Nitpicks, Birdbrains, and Death
First off, some nitpick things:
Eek!
The Thing didn't really name himself. Well, he did, but he was so down-trodden by the fact that he was now a craggy misshapen monster that he latched onto what Sue Storm called him when the Fantastic Four's spaceship crashed: a thing.
Graffiti
The card game got its name from actual war. I realize this comic is trying to be clever and pithy, but it usually fails pretty hard.
Meaning of Lila
Not really a nitpick, but it sort of is. I'm going to try not to bring this up every time Meaning of Lila mentions something in or around Cleveland, OH but it's really weird seeing it mention things I know, for a fact, are real.
Next, the evolution of a comic strip. On Wednesday, this was Birdbrains:
...and so it had been since I started as a DCReviewer way back whenever. It was pretty inoffensive. One of those comics that didn't really stick out, save for the way it was colored. It's colored very nicely, I think. Anyway, since Wednesday's comic was for some reason with the Thursday comics, this was right below it:
The same art-style, in a way, but the coloring is less dynamic and the caption is typed, not hand-written like it usually was. Also, I'm not sure what to think about the joke. Part of me thinks it's funny and a but clever, but sort of bizarre and mean-spirited. What sort of sadistic jerk brings the sole survivor of a family massacre to the place his loved ones have been mounted? Anyway, I was willing to continue ignoring Birdbrains, but then I came upon today's strip:
Not colored, but it features the same two humans from the previous strip. It would appear that Birdbrains has evolved from a dime-a-dozen single-panel gag-a-day comic (nicely colored though it was) to something that features an amoral jerk and his chubby mute sidekick. I'll be paying some attention to it for a while, to see what develops.
And now... DEATH:
Ferd'nand
I'm still amazed that so many comics use death and killing as a punchline. This particular strip is done well, though I guess Ferd'nand has some lingering problems if his wife thinks he's going to hang himself. It's not just this strip, though. Lots of other strips also use death as punchlines, though in most cases it's a predator/prey type thing. Then you have things like Dick Tracy, in which stylized death is one of the strip's trademarks. However, occasionally, you get something like this, from Minimum Security:
Yes, that's a cop getting shot through the head and falling to the ground so we can see the exit wound. Which I think is a bit much, to be honest, and rather off-putting.
That's it for me today, folks. For more of my output, check out the Meekrat Entertainment Group.
I had such high hopes for this strip when it first started. But is seems to have gone into a tailspin of lame jokes, like just about every other comic strip.
