Following the conversations

Maybe it's just coincidence.

But the Reubens were seven weeks ago, and this Sunday, we see multiple cartoons in which metacommentary rules.

Given the normal lead time for Sundays, given the time since a bunch of cartoonists were sitting around Las Vegas talking about cartooning, I'm gonna say there's a connection between their escape from the solitude of their basement studios and this week's selection of self-reflective comics.

Of course, I could be wrong. It might be the harmonica virgins. I've heard they make weird things happen.

But I think I'm onto something, and, at this time, I would like to place the following cartoons into evidence:

Not saying today's Monty isn't funny or in character -- it's both. And, if I'd read it first, I wouldn't have noticed that the punchline could have come from a poolside conversation in Las Vegas about who uses what tools to do what. But I promise you, those conversations took place.

If you're ever trying to pick up a cartoonist in a bar, try, "So, what kind of nib do you use?"

Unless you're in a hurry.

For obvious reasons, there were certainly also a lot of conversations about changing platforms and the challenge of adapting to the new technologies, I'm sure. I would assume that the few remaining "Cappy Dick" style arts-and-crafts-for-kids comics have already been badly hurt simply by shrinkage, but Thatababy suggests the next downward step for this genre:

Now, to be accurate, the kid would more likely be drawing on an iPad screen, but you wouldn't as instantly identify it as such -- a desktop is a much better choice.

And there are, of course, ways to make dot-to-dots work on a computer without using a pen, but I don't think overanalyzing the gag was what Paul Trap had in mind.

I'm old enough to remember Winky Dink, which encouraged kids to use crayons on their TVs. You were supposed to buy the Winky Dink set, which included a transparent plastic sheet that went over your TV screen, as well as some erasable crayons. If you didn't have the kit, you were supposed to use Saran Wrap.

You weren't supposed to draw directly on the screen. However, it's good that Magic Markers were not in wide usage at the time.

Incidentally, speaking of kids and technology, there's a new factor emerging that cartoonists can take advantage of, which is that little tiny kids are able to manipulate iPads and smartphones and have a lot of fun with simple games. It is becoming a "thing" that, when a parent wants, say, to take a shower or go down to the basement to work on laundry, you can bring up a game on the smartphone, hand it to the toddler and get five minutes of solitude.

Except that, if the phone rings during those five minutes, the caller may find that toddlers are better at answering the phone than they are at actually answering questions like, "Is your father home?"

But I digress ...

Greg Evans just wrapped up a major character, sending the lad back home to Australia. This is not the first time he's brought in a dreamy foreigner as a temporary crush-interest for Luann, but, as she slowly ages in the strip, the concept advances a bit, too, and the two of them were at the house, alone, in her bedroom, when he got the call that his folks were headed back to the Antipodes, else Luann might have found herself Down Under.

Today's discussion might have been planned all along, but it sounds to me as if Greg Evans may have had some conversations at the Reubens about how such matters are handled:

On the other hand, I could be wrong about all this.

For instance, I have no idea if Sally Forth's Ces even went to Vegas, and, if you follow his blog, you know that it doesn't take a heavy dose of desert sun on the cranium to make things like this occur to him. 

But they don't often escape onto the funny pages.  Perhaps some King Features editor left his tranq gun in the hotel room when he checked out:

Comments

[Joe c]

Of course when it came to Winky Dink, no one ever used Sarsn Wrap; we all just drew directly on the TV with crayons and rubbed it all off really hard with toilet paper.

[MaggieZ]

I noticed the pattern in two of the three strips you have when I read the color comics this morning (my paper doesn't carry Monty). I wondered what was going on.

[ddc]

When I first watched Winky Dink, I felt like I was missing out on a lot of the story. But I actually did use the saran wrap and drew a baseball bat or something with crayon.

Once I saw how the baseball bat was static and the images moved around it, I realized that I didn't need to actually draw the thing to follow the action.

[Mike Peterson]

We did the Saran Wrap for awhile and then got the official kit, but I can't remember being overly blown away by the show.

What I do remember is being in about second grade and seeing kids do coloring that was so smooth and free of light-and-dark spaces and being blown away. I'd always used crayons -- and they were using Magic Markers. Talk about a game-changer!