Funnies Will Tear Us Apart, Again
Posted on | July 26, 2004 at 12:53 pm | 8 Comments
This morning while eating breakfast, I come to find out that the comic strip Go Fish (a one-panel strip about a psychiatrist and his family drawn by the Fusco Brothers guy and which is not particularly funny) has been replaced in the Rocky Mountain News by a strip called Prickly City. After reading today’s installment, I got the distinct impression (verified by an accompanying article) that the tone of this strip is an overt distinctly politically conservative one. Seeing as how there are a number of strips with an overt liberal agenda, I see nothing wrong with there being some for the conservatives. However, it has to be funny, since it is a comic strip. Could this one be the one at last to buck the trend exemplified by such strips as Pluggers and B.C. and actually be a funny conservative strip? I’ve read the archives on the web page (it’s a new strip and only goes back a few weeks) and I have to say that so far the answer is a resounding “no”. At least “liberal” strips like Doonesbury, Boondocks, and Non-Sequiter established their comedy credentials before getting too much into the political arena. Prickly City is diving in face first, starting with gay marriage and Michael Moore.
I wish I could provide a link to the RMN article about the strip, since it includes some interesting comments from the strip’s author about what he is trying to do, but the News didn’t post it online. I found it fascinating that the strip’s author kept singling out Bloom County as the kind of thing he was providing an alternative voice to. How long has it been since Bloom County has been around – 10 years or more? Why didn’t he use a more recent example? (Maybe he was talking about the weekly Opus strip, which to me doesn’t seem to so much have a political agenda as much as it wants to take up as much space in the Sunday funnies as possible while not really having anything to say or being particularly funny.) I don’t even remember Bloom County being all that preachy – at least it didn’t start out that way.
When you get right down to it, aren’t most comic strips already of a conservative bent? Take for example the number of strips that espouse “family values” like Rose Is Rose, Baby Blues, Drabble and Zits. For every Zippy the Pinhead, there’s ten Family Circuses – strips that are conservative just by virtue of having been around so long and still be produced by Old Guys or their progeny. I’m not going to begrudge the conservatives a comic strip that so obviously lets it all hang out, but I wonder how many will actually want something like this representing their views. A lot of liberals don’t always agree with Doonesbury after all (I’ll admit the strip has had about as many or more downs than ups over the years). The thing I most want out of a comic strip is humor first, social relevance second. I don’t think Prickly City is going to cut it.
Latre.
Comments
8 Responses to “Funnies Will Tear Us Apart, Again”
July 27th, 2004 @ 10:26 am
I’m with you on this comics business, of course, Rog, except that I haven’t seen Prickly City, didn’t even click on the link you offered, and will not check our local rag (which goes unread by me) to see if we’ve picked it up (likely). However, I seem to recall The Boondocks got right into it, if maybe in a more sociopolitical than outright political fashion. Didn’t take McGruder long to get to his point, regardless.
July 27th, 2004 @ 12:34 pm
You read the funnies?
It’s one thing to collect comic books, but… the funnies haven’t been funny in ages.
Come to think of it – you read the paper?
July 27th, 2004 @ 7:19 pm
Yes Ben, I read the funnies. I know that to you and your comedy connoisseur buddies they are the Boone’s Farm in the wine cellar of humor, but how can anyone not love (for example) Pearls Before Swine?
And yes I do read the paper – I keep hoping Dear Abby will answer my letters. Plus, how else would I know who J.Lo is marrying this week and if Britney is really pregnant or not?
July 27th, 2004 @ 9:16 pm
I read the "Prickly City" archive (hey – its initials are "PC" – now the guy’s probably gonna wanna change it) and…I wasn’t tempted to laugh even once. See, if you’re going to make jokes about (say) Michael Moore, why not use the strip to set up something funny about him…instead of relying, evidently, on the assumption that your audience will "know" Moore is an irrational buffoon? (And I’m waiting for conservatives to point out actual irrationality – as opposed to inconvenient facts they disagree with…) And the gay marriage strips…yeesh, those were awful. Are these folks utterly ignorant that what we think of as marriage (two people in lurv) is a recent phenomenon – not the "bedrock of society" for thousands of years? Arranged marriages, protopolitical alliances: that’s the history of marriage (and the bedrock of society, I guess). Okay, I’ll shut up now. (Oh – and another terrifyingly unfunny conservative strip? "Mallard Fillmore")
July 29th, 2004 @ 9:32 am
Can Edith Prickley sue?
July 29th, 2004 @ 11:06 am
At least the guy who does Mallard Fillmore can draw. PC just looks like James Dobson threw up on the page.
Most of the political strips, left and right, seem to be under the impression that saying something sarcastically automatically makes it funny. Doonesbury is the exception; it’s quite uneven, but it’s genuine satire.
August 2nd, 2004 @ 1:14 pm
Thing is, funny conservatives are too darn busy doing whatever conservatives do to be involved in something as ephemeral as writing funnies.
That’s also why liberal books outsell conservative books about a zillion to one – conservatives don’t have time to read.
Come to that, I suppose that’s also why colleges are dominated by liberal professors: "Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach."
So, if liberals spent more time actually DOING stuff instead of talking or whining about stuff, we’d see more balance in these areas.
August 2nd, 2004 @ 8:35 pm
I thought it was the liberals who never had time for anything ephemeral, since they’re spending all their time raising taxes and writing/passing laws to make government bigger? Oh wait, I temporarily forgot that’s it the Republicans who are trying to intrude into every area of our lives lately and who are spending money like mad. You’re right.