Bet You A Dime!
Eric the dog trainer guy here.
Well, as Brian told us Sunday, (Little Orphan) Annie ended on June 13, 2010, after just over 85 years. I never really was a fan. By the time I saw it in the Daily News it was in its death throes, soon to be replaced by reruns. By the time Leonard Starr revived it, I wasn't reading the News anymore.
Until I read the coverage last week I was unaware that the creator, Harold Gray, often infused his own conservative politics into the strip. I guess that means it was a little like Mallard FIllmore, except that Annie had a plot and was probably funny on occasion.
Another long-lived strip that is still going on is Mandrake. It has some interesting concepts, but never seems to deliver.
"Mandrake the Magician" carrying a cellphone is kinda funny though. Him forgetting it in the car is even funnier.
Since we're discussing adventurers and superheroes, where would we be with mentioning the Spider-Man daily strip?
Except happier than we were before we read it?
Seriously....why is this strip so bad? I have always been a Spider-Man fan. I even liked the clones (well, a little, since I remember buying the first clone saga on the newsstand) and am willing to forgive the whole Maximum Carnage thing, but why does this suck so much? Where's the awesome ensemble cast? Where are the intertwined plot lines? Spider-Man should rock as a daily soap-opera style strip!
And why does Tony Stark look like an aging Commander Riker?
Based on the "coming attractions" note last Sunday, it looks like the Puppet Master will be the next bad guy. I wonder how badly they can screw up one of the Fantastic Four's lamest villains? The mind reels.
Perhaps the granddaddy of all daily soap-style strips is Gasoline Alley. Frank King drew the initial predecessor to this strip in 1918, back before Annie was a gleam in whoever-her-real-parents-were's eyes. It started, as many long lived strips, as a gag-a-day, but turned into an almost real-time soap where the characters (kind of) age as time passes.
I've been reading the Walt and Skeezix reprint books
I confess I only recently started reading the current strips. The jury is still out. Jim Scancerelli has promoted veteran's issues in the strip though, and that makes him OK in my book.
Tarzan is hard to read. Not because of the artwork or the script. It's just hard to read.
Is that really the best they can do with the scans? Even when I zoom in, the text is terrible. Sundays are often worse.
Mike Grell, who did some great work for DC comics in Warlord and Jonah Hex, apparently drew this strip for a while. I wish I could find some of them! If you ever have a chance to see the Tarzan strips done by Burne Hogarth, take it. They are legendary!
Today Arlo and Janis struck me as funny:
As did the Mutt and Jeff rerun.
Mutt and Jeff is one of the gag-a-day strips I remember really enjoying as a kid. There was another strip I always thought was funny, but everyone died or became horrifically cynical.
3 comments:
I'm going to be discussing this on my own blog when I do my weekly post on Spider-Man, Mandrake, and the Phantom but they in Iron Man's previous appearances (earlier this year) no one knew his secret identity. Now they do.
We don't need no stinking continuity.
Mandrake has left his car to investigate a strange shadow! And what's that smell? Do you hear voices? OH! A GUM WRAPPER! IT'S A MYSTERY!!
Dick Tracy is hiding in a drydocked submarine, preparing to flee shrieking if his stalker comes down the hatch, in spite of the fact that the city's entire police force is sitting not fifteen yards away in full uniform.
The Ineffectual Spider-Man stood by while Wolverine and Sabertooth destroyed a building, threatening innocent lives, then walked off--and now he's going to stand by while Tony Stark invites his girl to join the Mile-High Club in the airplane toilet. (Or wife. Or whatever, I don't know if Comic-Strip Spidey ALSO cut a badly-written deal with Satan to dissolve his marriage.)
All these strips could end right now and I wouldn't miss 'em; in fact, I'd be relieved to see them put out of their misery to make room for fresher, better strips.
Ditto Gasoline Alley. Mallard Fillmore mentions veterans' issues when it suits the writer, too; it doesn't make his strip any more honest or funny or insightful. You've missed some classic GA moments, like Slim burning a forest down after letting a bear run off with his child (he threw a can of lighter fluid at some squirrels while stealing food from a campsite), or Gertie abandoning Uncle Walt in the middle of a crowd to chase her sort-of boyfriend, getting fired over it, then getting her job back after said boyfriend lied for her.
The message of Funky Winkerbean may be "no matter how hard you try, God will kick your head to the curb every time," but the message of Gasoline Alley is "always do the worst things imaginable and God will cover for you."
Post a Comment