Stripped, But Not Stripped Down
We spend most of our time in the Comics section of Not News focused on comic books, whether they’re monthly magazines, collected edition, or original novel-length works. But if we go back to the definition of comics suggested by Scott McCloud (in a nutshell: words and pictures arranged in a sequence), there is one area of American comics that we have pretty much neglected: the comic strip, long a standby of your local paper and now making its way onto the Web.
Part of the reason for the neglect is probably a frustration with the modern limitations of the form — short, three-or-four-panel strips tend to lend themselves more to gags and punchlines than complex storytelling. It’s exactly that frustration that led Judd Winick, for example, to end publication of his Frumpy the Clown strip and move on to projects like Barry Ween and Pedro and Me. At the same time, newspaper comic strips have a far wider circulation than even the most popular American comic, which might reach about 100,000 people a month. Obviously, comic strips are doing something to connect to readers that comic books aren’t; their contributions to the medium should not be ignored, even while we keep their limitations in mind.
In my opinion, no one ever did more to transcend those limitations than Bill Watterson with Calvin & Hobbes. That Watterson expertly captured the sense of wonder and excitement that being six years old had to offer is probably fairly common knowledge, but as I reread The Authoritative Calvin & Hobbes recently, I was struck by the sophistication of his humor and his wry, understated commentary on modern society. You don’t find many comic strip characters deciding to be fatalists, questioning the existence of God, and having a toy bulldozer push imaginary toxic waste into a sandbox landfill –certainly not six year olds who also like to dress up in a cape and pretend to be Stupendous Man.
That diversity of approaches is probably what helped Watterson sneak so many stinging rebukes under the radar. We laugh at Calvin’s antics, and we smile at the more heartfelt moments between Calvin, his parents, and of course Hobbes. (Another skillful move by Watterson — despite Calvin’s hyperactivity, this is not a dysfunctional family, or one that gets all its gags from people being mean to each other. The complexity of the relationships has got to be one of the core factors in the characters’ popularity.) We know what’s coming from an overtly political strip like Doonesbury or even the old Bloom County, so we can be on guard — but when a precocious yet innocent kid like Calvin expresses his frustration at pollution or other modern problems, it doesn’t seem as threatening. Yet the message is delivered all the same.
Watterson also tried to do as much as he could graphically within the newspaper format. He campaigned tirelessly for papers to give his Sunday strips the space they needed to tell their story, and even worked a jab at the current attitudes of newspapers toward the medium in one of the strips collected in Authoritative C & H. Also in that book is an introductory sequence that I assume was written for the volume, as Watteston takes advantage of the space a full-size page provides, and really makes me regret he didn’t try and branch out into comic book publishing. At the height of his popularity, or even now, he could have given the industry a major shot in the arm. Instead, frustrated by deadlines and space limitations, he retired in 1996.
Since then, the mantle of quality newspaper strips has been carried by fewer and fewer artists. Dilbert has had its moments, but the workplace joke shows some signs of getting old. Lynn Johnston’s For Better or Worse deserves credit for actually letting characters evolve and grow.
I have long been a fan of Bill Amend’s Fox Trot, which doesn’t quite have Watterson’s complexity but does feature a number of endearing characters — and Jason Fox is always a perfect vehicle for some kind of commentary on technology, science fiction, or other topic that would appeal to egghead types like me.
Doonesbury is still out there poking fun at politics and media, and it would be a grave error for me not to mention The Boondocks, probably one of the sharpest satirical strips to come along in quite some time. I often get a laugh out of The Boondocks, or smile at a well-placed jab, but at the same time I feel like Aaron McGruder lets the axes he has to grind get in the way of either complex characterizations or a recognition that the issues he wants to confront have no easy answer. (I know I have some problems with the way he depicts interracial marriages, for example.) Whether you agree with McGruder or not I’m very glad The Boondocks is out there, challenging readers with a perspective many of them have likely never encountered before.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the quality strips that might be appearing in your local paper — or even the quality strips appearing in mine. I certainly hope we’ll get to talk about more on the message boards.
That said, while newspaper strips have had their ups and downs over the course of the 90s, a number of artists are working their way onto the Web, often exploring formats that no newspaper would be likely to touch. I’ve never been a huge fan of episodic strips, because the plot . . . moves . . . so . . . slowly . . . in . . . four . . . panel . . . increments. The ability of artists to archive a strip on the web does much to solve that problem — it’s much easier to stop into a favorite strip’s site every week or two than to keep a month’s worth of newspapers lying around. A number of artists have even started “tooncasting” — providing code on their websites for anyone to take and incorporate into their own sites, which sends new strips out to all the affiliates as they’re posted to the web. The approach was pioneered by Steve Conley’s Astounding Space Thrills, which is an immensely fun and witty strip in the pulp science fiction tradition. Conley adds a few animated bells-and-whistles to some of his daily strips, but for the most part what you get on the screen in what you might find in your daily paper — except it’s in gorgeous, vibrant color. Other tooncasting strips can be found at Toonorama; I’m fond of Doctor Cyborg, which is drawn by Mike Oeming of Powers fame. And there are a number of online comics that don’t tooncast, including several at Salon — Kevin has e-mailed me several of Ruben Bolling’s Tom the Dancing Bug strips.
I suppose that in the end, the success of these strips show the power and potential of comics as a storytelling medium, if they’re used by creators who have something they care about passionately and the skill to pull it off — and publishers, whether in newsprint or electrons, willing to take chances and support those creators.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.