Old Comic Randomness

Thank you to all of our supporters who have encouraged us at the DCR to keep going. Since I didn't quite know what we were going to do, I did a Sunday post over at my site which you can check out. A few weeks ago, I said I was going to post some older comics and I never got around to it with the Garfield debacle and such but I got the strips scanned and ready to go so let's get on with it. If any comics are cut off, just click them.

The Katzenjammer Kids 1906

The main problem I see with why The Katzenjammer Kids is not funny anymore is because child abuse is no longer funny. In my book of Katzenjammer comics most of the strips end with the kids being spanked or beaten and it is hilarious.


Anyone else notice how much Sandy, the Butcher Boy looks like The Yellow Kid? And because I am twelve-years-old, I chuckled pretty good at the "don't never try to get gay wit me" line.

Blondie

1933: Blondie and Dagwood get married. And as we know they would never be happy. As the look on Dag's face in the last panel shows.

Buster Brown 1903

Buster Brown was created by Yellow Kid creator Richard F. Outcault and lasted much longer.



I love Buster's deranged look in the first panel. I also wish comic strips were still the size of the entire newspaper page. The panels are all so expressive and you could have more than one plot in the strip. The only problem I could see is the problem we have now where strips that have run its course are still published and keeping fresh, new strips from making it.

Thimble Theatre

1923: Thimble Theatre debuted December 19, 1919 and starred Ham Gravy and Olive Oyl. Popeye would make his debut on January 17, 1929. This strip shows Ham's love for Olive because he would rather have a children's hospital go out of business than anyone else kiss his girl.

While Olive initially didn't like Popeye, she eventually left Ham to be Popeye's girlfriend and Ham vanished from the strip.

Krazy Kat

1937: Krazy Kat, along with Pogo, Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, is considered one of the best comic strips of all time. Krazy Kat, interestingly, is neither male nor female and Krazy's gender seems to change with each strip. Most contemporary authors refer to Krazy as a 'she' but creator George Herriman has stated that "Kat can't be a he or a she".


1917: Here, Krazy uses a Weeja (Ouija) board to find out if he has any enemies and does not like the results.


1919: Herriman's panels always varied from your normal stacked blocks to vertical panels like these which is a nice change from the bland panels today which are made to be moved around, squeezed together or deleted altogether.


1941: Just like Krazy loves Ignatz, Offissa Pupp loves Krazy however I think it is safe to say that Krazy only likes Offissa Pupp as a friend.

Bringing Up Father

1912: One strip that has grown on me over the last couple of years is Bringing Up Father. Created by George McManus in 1913, the strips featured Jiggs, an Irish immigrant, and his wife, Maggie. Maggie was constantly trying to drag Jiggs into upper-class society while Jiggs was satisfied right where he was. McManus passed away in 1954 and the strip was continued by numerous other writers and artists until coming to an end May 28, 2000.

Also, I don't know why the book this strip is from dated it 1912 when Bringing Up Father debuted in 1913. My only guess is that this strip appeared with another McManus strip since McManus said that he'd been using Maggie and Jiggs since 1911 in his other strips or the book was wrong.

WEBCOMICS WANTED

I am planning a webcomic-centric Sunday entry in the near future so if you know of a lesser known webcomic or if you have a webcomic you'd like to have showcased then let me know either in the comments or you can contact me.

Until next time, have a good week.

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Lazy Sunday (Part 1)

I have two posts for you today considering I flaked out on last week.  In case you haven't noticed, the comments on Brooke McEldowney's Pibgorn have been disabled.  That I don't really care about.  I know Mr. McEldowney's work tends to get a lot of criticism and such.  9 Chickweed Lane's comments have been disabled for years.  The problem I have is the way McEldowney phrased the reason the comments were disabled:

So, I objected and objected and objected as time went on and the tenor of posts became subject more and more to abuse. I wanted my work to appear as it did in the beginning, alone, without a raging public forum affixed to it. It was like looking at a work of art with the walls about it scrawled densely with graffiti.

I firmly agree that comic strips are a work of art.  I mean, look at Krazy Kat, Pogo, Terry and the Pirates and Calvin and Hobbes:

Heck, even a one-panel day for Pibgorn can be amazingly beautiful.

But actually reading McEldowney's blog, he just seems like an angry old man who doesn't like people criticizing his work.  While I admit, I believe most of the comments were not appropriate and possible misogynistic (which was the reason Chickweed's comments were disabled), that's what people do on the Internet.  They post anonymously about things they have no knowledge about.  I could post a picture of Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" and while there will be dozens of comments praising it and calling it a true masterpiece that all other masterpieces can only dream to be...

...there will be one jerk who will post that "Irises" is better because it doesn't get as much "face time" or maybe he posts it just to be a jerk (which the Internets call a "troll", Mr. McEldowney).

McEldowney wanted the comments moderated, which seems fair enough.  Newspapers can do it, opinion blogs can do it, The DCR can do it.  The syndicate refused giving him a spiel about them being a corporation and yada-yada-yada but the main (and untold) reason is probably they couldn't just justify paying a bunch of shleps to monitor every single comic posted on gocomics.com because if they are going to monitor comics they are not just going to monitor Pibgorn.  I do agree that there should be some moderation of comments when they do get out of hand (i.e. threats and libel) but Mr. McEldowney signed a contract with a syndicate and even though Pibgorn is a webcomic, he still has to abide by their rules.  He should be glad people are actually reading Pibgorn and that he's able to do what he wants to do for a living and that people actually pay attention to it.  I wish half the people who apparently read Pibgorn read my stuff.

But maybe if I could write or draw half as good as McEldowney, people would read my stuff.

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