Adam@Home by Rob Harrell for November 12, 2009

regarding yesterday’s column about “tooth strewn hockey rinks” in 32 years refereeing all different ages of hockey for both men and women i don’t recall a single instance of anyone losing even one tooth - let alone enough to “strew” on the ice. closest i ever saw was a guy pulling down his cage to do up the straps and getting hit in the back of the hand by a slap shot from one of the players who were supposed to stop shooting warmups while the referees came on to the ice. and was i ever ticked off at the guy who hit me!

Clayton is all uniform!!

Exactly what uniform is Clayton wearing? It’s too bulky for a line player and doesn’t look like a goalie either (where’s the blocker and the catcher?)

To be honest, Adam would probably dislike the goalie position most because of the cost of gear. My son played goalie and was able to borrow the pads from the rink for a couple of years, but it was getting close to time for him to buy his own – and that stuff is expensive!

This comic used to be funny. Now it’s just stupid. The artwork is different too - it looks like bad Disney. What happened? I’m dropping it.

It seems with all that gear on it would be hard for him to move and as a goalie you need to be able to move fast to prevent the other team from scoring.

Agree with the change for the better on the art work. I had quit reading it then came back on a whim and discovered the new guy. Now I read regularly.

Doc T – it’s the same poster … same cadence to his complaint every time.

1) First time poster 2) What happened? 3) I am dropping this from my list.

I can’t imagine that anyone who really was a fan of Adam is just now noticing the difference. Smells funny to me.

I liked the old Adam plenty, but the new Adam is nicer to look at and letting Basset concentrate only on the writing has given the strip a huge upgrade in terms of humor, storylines and character development.

I think the Basset/Harrel team works perfectly.

My only complaint would be the lettering gets hard to read sometimes … maybe it’s my eyes.

Old Adam = tired and not funny.

New Adam = better-looking, funnier.

That is all.

ji2m, if you have to ask…

hey what the heck adam, let the kid have his fun, you are jealous because you never really were into any kind of sports, except maybe chess

I prefer the artwork of the old Adam. It changed a great deal over the years, from Adam having fairly small eyes and bushy hair to gradually increased eye size, but there was something appealing about the sketchy approach that is missing now. Adam now looks too short and stocky to be believable as Adam. As far as humour goes, the new Adam is a bit funnier than the repetetive boredom that the old one had become, but it is nowhere close to matching the clever wit that Bassett displayed for so many years until he ran out of steam.

Funny, because I never liked the old Adam. I just shrugged my shoulders and thought maybe I wasn’t the targeted audience.

But now, I like it. The targeted audience hasn’t changed -I don’t think- so maybe that shows how his writing has improved.

And I look at art very simply, if it doesn’t detract from the writing it’s OK, if it adds to the writing – that’s great. The writing and humor will always be my priority.