Good Morning, Tiger
Well, as Marc promised, the comics in my Florida paper WERE in color! The hotel paper was USA Today, but I did get Florida Today on Saturday and Sunday. And yes, all the Saturday comics were in full, riotous color.
The "highlight" of the comics page for me was my re-introduction to Tiger. I recall this strip from my distant past. Maybe it was in the Nashville paper in the 80s? I do not remember, but this is not my first exposure to Tiger. I had wiped my memory of the strip, like you do anything that isn't worth the brain cells to remember. Here is Monday's strip in case you are unfamiliar with this particular brand of "humor:"
OK, so Tiger, the main character, is the chap in the black ball cap. The other dude is Tiger's best friend, Hugo. I learned this on the "About the Characters" page. There, I also learned about the two primary girls in the strip. Bonnie is "Hugo's outspoken yet brutally honest 'girlfriend'." Then there's Suzy: "She's everything that Bonnie isn't — blonde, feminine, innocent and liked by everyone. That makes them rivals!" And ZZZZZZZZZZ. . . . What is WITH the Betty and Veronica-ization of the funny pages? Dennis has Gina and Margaret; hell, even Curtis has Chutney and Michelle. It's the ultra-feminine pretty girl vs. the tomboy. ZZZZZZZ
When I was in Florida, the strip I saw included Tiger's brother "Punkinhead." Here he is in today's strip:
As you can see, he looks remarkably like Alfalfa from the Little Rascals gang. Of course, any humor modeled after 1920s-1930s childhood characters is cutting edge, and always funny. You think I am being sarcastic, but need I remind you of Eddie Murphy's Buh-weet? You can get a laugh just reading this.
Shockingly, Tiger isn't as funny as Eddie Murphy.
This strip first appeared in 1965. The creator retired in 2004 and died in 2005. He didn't have a son or friend take over, but the strip, much like Peanuts, is now in reruns. This is, according to toonopedia, because the gags are, ahem, "timeless." Hey, just like the Little Rascals!
And, oh my God. Why is this still taking up space in the funny pages? THE CREATOR IS DEAD. THESE ARE ALL RERUNS. I am ALMOST willing to make an exception for the seminal and often brilliant Peanuts. But Tiger? Really? This takes up space that could be given to other, new artists? Why? There are people who would complain if it were taken away from the funny pages? Can't they accept that the artist is not creating NEW stuff? That he is DEAD???
What if other entertainment venues followed the same logic as the comics? So, Mickey Mantle retires. But, the Yankees just keep sending him out to play. Then, he dies. So, all Weekend at Bernie's-like, the Yankees send his corpse up to bat (this may be what Ted Williams was up to with the whole cryogenics freezing thing). Better yet, when the Mick's turn to bat comes, they could just play a rerun of a previous Mantle at bat from the 1950s or 1960s.
Then again, I do listen to the Beatles from time to time, and half of them are dead. And, you go to an art museuem to look at say, Rembrandt. And he's dead, too. So, are the comics supposed to be like fine art? Or oldies music?
WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY ARE THE COMICS SO HOPELESSLY FROZEN IN TIME? THEY SUCK. THE WHOLE MEDIUM IS JUST BACKWARDS AND STAGNANT.
Grrrrrrr . . . Tiger is my new nemesis. Too bad it's not carried in my local paper. Then, I could work up a real sense of righteous outrage.
The "highlight" of the comics page for me was my re-introduction to Tiger. I recall this strip from my distant past. Maybe it was in the Nashville paper in the 80s? I do not remember, but this is not my first exposure to Tiger. I had wiped my memory of the strip, like you do anything that isn't worth the brain cells to remember. Here is Monday's strip in case you are unfamiliar with this particular brand of "humor:"
OK, so Tiger, the main character, is the chap in the black ball cap. The other dude is Tiger's best friend, Hugo. I learned this on the "About the Characters" page. There, I also learned about the two primary girls in the strip. Bonnie is "Hugo's outspoken yet brutally honest 'girlfriend'." Then there's Suzy: "She's everything that Bonnie isn't — blonde, feminine, innocent and liked by everyone. That makes them rivals!" And ZZZZZZZZZZ. . . . What is WITH the Betty and Veronica-ization of the funny pages? Dennis has Gina and Margaret; hell, even Curtis has Chutney and Michelle. It's the ultra-feminine pretty girl vs. the tomboy. ZZZZZZZ
When I was in Florida, the strip I saw included Tiger's brother "Punkinhead." Here he is in today's strip:
As you can see, he looks remarkably like Alfalfa from the Little Rascals gang. Of course, any humor modeled after 1920s-1930s childhood characters is cutting edge, and always funny. You think I am being sarcastic, but need I remind you of Eddie Murphy's Buh-weet? You can get a laugh just reading this.
