My seventh grade teacher, Mark Esper assigned us a project where we had to illustrate current events with comics. Not like I didn't read comics before, but it was mostly Family Circus and Peanuts, you know, the Funnies. But this project was a eye opener, because I started reading Doonsbury, and the Editorial cartoons, all the cartoons in the paper. I read it all, and cut them out, put them in a notebook and wrote why I thought they applied to current events. I still think about comics as social commentary, cultural context.
I have read For Better or For Worse for 20 years, despite it being about families and babies, it is not laugh out loud funny most of the time. But Lyn Johnston did a story about Lawrence, who is gay. No big political point, just here is a young man who is gay, and he has friends and family and is struggling with being honest. A series of four panel drawings that encapsulated a world wide realization of what freedom for all actually means. Because her characters grow up, the stories flow through. Because a dog dies, as old dogs do. I have a deep affection for this comic, she keeps surprizing me.
I have also realized that Doonsbury is at it's best dealing with the life and death issues of war, Vietnam and Iraq. That I must be aware, but I needn't wallow to the point of paralysis, grim laughter is my relief. Over the decades, much of my news came from that strip, just as many people get much of their news from Jon Stewart. Not because I am flip or uncaring, but because I must filter the flow a bit in order to take it all in. The tragedy of the world crushing me like a broken dam is not sustainable. I must step back and squint my eyes, lest I be blinded and broken. Like looking at the sun, I need a pinhole box.
And then there are the strips I abandoned because I grew up. I read Family Circle, Garfield, Blondie, every Peanuts collection at the library, they were all aimed at me. I gradually realized how much the same they all were, same jokes, simplistic, repetitious like sitcoms. I liked Cathy when I was young, I grew up and tiredof her, as her whining became unbearable, her self pity nauseating, her anti-feminist conflicts grating. I read The Lockhorns marital discord not understanding, but it was available as cultural information. Aimed at children.
Dilbert was wonderful when it was about engineers, of no interest to me when it was about cubicle world. For me, it lost it's appeal as it became more staid, and commercial. Creativity, humor, topicality, given over to the grinding demands of the market. People want them, read them, not because they are good, but because they are comforting, the same tired jokes every morning, safe predictable subjects, stasis. Children can justify it, it is all new to them, and they need continuity and repetition. For adults, it is a trap, or a symptom of being trapped. Like easy listening music, macaroni and cheese, a kind of comfort food for the sense of humor. Bland and harmless, save for damage to the wit. The fact that I am certain that anyone ever reading this will know all these comics is part of why I probably hate them. Pernicious and omnipresent, they are over-told jokes, overplayed songs.
Gary Larson and Bill Waterson had admirable integrity by stopping when they were done talking. Far Side and Calvin and Hobbs never became trite. Thanks, guys.
My favorite comics, now as ever, either change with time, or reflect the times. I am still always willing to say "enough" when a comic strip loses it's edge. When I saw the Target symbol on a bag in one recent strip, one of those where the kid never grows up, I stopped reading it. I am still often enough amused by Mother Goose and Grim to keep reading. I used to think Luann was lame, until he started the story about the brother becoming a firefighter. I gave it another chance, and glad I did, because the story was worthwhile.
I read quite a few strips every day, and I do not know why some make me laugh, and some leave me cold. I do know that it is important to occasionally ask myself why I read a strip every day, and if it is worth the time, and if there are others worth knowing about. These are the stories of our culture, small stories that speak to us, and about us. They are the signs of the times. And, they make me laugh.
I had links here, but most of them are now broken.
3 comments:
Yeah, there's a certain stage at which I realize that it points to something wrong, if I keep laughing at the same joke over and over.
The really wonderful comics though I can come back to over and over and it's always something new.
Do you remember Hobbes cutting Calvin's hair?
("Well... in some places it looks sort of like a mohawk...")
Until recently, I never read comics on a regular basis. Goes to show how the interests of your friends tend to slowly seep out and influence what you are exposed to.
I noticed your sidebar has an addition. Appropriate.
I do remember the hair cutting. I related to it, since I cut my hair when I was little, wanting to use the scissors but knowing that I shouldn't cut anything not mine. The only thing I could think of was my hair, figured I had the right to cut that. My mother thought not.
Might go a long way to explaining why I buzzed all my hair off for a year or so. In my 30's. Might someday do it again. In fact, I have promised to by the time I am 60, and stop dying it, let it be whatever color it wants to be when it grows back in. Should be interesting.
Well, only to me, but that is what I meant.
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