He's b-a-a-a-ck!

  
Okay, he's no Chris Christie. He's no Lou Christie. He isn't even Julie Christie.

But he is the savior I've been hoping would return and enter the presidential race: Kevin the Lost Bunny of the Apocalypse, and now he's back in Prickly City and ready to redeem the nation, I'm sure much as you would redeem an empty soft drink bottle: Turn it over for destruction in exchange for whatever you can get!

Scott Stantis, who is also the political cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune, is that rare breed, the Thinking Conservative, that was all but wiped out about two decades ago, and, after a kind of bumpy start seven years ago, Prickly City has turned into a good place to find curmudgeonly swipes at the political system.

In this arc, which began last week, Stantis has introduced the reporter seen above, who I think is the first recurring character in the strip since Kevin was introduced, and now he's interviewing a lizard who also has lines. (Which I suppose might mean he's a skink, though he only has four lines.)

I hope he at least sticks around through the end of the election, in part because he could be very useful in the campaign storyline and in part because the strip tends to be a little claustrophobic and a new character might open it up a little.

Meanwhile, people talk about "balancing" Doonesbury, but they usually mean doing it with a knee-jerk, partisan right-wing rant, and that's not balance. Given that Trudeau is a progressive who often mocks the numbskulls on his side of the fence, I think Prickly City provides that aforementioned balance in the form of a mostly conservative strip that also doesn't like having its nose held to a party line.

We're going to need a few laughs on both sides to get through that which is to come.

                    *                         *                         *

I rise on a point of personal privilege: Speaking of "he's back," Corey Pandolph's "Barkeater Lake" is just entering a full rerun at Gocomics. The strip is set in the Adirondacks, in a very thinly disguised version of Pandolph's hometown of Saranac Lake, and, in its first several storylines, provided some good laughs for those of us who could relate and especially to those of us, like me, who grew up within about 40 miles of where he grew up.

We countryfolk rarely get to see ourselves spoofed with affection and by someone who actually knows something about country life.

I'll be following along.

 

Comments

[vppeterson]

Forty miles was Tupper Lake, Saranac Lake is about another 20 and then Lake Placid about 10. Delighted to see this strip again, at whatever remove.

[Mike Peterson]

Right you are. I had juxtaposed my later life up there. When I lived in Plattsburgh/Cadyville, it was about 40 miles to Saranac Lake.

[Sherwood Harrington]

Note to comments' readers who are not from upstate NY or Vermont: all of the above lakes are either light years away from or right next to Lake Wobegon, depending on how your day is going.

[Mark Jackson]

Sherwood, Barkeater Lake always put me more in mind of Northern Exposure (although the pilot is considerably less attractive).

Glad to see BL running again; the fact that I've seen them all before is pretty much balanced by knowing there won't be any long, annoying hiatuses (hiati?).

Mike, as it happens we'll be 25 miles south of your ancestral manse this weekend - church weekend at Unirondack on Beaver Lake.