Since I launched this website, I've added some strips to my daily diet, in part to try to keep from citing the same ones over and over and in part because I feel I ought to know a little more about what's out there.
I've dropped a few that were clearly never going to make the grade, and there are some that remain because, well, they aren't annoying enough to justify toggling through the selection process to get them off the page.
And then there is "On a Claire Day," a relatively young (2006) strip by the husband-and-wife team of Carla Ventresca and Henry Beckett that will probably never hit on Comic Strip of the Day.com because it doesn't really do knock-you-over humor. And yet here it is anyway, because I find that -- after a fairly long period of "why am I reading this?" -- I'm really enjoying having it part of my daily rounds.
It's easier to describe what it isn't than what it is. For instance, it doesn't have the sly observational wisecrack humor of "Between Friends," and it doesn't feature the short, punchy, crisis stories of "Edge City." It doesn't even have the "awww, isn't that the truth?" emotional appeal of "For Better or For Worse."
So what is it? Well, it's a bit like the first few seasons of "Mad About You," when there wasn't a lot of plot, but you just enjoyed spending half an hour with Jamie and Paul, watching them sort through a fairly normal life. There are a few problems to be dealt with, a few difficult characters dropping by, but it all kind of works itself out. There's even a dog, as we see in this episode, and a kindly landlord who owns the Italian restaurant right under their new apartment.
They've been moving into this apartment since the middle of summer, by the way. Things don't move very quickly in this universe. But that's part of the charm of the strip. And, if I ever start up a website called "Comic Strip of the Quarter.com," this strip will be on it all the time.
Meanwhile, give it a try. A long try.
Comments