More like Funky Winker-MEAN (Part 2 of 2)

I greatly admire the really good cartoonists. I like the poignancy of Peanuts. The offbeat humor of The Far Side always gets me. And I’m amazed at how Calvin and Hobbes can make you laugh and make you think (perhaps I’ll follow up with another entry specifically on Bill Watterson and his creation). I know those three strips are no longer in development but let’s not forget that there are certainly some terrific comics in production today. I think Mr. Boffo by Joe Martin is terrific but surprisingly unknown. Speed Bump by Dave Coverly is interesting and works well. And Dilbert by Scott Adams reaches people that would never pick up the funny pages otherwise.

[Warning: rants ahead]

There’s a downside, of course. Maybe it’s because I love comics so much that it hurts so much to see them so...not good. My issues start with the newspapers themselves. Several decades ago, a decent Sunday paper might have a comics section of 30+ pages. And each of those Sunday strips might have half a page with which to work. Considering the real estate allotted to comics today, that’s astounding. I think the Indy Star, a reasonably “large” paper, prints something like six pages of Sunday funnies with the strips being little larger than the minuscule weekday strips. Add to that the fact that the first two panels (essentially the first line) of today’s Sundays have to be “throw away” work to be printed or not printed at the paper’s discretion and…well…it’s bad.

The other downside? The strips. They simply aren’t funny. Now I could probably read Flash Gordon, Tarzan, or Spider-Man but those aren’t intended to be funny. But, c’mon, has anyone read Funky Winkerbean in the last ten years? Seriously, alcoholism, cancer, chemotherapy, death, missing limbs, lost biological parents, etc. It sounds more like a season of Degrassi Junior High than anything funky. Of course, the odd thing is that I actually read Funky but only because the thing's a train wreck. Then there are the reprints of Peanuts. Reprints?! Not cool. It seems like most of what’s left in the funnies are heavy-handed political or social commentary. Asking readers to think about an issue is great. Unfortunately, so much of it now is the literary equivalent of a sucker punch in the face…with brass knuckles…embossed with some kind of bumper sticker-ism. Ugg. Don't we get enough of that from John Mellencamp?

I do have hope. Most notably, that hope springs from the web. Nowhere can one get their work “out there” as easily as on the web. The possibilities are endless. Online comics can be animated, any length, color, black and white, you name it. Sure, it creates even more competition for the printed strips. And, yes, the ease of online publishing has created a sea of junk which makes it difficult to find “the good stuff”. Mr. Boffo, Speed Bump, and Dilbert are all available online so that’s a plus. While I’m surfing, maybe I’ll find something else new and, you know, not painful.

Perhaps I’ll review the work of Scott McCloud and his views on web comics. Pretty interesting stuff. In the meantime, I’m breaking out The Authoratative Calvin and Hobbes and The Prehistory of the Far Side.

Maybe this should've been 3 parts.