Recent Comments

1. almost 2 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   Ah, the Great Newspaper Comic Size Imbroglio of 1987 (or thereabouts)…

   I guess it’s to Watterson’s credit that this was really the ONLY time he brought it up in-strip, even though he obviously cared about the issue a great deal (see his writings in the 10th Anniversary C&H compilation, which make for great reading). Meanwhile, around this same year, Berke Breathed had constructed an entire story arc around it, with the Bloom County regulars going on strike (and getting badly/hilariously replaced).

   And Watterson did sort of win at the end, in that he got the syndicates to (VERY grudgingly) accept a new Sunday size scheme for C&H that afforded him more creative usage of space.

2. almost 2 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   It’s less about the promise of mud, and more about when you’re a child, the world seems so much bigger and grander… and so you’ll find high adventure in even the most mundane and commonplace things.

   For instance, my neighbors used to have this pit in their backyard filled with sand, and as kids we’d play in that thing for HOURS. Sometimes we’d build castles, sometimes we’d bring in toy trucks or action figures, but in EVERY instance, there were epic tales for the ages being written inside our tousled, dirt-caked heads.

   Then I revisited it after coming home from my first year at college, and was dismayed to find it was just this… little hole in the ground. Call it personal growth or jaded adulthood — that perspective had irrevocably changed.

3. about 8 years ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   Y’know, I distinctly remember laughing at this particular comic when it first appeared in the newspaper. The idea of stores breaking out Christmas merchandise on November 1 in 1986 was still patently ridiculous. Whether merchants were being graciously polite, or just hadn’t yet realized that season’s vital end-of-year economic uptick, in any case there was still an informal etiquette in place that reserved that commercial ceremony for the day after Thanksgiving (and even then, there wasn’t talk of ‘Black Friday’, except perhaps amongst overworked retail workers).

   At this rate, I venture by 2046 Halloween, Thankgiving, Christmas and New Year’s will have blended into a single three-month-long holiday, perhaps backed by a vague “death-to-life” allegorical story of renewal (that Madison Avenue hasn’t quite cooked up yet).

4. about 8 years ago on Bloom County

   Aw, poor Opus. He tries so hard…

   Another strip I hadn’t seen before. Though unlike the Cyndi Lauper/WWF arc, I can at least understand why this one was excised from the printed ’80’s collections, as Lynch’s rather off-putting adaptation of Dune required a generous amount of time to settle deep within the public consciousness. Nevertheless, it would’ve been nice to witness an exhibition of Oliver’s cultural literacy in the realm of sequential art, and…

   Ohmigod, I’m doing it too!

5. about 8 years ago on Bloom County

   Heh. This one aged like a fine wine, and won’t stop being relevant for a loooooong while, yet. It’s also a rare strip where the specific choice of typography made it at least 80% funnier.

6. about 8 years ago on Bloom County

   Ye gods. This is the very first time I’ve seen this particular BC comic arc — why on Earth was it left out of the printed strip collections, back in The Day? It’s a classic ’80’s “two-fer” riffing on Cyndi Lauper AND the World Wrestling Federation, for pity’s sake! Plus, I guess Cyndi was Opus’ first love interest as well? Sheesh!

7. about 8 years ago on Bloom County

   Heh. A bit of fourth-wall breaking, having Opus FINALLY take notice of this running gag of Breathed’s. He always loved making the last item on a list be something completely oddball and goofy, much like the “dogs and cats living together” line in Ghostbusters. “Dog hickeys” was another memorable one…

8. about 8 years ago on The Best Medicine Cartoon

   Not so sure about that. Being rather out of the loop, I recently binge-browsed the past year’s worth of BC 2.0. The distinct impression I get can be best summed up with the “Trump Mockers in Crisis” strip from March: one of ennui, and a desire to just get past the whole subject, altogether (despite half the audience evidently demanding, I dunno, Nast Vs. Tweed for the 21st Century or something). Plus, as BB himself admitted, personal crusades don’t yield especially funny strips, either…