Shockingly, Tiger isn't as funny as Eddie Murphy.
This strip first appeared in 1965. The creator retired in 2004 and died in 2005. He didn't have a son or friend take over, but the strip, much like Peanuts, is now in reruns. This is, according to toonopedia, because the gags are, ahem, "timeless." Hey, just like the Little Rascals!
And, oh my God. Why is this still taking up space in the funny pages? THE CREATOR IS DEAD. THESE ARE ALL RERUNS. I am ALMOST willing to make an exception for the seminal and often brilliant Peanuts. But Tiger? Really? This takes up space that could be given to other, new artists? Why? There are people who would complain if it were taken away from the funny pages? Can't they accept that the artist is not creating NEW stuff? That he is DEAD???
What if other entertainment venues followed the same logic as the comics? So, Mickey Mantle retires. But, the Yankees just keep sending him out to play. Then, he dies. So, all Weekend at Bernie's-like, the Yankees send his corpse up to bat (this may be what Ted Williams was up to with the whole cryogenics freezing thing). Better yet, when the Mick's turn to bat comes, they could just play a rerun of a previous Mantle at bat from the 1950s or 1960s.
Then again, I do listen to the Beatles from time to time, and half of them are dead. And, you go to an art museuem to look at say, Rembrandt. And he's dead, too. So, are the comics supposed to be like fine art? Or oldies music?
WHY OH WHY OH WHY OH WHY ARE THE COMICS SO HOPELESSLY FROZEN IN TIME? THEY SUCK. THE WHOLE MEDIUM IS JUST BACKWARDS AND STAGNANT.
Grrrrrrr . . . Tiger is my new nemesis. Too bad it's not carried in my local paper. Then, I could work up a real sense of righteous outrage.
posted by big al at 6:24 PM
5 Comments:
Thanks for the shout out big al!
Imagine how much extra it must cost for the papers print the comics in color EVERYDAY!
And btw, all comics are stuck in a timewarp, except foxtrot and any other strip that does not have a creator over 50.
The sports page should try to be more like the comics. They could just randomly put in old box scores. So you are reading along, let's see . .. hmmm... Albert Pujols went 2 for 4 yesterday. Oh, and Randy Johnson struck out 11! Oh, and look here, Willie Mays hit a home run and stole 2 bases against the Senators! I think this is really going to be the NY Giants' year!
A comic that followed through on your propped-up-corpse notion about the Yankees lineup would in fact be far more entertaining to read than the vast majority of the stuff in our papers. If only you could draw. If only you could draw Mickey Mantle, dead, taking pitches on the helmet to get to first.
Gene Siskel had a simple test for movies: Is watching this film more or less entertaining than it would be to sit down to a dinner conversation with the people who made it? Here's a similar easily-carried-out test for comics: is this more or less entertaining and original than a comparable sit com?
Try it out. As execrable as most pop television is -- I'm a big "American Experience" groupie myself -- "Hi and Lois" is worse than almost anything you can imagine the networks putting on the air. I mean, it's worse than "Blind Date" from the little I know of that. It's far worse than the preachy, overscripted seasons of M*A*S*H, which I seriously think tarnished the greatness of that series. There's no excuse for Hi and Lois being in the paper. None. Nobody even has fond memories of this series. "Tiger" is benign, but yeah, it was just a generic joke a day, and the teller is dead and buried.
You'd think newspapers would want to win niche markets, would try to pitch themselves as the antidote to broadcast TV's bland "Friends"iness. The closest publishers come to that is choosing benignly "ethnic" cartoons: We need an Hispanic strip, let's put in "La Cucaracha."
Stagnant is right.
Maybe the big syndicators (can we call them "Big Syndi" like Big Oil and Big Pharma?) package their good comics with the crappy old ones. For instance, United Syndicates may sell Dilbert to a paper but only if they buy Nancy and Marmaduke. Of course, the United webpage lists Marmaduke as a "beloved reader favorite" so that may be part of the problem right there...
The Des Moines Register prints the Peanuts comic strips from the 1990s, which many do not consider to be as funny as the older ones. They include ones which resemble Hallmark greeting cards and ones with Snoopy yearning for cookies and his brothers. The Peanuts comic strip should have been dropped once its creator retired. There are many comic strip artists who have strips which could be discovered, were it not for those publishers and readers not willing to take a chance with new comic strips.
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