Overboard by Chip Dunham for July 06, 2009
July 05, 2009
July 07, 2009
Transcript:
Captain: What in the- Geez, little guy... You've got four minutes left on a ten-minute sentence for driving over my foot... Mouse 1: How's it going? Jonas: I was starting to move it, but then it just stopped. Mouse 2: Try a lower gear and really step on it.
Brenzluv said:
….and stay out of the strip, you never saw Watterson or Breathed doing that, or Jim Toomey now…
Watterson never did it (except VERY obliquely), but the characters in Bloom County and Sherman’s Lagoon were/are periodically aware that they’re comic strip characters (as are the characters in Doonesbury, BC, Pogo Possum, and others). From there, it’s a short step to introducing the cartoonist himself (or herself) as a character.
Bil in “Family Circus” is a cartoonist, and it occasionally appears that the comic he does is the one in which he appears (witness Billy’s “fill-ins”). When “Garfield” began it was established that Jon was a cartoonist, although I don’t know that he draws a mediocre strip about an intolerable cat. Griffy in “Zippy” is somewhat synonymous with Bill Griffiths, and refers to himself in conversation with the other characters as their creator.
Stephan Pastis REGUARLY injects himself into “Pearls Before Swine”, often sitting at the drawingboard while Rat kibbitzes on the strip.
So what Chip is doing is not unknown across the whole spectrum of comic strips, in both the good and the bad. One distinction, though, is the guy who does the strip at “Overboard, Inc.” ACTUALLY Chip Dunham? I can only recall him being referred to as “the guy who does the strip.” I think that’s a nice touch.
(But I hate the rabbits.)