of my browser). This stretches back years and years, to when a young and bookish kid pored over For Better or For Worse and The Far Side in the London Free Press. As I grew older, my interest waned—I’d still read the funnies if the paper was handy, but never went out of the way to look it up. It seemed my devotion to the artform was dormant, or had at least plateaued.
Well, dear readers, it’s back, in full force. Nary a morning goes by these days without a scan of at least half a dozen comic strips. The rotation varies from time to time, but there are some I never, ever miss:
• Get Fuzzy, for its bizarre storylines, beautiful artwork and painstaking attention to characterization.
• Dilbert, because I work in a cube now and it’s kind of mandatory, innit?
• Doonesbury, for its enduring (if increasingly cantankerous) commitment to pointing out US policy gaffes.
• Mary Worth, because the Comics Curmudgeon’s snarky comments make me care about it.
• Family Circus: see above.
• The beloved Calvin and Hobbes, appearing via rerun in my delightful Mac desktop widget.
• For Better or For Worse. For hell’s sake, For Better or For Worse. Every day. I know it’s awful. It’s saccharine and sanctimonious and the characters behave in increasingly obnoxious and/or oblivious ways, and yet I can’t get enough. It’s an addiction, a vice, this awful, awful adored-by-grannies Canuck creation, and yet I’m seriously bummed that it’s ending next year.
Anyhow. It’s just dawned on me that the comics are something that I value a good deal, but don’t often think about (regular perusal of www.joshreads.com aside). These daily three-or-four panel snippits of weird alternate universes are pretty swell, and surely I can’t be the only one out there who appreciates them. I know Howden does (or used to) but is there anyone else? For the love of all that’s holy, let me not be the only one who cares about those damned Pattersons.
posted by D. at
5:05 PM
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