I saw a couple of strips today that referenced the tradition that whatever you do on New Year's Day is what you'll do for the whole year.
To which I can only add that, if so, it's gonna be one helluva year for Jeff Corriveau's Deflocked.
There are plenty of strips that sometimes consist mainly of a character having a prolonged hissy-fit-rant, but there are (A) not many that would not having you skipping through the dialogue by about the third frame and (B) not many that would lead to an actual payoff, rather than just a panel in which the other characters express exasperation. And not just a payoff but one that makes you stop and say "Wait, what?" and THEN laff.
Good stuff. Consistently.
New Year's Bonus: More than you want to know about CSOTD
The blog will be two years old in early February. It's gaining audience slowly but steadily and I'm enjoying it.
I wish I could get the physical results from a daily trip to the gym to mirror the mental results of doing this, which would, of course, require that I show up at the gym every day, at which point the rest of that wish might well happen.
CSOTD has given me more of an early-to-bed, early-to-rise lifestyle than I had to begin with. I have an alarm set for 4:45, which I don't always need, and I try to have a posting up by 7:30, so that people with more traditional schedules -- at least those not on the East Coast -- can read it over their morning coffee.
I hit the coffeemaker, turn on the computer and then bring up Firefox (which just became "Aurora" for reasons that are unclear) and load 36 bookmarks in separate tabs while I do a quick run-through of personal mail, business mail and Facebook on separate browsers.
(I keep Facebook quarantined in its own browser, with all apps disabled and with Social Fixer engaged. I don't know how much difference it makes in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly makes Facebook less annoying and it also makes me feel less paranoid. Both of which are worth the minimal effort involved.)
About the time everything has loaded, I have a sense that this is the day I will have nothing to say and that no comic is going to be in the least inspiring.
Fortunately, Daily Ink is first and the first two strips up are Rip Kirby and the Heart of Juliet Jones, neither of which are likely to be CSOTD, though I did give Rip a plug when I started reading it. Rip is an all-around great strip and Juliet, well, the art is very good, anyway, and between the two, they break the ice each morning.
Most of those 36 bookmarks are to comic strips, but I also monitor Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter, Alan Gardner's Daily Cartoonist, Michael Cavna's Comic Riffs and Mike Lynch's nearly-eponymous blog, all of which I recommend and each of which has, more than once, sent me to a new place which I was glad to find before I posted CSOTD.
(I should add that I monitor a number of cartoonists' blogs besides Mike's, but on my own time, since they don't function as tip sheets so frequently as his does.)
And, just as Rip and Juliet serve as the ice breakers, Free Kibble is the last tab, the after-dinner mint that clears my brain to start writing. Run by a 14-year-old animal lover, this is a site on which you answer a trivia question about dogs and it earns kibble for an animal shelter somewhere. Yes, she has a site where you can click to feed kitties, too.
This has been an unpaid public service announcement on behalf of my dog Vaska on his name day, though, with a Russian version of the name and being a fool himself, I'm sure he actually celebrates his name day on August 2.
In any case, by the time I've gone through all that, I've got anywhere from two to a half-dozen nominees for CSOTD and then I narrow it down to one and start writing. If I haven't been blown away by anything, I may do a Classic, but 9 times out of 10, "Classic" means I'm out of town and prepared a few posts to cover my absence.
So there's more than you wanted to know about how this gets here. You'll notice I haven't said what strips I have bookmarked, because I like to play those cards close to my vest in order to protect feelings and,conversely, to avoid feeling compelled to feature something.
But I'm planning, over the next little while, to redo my bookmarks, edit my Daily Ink and Gocomics.com selections, and add some new blood as well as dropping a few that I read out of habit rather than joy and so, if there is a strip you haven't seen here and that you think I should know about, email me at [email protected] and give me a URL.
And have a Happy St. Basil's Day.
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