I've Given Up On 9 Chickweed Lane

It’s a comic strip, for those who may not know. Here’s the link.

I’ve never been a real hardcore fan, but I’ve enjoyed Edda’s move to the city, the introduction of Seth and his boyfriend, even the (frequent, dialogue free) strips where the author/artist is just messing around with light and with forced perpective and showing off how well he draws. He draws really well, with the except of the chipmunk-cheeked, chinless faces, which I assume are done intenionally.

But the Hallmarks of Felinity, the aphorisms of Thorax – a lot of what he presents is IMO just plain boring. Now he’s devoting the strip to some bizarre flight of fancy in which Edda meets a unicorn. He has transformed the strip into two panels, one an illustration, one a box of brief text. This is IMO complete laziness and so obviously laziness as to be insulting to the audience. From the usual four-panel format that requires a significant amount of drawing and a plot that either moves forward through multiple strips or resolves within the four-panel format, he now provides only one panel and a plot that barely exists and barely moves forward one iota from day to day. How could it? Each day has only a single panel. And rather than allowing drawing and dialogue to present the story to the audience, he is telling the audience the story, not through the medium of comics or cartooning, but through text instead of through exposition.

It’s incredibly boring. It’s lazy. It’s like an illustrated children’s book instead of a comic strip – a children’s book that is being printed one page at a time. For me, the strip has always walked the line between being whimsical and being tedious. Now, unfortunately, there’s no question as to where it stands, IMO. I realize I’m only one reader, but I was a fairly sympathetic and interested one, and now I’m one more person who’s not bothering to read it.

Yeah, I agree. It’s dull and not worth reading. Bring back the creepy ephebophilia if you ask me.

I hear you… The past two weeks have been horrible, and I’m saying this as a person who would have considered it one of their favorite strips up until about two weeks ago.

I wonder if there’s any particular reason for this? Or is it really just laziness?

Everything you’ve listed here is why I read the strip in the first place. Those and the visual non-gags.

To each his own, and all that. I think the current stuff is actually really neat.

My local paper ran this strip for about a year, and although I loved the artwork, I could never get into the story or figure out much about the characters. From what I gathered, Edda is a ballerina, and she has a geeky looking boyfriend, a gay roommate/dance partner, and a frequently featured cat. Oh, and some fat priest who comes from another planet? And some nuns that completely baffled me.

I wasn’t sad when they replaced it with something else. It got to where I preferred the wordless arty, Edda stretching strips.

I also gave up on the strip but a long time ago.

Great illustrations, lousy writing.

I won’t be sorry when he finishes up this storyline, that’s for sure.

Dear Lord, please don’t let it run as long as A Midsummer Night’s Dream did! :eek: