A Drive-By Blogging
No time for love Dr. Jones. Let's get to the strips.
Frazz, April 3, 2011
Is this a sign of self-awareness? I used to find Frazz hilarious, but the preachiness has really started to grate — even though I often agree.
Pluggers, April 4, 2011
After a month or so of adding Pluggers to my subscriptions I have learn that they are fat, poor, old, stupid, and cheap.
Who wouldn't want to be one?
B.C. April 5, 2011
Words I never thought I would say again: "B.C. is getting kind of funny."
Brewster Rockit April 5, 2011
Literally an LOL.
8 comments:
Calvin and Hobbes inspired many imitators. I can think of 3 offhand: Heart of the City, Buckles and Frazz, replacing Calvin with a girl, dog and adult respectively. I remember these all being pretty good when they first started.
However, as good as C&H was, most of its preachy strips were obnoxious; they went on and on about how Comic Books and TV were destroying culture, etc. There also seemed to be more of them as time went on, and in retrospect it was probably the right decision to end C&H after 10 years. If not it would be like B.C. when Johnny Hart was alive, except replacing Golf with cycling and Christianity with Henry David Thoreau.
However the imitators seem to suffer from the same problem, insufferable preachiness that increases as the age of the comic increases. And all 3 now have run as long or longer than C&H: Heart of the City (12 years), Buckles (15 years) and Frazz (10 years).
Very good point, C&H did get preachy at times. I guess it was less annoying because it was less frequent (or at least it seems like it was) and because Watterson got out while the getting was good.
With Frazz it seems like it went from funny to outright tedious almost overnight. I was originally attracted to thre strip because of the comparison to C&H and even spent a lot of time reading the online archives - the strip was really, really good.
Now all I can say is: Jef, either get over yourself or switch to life coaching.
"they went on and on about how Comic Books and TV were destroying culture"
Uh, what? I didn't get that at all. Perhaps there was some subtle underlying message related to that, but I don't remember C&H ever "preaching" it.
If anything, what I took away was that Calvin loved comic books and they inspired imagination.
@JSG
Calvin, the character, loved comics and TV. But it was pretty obvious that Bill Watterson, the writer, did not.
http://espritnoir.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/opiate-of-the-masses.jpg
I can't find a strip for comic books but here's a quote from the (10th?) anniversary collection:
"You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid."
— Bill Watterson
Slight edit:I should have said "comic books" or "superhero comics". Watterson always loved newspaper comics (at least classic ones like Peanuts & Pogo).
I really wish blogger had a way to tell posters when comments are made.
I think a lot of Watterson's opinions about comics were about the books that were popular in the 80's and 90's. Dark Knight Returns, and much of the industry's attempt to repeatedly reproduce it, happened while C&H was popular.
Even if Watterson hated comic books (and I don't believe that he did), I see no evidence of that in C&H nor do I see any preaching of such... no preaching about TV either, other than his parents sometimes telling him to stop watching TV and go outside, which is normal parental stuff.
@Eric:
Don't forget Liefeld!
@JSG:
Ultimately the end product is open to individual interpretation. IMO a hallmark of a good writer is not to hit your readers over the head with your own personal preferences and morals like an anvil. Watterson is an excellent writer so it's not surprising that his own hobbies and morals (which he states pretty clearly in the tenth anniversary collection in text under the strips) don't appear in the strip very much until, arguably, towards the end (unfortunately I don't have my copy of "It's a Magical World" with me at my current apartment, otherwise I could probably find some better examples than the one I posted above which, while a little preachy, is still funny.)
Aside:
Being an uber C&H fan since I was 6 years old (I'm 30), I used to have the opinion that Watterson should have kept it going. In his various farewell letters Watterson said he felt the quality was decreasing, and I disagreed. However going back and reading the comic again as an adult, I can see what he was talking about. Granted, it never was terrible and some of the comics right at the end were some of the best he ever created (especially the new format Sunday ones) but better to leave on a high note.
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