Exhibit #1:Keith Knight. He does both comedy and tragedy (“You could see it in her eyes”). He does seem to have a thing for penis humor, but it’s good penis humor, à la “Austin Powers 2”. See, for example, “Big Easy,” “Big Dick Cheney,” and “Episode 2”.
Exhibit #2:Aaron Magruder. Nuff said. (He actually seems to spend as much time bashing “embarrassing” black people as he does the US government – an open-minded, equal-opportunity sort of chap.)
Exhibit #3: Hi…uh…whoever.
Does anyone remember Milestone Comics? “Blood Syndicate” and “Static” were the best ones.
It’s about time!
P.S. Lloyd Dangle isn’t African-American but he’s cool too. Check out the hilarious cartoon at the first button. What is it about Dick Cheney that attracts cartoonists?
This is just my opinion, but all the guys mentioned in this post are the smartest and funniest guys working in the biz today. Yes, even Cheney.
The cartoons you linked to are clever and well drawn, but they’ve got this obsessive, paranoid anti-government sensibility that I can’t relate to at all.
Part of the reason why I like these guys is cuz they can be anti-government and funny at the same time. I guess it depends on your point of view.
On the other hand, couldn’t a more conservative person find them funny too? I, as a left-winger, personally found the conservatively-oriented cartoons “Broom Hilda” and “Bloom County” to be quite funny. Humor can cross party lines.
I really don’t think the words “paranoid” and “obsessive” apply to this body of work. Those words do apply to the character of Huey Freeman in “The Boondocks,” but that’s part of what makes him such a great character. As for the cartoonists themselves – well, I would use the words “intelligent,” “biting” and “witty.”
It was just barely to the right of Doonesbury. But only just barely.
That doesn’t detract from the fact that it was a wonderful strip and did, on occasion, poke fun at the left, but overall “conservative”?
How do you figure?
And back on topic, while I admire the hell out of the art in Boondocks, the characters/story don’t do anything for me. I put Magruder in the same category as Frank (“Liberty Meadows”) Cho: a brilliant cartoonist who desperately needs to team up with someone who can write.
I guess I got the impression that “Bloom County” was conservative precisely because it poked fun at the left. OK, swap “Bloom County” for “Shoe”. No, wait, that wouldn’t work – “Shoe” isn’t that funny.
This isn’t central to my main point anyway. In that post, I was just trying to give examples of conservatively-oriented cartoons that a leftie like me can still appreciate. No more examples come to mind, but I’m sure someone out there can give a few more.
Re: Aaron Magruder’s talents, I think you have it backwards. He is always apologizing for the “bad” art, but he has most of his fans because of his writing and dialogue. Kinda like the Simpsons.
How 'bout early B.C.? It used to be brilliant, funny and conservative. Then the brain-eater got Johnny Hart…*
On Magruder: Obviously our tastes differ (big surprise, given our other discussions! : I love Magruder’s art. It’s stylish, conveys emotion and movement. It’s stunningly good. He’s up there with “Rose Is Rose” or “Calvin and Hobbes” for expressive and stylish. But his writing (and it’s not just a left-right thing) annoys me. For me, the dialogue is shrill (though not nearly as shrill as “Mallard Fillmore” or “Doonsbury” since the '80s), and the punchlines limp in a way I have trouble describing.
*The brain-eater: the only way to explain how someone who was witty and intelligent descended into tin-foil-hat-land. See James P. Hogan for another good example of a brain-eater victim.
I take it back…I just read some of his more recent stuff from your link. He’s improved tremedously. Some of his stuff made me laugh out loud (This one and the week that follows (where the kid goes to Attack of the Clones) ) were wonderful!
Thanks for making me take a second look at Magruder!
Keith Knight is also a damn good rapper. I don’t think his band ever had a major label release, but I downloaded (legal) MP3s from the internet underground music database. He sampled the violin part from Camper Van Beethovens version of Matchstick Men in one song.
Magruder is an amasing artist, and for a daily strip Boondocks is quite funny- but when it’s unfunny it’s reeeeally unfunny.
Anyone who disses Boondocks will have to answer to me. It’s arguably the most intelligent thing on the funny pages these days, right next to Doonesbery and Non Sequiter.
As for African-American/black cartoonists, how about Robb Armstrong’s Jump Start? Granted, it’s a very conventional family-oriented comic, but Robb’s got good art, and the characters have heart. The current strip about Pop’s heart attack is giving the strip some welcome depth.
