Speaking of highway safety and the drivers you will never be able to reach, Frazz has an arc going about a kid from Florida coming to Frazzland (presumably Michigan) to see snow for himself.
For those who live in more tropical climes, yes, the first snowfall brings out the idiocy in drivers, as well as revealing who hasn't bought new tires or mounted their snow tires yet.
And, as with all road hazards, it doesn't take a complete breakdown to create that "First-Snow Chaos Show." Generally, one driver plays bowling ball for 10 drivers who offer up their cars as pins, and a single jack-knifed 18-wheeler can close down the entire Interstate for well over an hour.
Another source of humor in the first snowfall comes on college campuses, in the form of "Spot the Californians."
The first snow, a sloppy inch of snow on a day when the temperature is about two degrees below freezing, brings out the freshmen from sunny places, decked out in their entire winter wardrobes: Parkas, knit caps, scarves, gloves, boots, looking like Robert Scott on the way back from the pole, while the everyone else stands around in sweaters that they know they'll be taking off by 10 a.m.
I like the sense of place in Frazz. Jef Mallett grew up in Michigan and still lives there, and it's pretty clear that the strip is set there (see below), though I'm not sure he's ever declared it to be Michigan as opposed to "an unspecified northern place."
Still, the strip's setting has a definite identity, specified or not, and it's better for it.
It's kind of foolish, this creation of a cartoon Neverland that exists in a vaguely homogenized world in which pianos are hoisted on frayed ropes, pie crust bottoms remain intact upon contact with a face and all the garage doorframes are damaged from frequent low-speed impact. And it not only robs you of the chance to make place-specific gags, but it robs your characters of depth.
A sense of place is part of good literature. The more homogenized, the less compelling.
Lynn Johnston declined to set "For Better or For Worse" in that amorphous cartoonland, and the world did not end. People accepted that the Pattersons were Canadian and even that they (gasp!) celebrated Thanksgiving in October.
And why couldn't you trust readers to accept that sort of thing? Other editors have, and it's worked out for them.
I mean, Jake Barnes could have brooded over his failed relationship with Brett Ashley at a booth in a diner at Woolworth's, but I've read a lot of the back-and-forth about "The Sun Also Rises" and I don't recall Max Perkins ever writing to Hemingway saying, "You know, most of our readers have never been to Paris, much less to this Pamploma. What about having it take place somewhere in the midwest? They could go to a baseball game. People like baseball, and you wouldn't have to include so much explanation!"
The idea that there is snow on the ground in Frazzland from now until spring is part of what makes the strip come alive, and it's not just snow in the background but snow that people have to deal with in a kind of comprehensive way that permeates everything.
Dagwood shovels his sidewalk, certainly, but there is a realness to winter in Frazz. It's cold, it's all-pervasive, and it lets you know we're actually in Michigan, or some place very like it.
Of course, the hazard in all this is that a truly funny gag that relies on a sense of place can become outdated, as may be happening to this personal favorite from 2002.
But they haven't ruined it quite yet. We'll see what happens over the next few weeks.
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