We all seem to agree the current comics suck. But how might we improve them? Pick up a copy of today’s (April 1) Sunday comics and give it a try. How would you fix or tinker with this day’s strips to make them funnier, or at least more interesting?
My attempts (limited to dialog change because I can’t draw):
In today’s Doonesbury: I’d have the kid in the last frame say “Mommy, I was worried about Zonker, but now I’m more worried about the poltergeists that are moving the lamp and picture around in his room.”
In today’s Hi & Lois: I’d have the kid in the last frame say, “I want to grow up to pitch for the Orioles.”
In today’s Garfield: the dialog would go like this:
Frame 1: “Things are going to change around here Garfield.”
Frame 2: Garfield thinks, “So you mean we’re finally going to have something different going on?”
Frame 3: He continues thinking, “You’re going to actually start dating that veterinarian woman and have a hot and steamy relationship?”
Frame 4: Continuing, “Odie and I are really going to get along, develop mutual respect, and engage in some clever and witty exchanges?”
Frame 5: Continuing, “Furthermore, we’re going to retire any and all remarks about Monday, lasagna, your hayseed relatives, and your overall cluelessness?”
Frame 6: “No Garfield. You’re getting fixed tomorrow.” And Garfield thinks, “You mean I’m not already fixed?”
I was going to change today’s Blondie, but that one was too weird on its own.
I would take the advice of Paige from FoxTrot and have the cartoonists do each other’s work like they did in 1997. Not every April Fool’s Day-maybe just every two or three years.
I tossed this morning’s funny pages after reading them at an airport, and I’m not surprised to say that I can’t remember ANY punchlines. Except for “Blondie,” which I remember staring at with my brow furrowed.
(To respond to the OP: More gratuitous busty chicks in “The Lockhorns.” A horrible strip, or rather series of one-panels, but the artist has a certain way with gratuitous busty chicks.)
I’ve nothing better to do, so here’s a list of all the cartoonists parodied in April 1st’s FoxTrot (all of whom Amend apologizes to in the last panel):
2nd panel: Jason in the style of Cathy Guisewite (Cathy)
3rd panel: Jason in the style of Chris Browne (Hagar the Horrible)
4th panel: Quincy (iguana) in the style of Scott Adams (Dilbert), Jason in the style of Aaron McGruder (The Boondocks)
5th panel: Peter in the style of Garry Truedau (Doonesbury), Andy (mom) in the style of Lynn Johnson (For Better or For Worse), Roger (dad) in the style of Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott (Baby Blues), Jason in the style of Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes)
Much obliged, mobo85. I read the comic online, and it was so small I didn’t notice the apologies line, and even now, as I check back, it’s too small to read.
Also, the style doesn’t match as good as the others. I just checked the paper, and the nose is right though.
Personally, I’d think comics would be a hell of a lot better if they gave the cartoonist more room to work with.
I support Watterson contention that editors need to give the comics more room in the papers.
I don’t think that Andy was drawn in the Lynn Johnston style but I don’t know what style it is. I’ll agree on all the rest.
Phoenix has a full sheet of daily comis and six and a half devoted to the sunday funnies so they don’t have to be shrunk. Of course if they weeded out all the lame comics… The Family Circus is on top because Bil Keane is a homeboy. The irony is that while one of the running gags is to have “Billy” draw the cartoons when dad can’t, Bil’s real life son Jeff has been drawing most of the cartoons based on dad’s notes.
If the comics were MORE like this one every day, I’d be a very happy reader. “Blondie”'s got me confused now—literally hours and hours after reading it.
The real challenge, I think, is not to scrap the dear old comics, but to breathe fresh life into them.
Look at “The Family Circus” in today’s paper, as an example. This comic strip is so maligned, but there might be something there to work with yet. Did Dolly actually follow Billy all the way around without him hearing her? How could this be? Possibly Billy is going deaf (Dramatic turn!) or sinking deeper into his fiction-loving fantasy world. Or Did Dolly just sneak out behind him at that moment…and if so what then? The real flaw in today’s strip was not the “path” segment of the cartoon, but the punchline.
Perhaps the punchline could have been that Billy was trying to find Dolly to tell her that everyone was eating ice cream…and now she misses out due to her little game.
Or perhaps the joke could be that Dolly’s invisible dead grandparents were chasing her around all afternoon as well.
Or maybe Billy could say, “Hah hah. Very funny Dolly. But we have to get out now because the house is going to be tented for termites.”
Granted, these are weak punchlines as well–but I’m writing off the top of my head. In any case, the “April Fool’s” joke was the lamest imaginable. I believe we all here could do better. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. (Though I can imagine a humerous “Family Circus” cartoon where PJ is actually getting thrown out with the wastewater.) It takes years to establish characters such as those in “The Family Circus” so deep into our common national psyche. Now is the opportunity to do something creative with them, not throw them out like yesterday’s newspaper.
You know him…he’s the one that drew “Piotr Plavinowich”, that ran for 53 years in the Warsaw Picayune-Reader.
Seriously, though, I had no problem understanding Blondie on Sunday at all. I didn’t think it was particularly funny, but I understood what was going on. Of course, the “didn’t think it was particularly funny” part is par for the course, anyway.