And to *tclouie, if you liked Static, you better be watching the static Shock cartoon on the WB network. I can’t remember though, if Static was created by Tony Isabella, who’s white…? Tony definietly did write for DC’s Black Lightning a while ago, though.
I love The K Chronicles. Ever since they started printing it in the ‘indie’ paper here, I’ve read it and either laughed my butt off or nodded my head in agreement. Sometimes it’s extremely intelligent, sharp stuff, and sometimes it’s good for a giggle.
And rjung, I like “Jump Start”, too. The only other comic we get is one I don’t really care for, “Curtis”. It’s because it’s the same old thing, over and over. Dad smokes too much, Curtis’ music is too loud, the baby brother starts arguments and gets away with it. I sincerely believe “Curtis” is the Garfield of African-American comics.
Interesting. I was just going to mention that I like Curtis, mainly because it tends to be about universal stuff. I’m a 41-year-old white guy, and I recognize stuff in the strip from my own upbringing.
We don’t get the paper, though, so I rarely see it. Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen the “same old thing” syndrome.
Re Johnny Hart: “brain eater” is way too harsh. I still like him, but it is evident that he’s having a harder time coming up with good ideas. Having been in the biz as long as he has – and with two strips, to boot – it’s small wonder. The strip for Sunday, 6/2 was good, though.
RR
Keith Knight is awesome. And he will write back to you if you email him! I missed Marginal Prophets last time they were here in Utah but I have an eye peeled for their return!
Aaron Macgruder rocks.Huey cracks me up. I died when he was chattin with the Star Wars groupie. That was funny… Star Wars is funny too… though not intentionally…
I wasn’t a big fan of Magruder when he first came out. His style was very different from other cartoonists due to his relentless use of “angry eyebrows”. (A cartoon figure with eyebrows drawn in a “V” shape will look angry.) The kid and his younger brother never lacked anger. Nor did their parental figure.
More recently, the lead character (with perpetually angry eyebrows) is more likely to be matched with a nonangry counterpart (usually his female friend). That (IMHO) allows for greater humor, less bitterness.
The thing I like about Boondocks is that the characters’ interactions are interesting. Most of the characters come off as very one-dimensional, but the cartoonist adds a dimension by putting them into conversations in which they follow their attribute to its logical extremity and it snaps back at them. (The one posted above about Osama at the Piggly Wiggly is just one of many.) He’s clever and funny with his characters.
The thing I don’t like about Boondocks is that Macgruder seem absolutely obsessed with trashing “dubya.” Having a political voice for his characters, and as the author through his characters, is one thing. Hammering away at one broken key on the xylophone hoping the tone will sound the next time is another thing. “Humor” about Bush in the strip is simply Macgruder taking every single cliche about the man and his presidency and rolling them into a ball, tossing it into the air, mushing it around a bit, hitting it with a rolling pin and hoping it comes out as a pizza. Not gonna happen. Other than that, his politics works, because the boys are not Macgruder’s political voice. They’re a satire on what he thinks is the voice of alot of people in his community.
I have to respect “Curtis” too. It doesn’t feel the need to make every single strip about a “black community” issue, it just tries to be funny in a way everyone can relate to (not that Boondocks is race-specific all the time either, but it draws a good proportion of its humour from that perspective.) It was admiringly patriotic in its post-911 strips, in which Curtis learns respect for the values of our country.
Boondocks is edgy. It’s one of those love-it-or-hate-it strips. The recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch comic survey showed the strip high on both the most-liked and most-hated lists. I personally rather enjoy his animation style, so I’ll put it on the like-it list for now. As long as he doesn’t dwell so much on Bush in the future and turn the strip into a one-trick-pony, I think Macgruder will be around for years.
Yes yes yes K Chronicles and Keith Knight is swell swell swell. The little book of his cartoons, Dances with Sheep, cracks me up. I hear Fear of a Black Marker is out-- need to find that. Haven’t heard much of the Marginal Prophets, though.
: I love Magruder’s art. It’s stylish, conveys emotion and movement. It’s stunningly good. He’s up there with “Rose Is Rose” or “Calvin and Hobbes” for expressive and stylish. But his writing (and it’s not just a left-right thing) annoys me. For me, the dialogue is shrill (though not nearly as shrill as “Mallard Fillmore” or “Doonsbury” since the '80s), and the punchlines limp in a way I have trouble describing.