My local paper has run the comic strip Mallard Fillmore for only several months now, and there have already been 3 0r 4 references to Chappaquiddick. I’m wondering if anyone has kept track of how many of these thigh-slappers have been done in the history of the strip. We wouldn’t want to shift into overkill, now.
You know, I would have guessed that strip (being timely) is targeted more towards the recent antics of Patrick Kennedy. (Antics?! Hardly the appropriate word - but it’s late here).
Of course, it does fit in regard to Teddy.
The Doctor
Obviously he’s drawing a connection between the recent incident and the “classic” one, but it counts.
These have been some of the good strips. Usually he makes up a funny looking liberal, makes him say something that no mainstream liberal says, and gets his yucks out of that.
This strip has been in my paper for 10 years that I’ve been here, and Tinsley comes up with a funny joke about once a presidential term. And you haven’t lived until you see him try to make fun of Doonsbury. :rolleyes:
That would require reading Mallard Fillmore on a regular basis, and quite frankly I would rather lick a car battery. There are good comic strips, there are bad comic strips, there are political cartoons, and then there’s Mallard Fillmore.
Patrick Kennedy’s recent crash gave Mallard a chance to dust off his favorite sharp stick. He linked Patrick and his uncle Teddy by speaking of “cars driven by Kennedys.” The strip’s cartoonist, Bruce Tinsley, prefers to beat on the same gag for four or five days, so we’ll probably see at least another “driving Kennedy” strip in this rash.
Can you remember the date of the comic? I want to see how he made fun of Doonsbury.
I’m going to guess he has the duck saying, “Doonsbury has too many words. They make my brain hurt.”
Am I right?
-Joe
No. What you wrote has the possibility of making somebody laugh - so no chance it would ever make it into this strip. Sorry, I don’t remember the date - it wasn’t recent. Let me search rec.arts.comics.strips, which,. when I was reading it, had a continuing thread called DS (for Duck Shit) which discussed the latest Tinsley travesty.
I’m sure it was “Doonesbury is stupid.”
That’s his punchline for everything.
Since starting this thread I’m 2 for 2.
The link at the top of the thread shows the current day’s strip. From there you can go to previous ones.
Actually, Tinsley’s feebly attempted to start a feud with Gary Trudeau by accusing him and “Doonesbury” of being too old, too out-of-touch, too unfunny, and (especially) too liberal to remain on the comic page.
So Doonesbury was so unfunny that he’s trying to one-up (down?) it?
-Joe
3 for 3.
Where Doonesbury’s weekly theme usually involves an ongoing situation that plays out over the six days (Sunday strips are almost never continuity), Mallard Fillmore’s weekly theme involves the repetition of the same joke seven times.
Zing.
(Incidentally, my earlier post should read, “Actually, Tinsley feebly attempted… .” I was changing the wording of my posting and forgot to remove the possessive.)
What I found interesting about “Mallard Fillmore’s” attack on “Doonesbury” and Trudeau is that it was a rare instance of a cartoonist using his strip to trash another cartoonist and his strip. From what I’ve read about cartoonists, they seem to be a fairly close nit group (at least the ones who write comic strips). If there’s any ill will between any of them, it’s mostly kept out of the public eye. Berkeley Breathed also used to take not-so-good-natured potshots at other cartoonists in both his strips and in interviews and he ended up alienating himself from most of this fellow cartoonists. I wonder if Tinsley still gets invited to any cartoonist’s conventions.
Doh! :smack: Tripped up on a possessive again! That should be “**cartoonists’ ** conventions.”
Does that mean they knew each other as larvae?
(I realize that my own tendency to not strike letter keys hard enough to properly register them frequently leaves me open to this sort of thing in return. But I couldn’t resist.)
Is that a fact? I’m only aware of him repeatedly attacking “Garfield,” and I’m sure Jim Davis (who can’t be called a cartoonist in any more than a strictly academic sense anyway) couldn’t have cared less. Conversely, in one of his collections Breathed recalled all the messages of support he received from fellow cartoonists after he broke his back in an accident.
In a few strips, Breathed also took shots at Charles Schulz while he was alive for the way he let his characters be used to sell anything (in particular, Metropolitan Life Insurance). Granted, it was an obvious target for criticism but you still don’t often see one cartoonist publicly take another one to task (especially someone who was regarded as a titan in his field like Schulz). It seems to be an “11th Commandment” among cartoonists and Tinsley violated it even more flagrantly.
As for Breathed not being well liked among his brethren, early on there was some grumbling that he had ripped off his visual style and his humor from Gary Trudeau. There were also loud cries of outrage when he later won the Pulitzer Prize for best editorial cartoonist. As you might expect, much of the anger came from other editorial cartoonists. I remember hearing an interview with Pat Oliphant in which attacked the award as a travesty. Additionally, I notice Breathed in interviews sometimes gives off a bit of an arrogant vibe and that probably irritates some people in the industry.
(Regarding “close nit” versus “close knit,” I checked with Dictionary.com and the proper form is the latter. However, a Google search of the term indicates the use of the incorrectly spelled version is also common.)