Those of you who read Something Positive
Jun. 25th, 2003 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynare aware that the news post that went along with the 22 June comic strip talked about newspaper comic strips that are not funny, or even good. I've ranted about these before, myself, so I won't burden you with that again. I just wanted to say that I've added another comic to my list of strips I shan't bother reading the more: Funky Winkerbean.
When I first started reading it, this strip was funny. Periodically it would erupt into fits of continuity and run a Dramatic Plot for a while, but it would revert into Funny later. I remember a lot of people apparently got alienated from the strip by the plot about the high schooler who got pregnant, and later even more by a strip where a student with a crush on her teacher attempted suicide when she found out he wasn't interested in her, or the one where someone - I forget whether it was that student or someone else - got injured by a pipe bomb in the post office. The readers who complained said they weren't Appropriate Subjects for the comics page and that they turned to the comics to get away from the nastiness of the rest of the news. After the plots finished, Batiuk went back to writing silly high schooler jokes, or silly family jokes, or what have you. It went okay for a time, especially when one realised he was letting characters age.
Lately, though...
Lately the strip feels like it's trying to become the American equivalent of For Better Or For Worse. The problem is, it's trying too hard. Every strip is Dramatic Plot Continuity these days. This week features the start of a plot about a woman who got fired from her job because chemo for breast cancer was eating into her time at work, a case which Les's wife agreed to take because she'd had breast cancer herself. This was separated by one week's worth of 'I have a really bad memory' humor strips from nearly a month - maybe more - of a plot about the main character's soldier cousin and how he escaped being a prisoner of war in Afghanistan. Immediately before that we had a plot about the soldier character's high school girlfriend (whom he left for the military because he caused the drunk driving accident that cost her an arm and a music career) going out with the Comic Book Guy, whom she had set up a blind date with on the Internet. I don't remember before that...
Thing is, it's not funny. It's plot-heavy, and the plots don't feel particularly relevant. They feel like Batiuk is going through the newspaper and saying 'I want to do a strip about that', then dropping characters into place. It feels as if he wants to write an opinion column about current events issues, but he can't get one, so he draws pictures instead. That's all well and good, but there's nothing very remarkable about the stuff he's doing - it's all dead common, and it's nothing that I haven't seen before.
Add to this the fact that the art style is now different, if you will. I'm not sure when it happened. I think it was sometime during the blind date storyline, or a bit earlier. The artist can't seem to decide whether he wants to be doing Mary Worth/Apartment 3-G Dramatic Style, or his old easily-cartooned but still decently drawn style. I wouldn't ordinarily argue about a change in graphic style, but I don't like the new style. It reminds me of certain 1970's comics - a minimal number of lines, and not all that attractive to look at.
In short: The strip is being overwhelmed by plot lines that just aren't interesting and aren't funny, plus it looks bad compared to its old self. At least, to my way of thinking it does. What gets me is that Batiuk has generally taken positions in the strip that seem to synch up with a politically liberal outlook on the world, and I still find his plotline stuff vaguely preachy and distinctly boring. When I want well-done storylines, I'll go to Lynn Patterson; when I want political or social commentary, I'll go to Garry Trudeau or Cantu and Castellanos (the team behind the strip Baldo; when I want serial strip art, I'll wait for Sunday and read Prince Valiant. Prince Valiant is cool. This strip is not, and so, like The Lockhorns, Fred Basset, Beetle Bailey, Cathy, Dennis the Menace, Heathcliff, and Andy Capp, it's going in the bin of Strips I Won't Even Bother Looking At Any More.
When I first started reading it, this strip was funny. Periodically it would erupt into fits of continuity and run a Dramatic Plot for a while, but it would revert into Funny later. I remember a lot of people apparently got alienated from the strip by the plot about the high schooler who got pregnant, and later even more by a strip where a student with a crush on her teacher attempted suicide when she found out he wasn't interested in her, or the one where someone - I forget whether it was that student or someone else - got injured by a pipe bomb in the post office. The readers who complained said they weren't Appropriate Subjects for the comics page and that they turned to the comics to get away from the nastiness of the rest of the news. After the plots finished, Batiuk went back to writing silly high schooler jokes, or silly family jokes, or what have you. It went okay for a time, especially when one realised he was letting characters age.
Lately, though...
Lately the strip feels like it's trying to become the American equivalent of For Better Or For Worse. The problem is, it's trying too hard. Every strip is Dramatic Plot Continuity these days. This week features the start of a plot about a woman who got fired from her job because chemo for breast cancer was eating into her time at work, a case which Les's wife agreed to take because she'd had breast cancer herself. This was separated by one week's worth of 'I have a really bad memory' humor strips from nearly a month - maybe more - of a plot about the main character's soldier cousin and how he escaped being a prisoner of war in Afghanistan. Immediately before that we had a plot about the soldier character's high school girlfriend (whom he left for the military because he caused the drunk driving accident that cost her an arm and a music career) going out with the Comic Book Guy, whom she had set up a blind date with on the Internet. I don't remember before that...
Thing is, it's not funny. It's plot-heavy, and the plots don't feel particularly relevant. They feel like Batiuk is going through the newspaper and saying 'I want to do a strip about that', then dropping characters into place. It feels as if he wants to write an opinion column about current events issues, but he can't get one, so he draws pictures instead. That's all well and good, but there's nothing very remarkable about the stuff he's doing - it's all dead common, and it's nothing that I haven't seen before.
Add to this the fact that the art style is now different, if you will. I'm not sure when it happened. I think it was sometime during the blind date storyline, or a bit earlier. The artist can't seem to decide whether he wants to be doing Mary Worth/Apartment 3-G Dramatic Style, or his old easily-cartooned but still decently drawn style. I wouldn't ordinarily argue about a change in graphic style, but I don't like the new style. It reminds me of certain 1970's comics - a minimal number of lines, and not all that attractive to look at.
In short: The strip is being overwhelmed by plot lines that just aren't interesting and aren't funny, plus it looks bad compared to its old self. At least, to my way of thinking it does. What gets me is that Batiuk has generally taken positions in the strip that seem to synch up with a politically liberal outlook on the world, and I still find his plotline stuff vaguely preachy and distinctly boring. When I want well-done storylines, I'll go to Lynn Patterson; when I want political or social commentary, I'll go to Garry Trudeau or Cantu and Castellanos (the team behind the strip Baldo; when I want serial strip art, I'll wait for Sunday and read Prince Valiant. Prince Valiant is cool. This strip is not, and so, like The Lockhorns, Fred Basset, Beetle Bailey, Cathy, Dennis the Menace, Heathcliff, and Andy Capp, it's going in the bin of Strips I Won't Even Bother Looking At Any More.
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Date: 2003-06-25 11:27 am (UTC)Ah, sweet shame.