Golden Treasury was in my carry-on bag during a loooooooong flight that I took recently, and I'm really glad that I had it with me.
Shaenon took it away from me as soon as I got back and knocked out that review so quickly and effortlessly that I question why I ever even try to write about comics.
Mr. Thompson, I'm glad that Shaenon Garrity has the perspicacity to enjoy your strip. I'm sorry that her review has so much self-indulgent writing and so little examination of your work. I wish that she weren't writing just to see herself write.
"Making oddball characters work in a daily strip is hard; that’s why most comic-strip characters are flat and predictable stereotypes."
I couldn't agree more. Syndicated strips are in that period TV sitcoms were in, when they tried to assemble a formulaic group of zanies but could never replicate the ensemble comedy of the Mary Tyler Moore show.
I try to be supportive of the new stuff, but how many misanthropic talking animals and old people do we really need?
And I agree with her, too, that your group of zanies works very well indeed. Probably because it wasn't assembled by matching numbered tabs with slots on a template.
Thanks for sharing your book with Shaenon, Andrew! Glad it got you through a long flight.
MJB, I gotta say I always enjoy Shaenon Garrity's work, like her work, even when she's not saying nice things about CdS. Go here and poke around, it's all good. http://www.comixology.com/columns/all_the_comics_in_the_world/ or http://www.gocomics.com/skinhorse
Thanks, Mike. I always thought writing decent characters was the hardest yet noblest calling, comic strip-wise. (hey, isn't that Timese?)
Oh yeah, I like TKAM a lot, it's one of those books that I read enough to go through multiple copies, and now my daughters have done the same. When I reread it in sometime in the mid eighties, it struck me that it was almost a children's book for adults. I think it was the part where Dill's in the courthouse square with Scout and he gets a drink from a character thought to be kinda dicey and it turns out it's just Coke in the paper bag, not whiskey. Somebody recently pointed out how impossibly upright Atticus is - his only failing is thinking he's a lousy parent - and how the book's characters, lovable and solid as they are, tend to fall to extremes that wouldn't work if the writing wasn't so compelling. Whatever, when I read it last, out loud a few years ago when my older daughter was 12, I choked up at the end like always, even though I could recite it from memory.
And Mike, Ha! That'd be a great plot twist and an interesting direction in a newspaper strip.
7 comments:
I loved the TCJ review. Very spot-on.
Golden Treasury was in my carry-on bag during a loooooooong flight that I took recently, and I'm really glad that I had it with me.
Shaenon took it away from me as soon as I got back and knocked out that review so quickly and effortlessly that I question why I ever even try to write about comics.
Mr. Thompson, I'm glad that Shaenon Garrity has the perspicacity to enjoy your strip. I'm sorry that her review has so much self-indulgent writing and so little examination of your work. I wish that she weren't writing just to see herself write.
"Making oddball characters work in a daily strip is hard; that’s why most comic-strip characters are flat and predictable stereotypes."
I couldn't agree more. Syndicated strips are in that period TV sitcoms were in, when they tried to assemble a formulaic group of zanies but could never replicate the ensemble comedy of the Mary Tyler Moore show.
I try to be supportive of the new stuff, but how many misanthropic talking animals and old people do we really need?
And I agree with her, too, that your group of zanies works very well indeed. Probably because it wasn't assembled by matching numbered tabs with slots on a template.
Thanks for sharing your book with Shaenon, Andrew! Glad it got you through a long flight.
MJB, I gotta say I always enjoy Shaenon Garrity's work, like her work, even when she's not saying nice things about CdS. Go here and poke around, it's all good.
http://www.comixology.com/columns/all_the_comics_in_the_world/
or
http://www.gocomics.com/skinhorse
Thanks, Mike. I always thought writing decent characters was the hardest yet noblest calling, comic strip-wise. (hey, isn't that Timese?)
We have the character named Dill and that sequence where Petey goes dressed up for Trick or Treat as Boo Radley. Any chance you're a TKAM fan?
Stay tuned for the extended storyline where Dill and Alice go out to Kansas so he can write a book about a murder.
Oh yeah, I like TKAM a lot, it's one of those books that I read enough to go through multiple copies, and now my daughters have done the same. When I reread it in sometime in the mid eighties, it struck me that it was almost a children's book for adults. I think it was the part where Dill's in the courthouse square with Scout and he gets a drink from a character thought to be kinda dicey and it turns out it's just Coke in the paper bag, not whiskey. Somebody recently pointed out how impossibly upright Atticus is - his only failing is thinking he's a lousy parent - and how the book's characters, lovable and solid as they are, tend to fall to extremes that wouldn't work if the writing wasn't so compelling. Whatever, when I read it last, out loud a few years ago when my older daughter was 12, I choked up at the end like always, even though I could recite it from memory.
And Mike, Ha! That'd be a great plot twist and an interesting direction in a newspaper strip.
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