New (and vintage) Beginnings

This is suddenly a really good time to pick up on some continuity strips, since several that are worth following are just starting new stories:

Over at DailyInk, Rip Kirby has just had a confrontation on a twisty road with this woman who we now discover is a race car driver. The strip is from 1953 and I doubt very much that it was in the minds of whoever wrote the screenplay for "Goldfinger" fourteen years later, but there's certainly some Bond in Rip Kirby and there may be a little bit of Tilly Masterson in Jet Allyson, too.

We'll see. If you've got a subscription, now's a good time to add Rip. If you don't, well, now's a good time. (Yes, I've done PBS fundraisers. The key is instilling guilt.)

John Cullen Murphy's influences are a little more blatant in the new (well, it was new in 1952) Big Ben Bolt story also kicking off at DailyInk. BBB is on a flight to Australia for a prize fight, and his fellow passengers, besides his manager, include a convict cuffed to his seat plus his minder, this folksy celebrity who seems to look an awful lot like Will Rogers and the latest to come aboard, this hard-edged dame who you might think is taken from Lauren Bacall, but there was a reason Bacall played a girl called "Slim" in "To Have and Have Not." 

I'm saying Murphy was drawing Ann Sheridan, who had a little more meat on her bones and generally played girls with a little more mileage. Anyway, I'm hoping for that, because, while both of these tough-talkin' frails were toxic, Sheridan's characters always seemed a little more self-destructive and vulnerable under the shell.

Incidentally, Big Ben Bolt was written by Eliot Caplin, whose brother Al had a fairly successful strip about hillbillies.

I realize the artists in the audience just got a case of the bends from going too quickly from Alex Raymond and John Cullen Murphy to the graphic stylings of Joe d'Angelo, but the writing at Pirate Cove is inventive and intricate enough to make up for the draftsmanship, which, in fact, kind of grows on you. And, despite the simple style, the characters are visually distinctive, which isn't true of some more intricately drawn strips.

And the stories are both suspenseful and hilarious, but they do go on for a time. This one, just wrapping up as we see, began January 12, so it's worth my running a flag up the mast to let people know when there is an opportunity to get in on a new story line. 

This would be that opportunity. 

Dick Tracy is also just wrapping up a storyline, but Staton and Curtis have, since they took over the strip, purposely cut the arcs down to provide more entry points. They've also started indulging in some nudge-in-the-rib gags for true Tracy fans, who will get the reference to Naperville and will also be wondering about the apparent hint of a reappearance of Moon Maid in this latest arc.

Moon Maid being emblematic of the last years of creator Chester Gould's work on the strip, at a point when it went completely off the rails, it would take substantial chutzpah to bring her back, but, meanwhile, it's keeping the old-time fans engaged. And I would say that "off the rails" is better than "tedious," which the strip had become until the current crew took over and brightened it up.

And, for those with an even shorter attention span, here's the apparent start of what promises to be a truly horrifying story:

Captain Eddie in politics? Wiley constantly throws curve balls, but if he follows through with this, there will be some good chuckles upcoming in Non Sequitur.

Wiley began as an editorial cartoonist, and there's still a lot of that sensibility in Non Sequitur, though he also has something of the New Yorker style of social commentary -- there's more of Johnny Carson than Jon Stewart in his work, and his move to Maine several years ago provided him with a small cast of recurring characters to play with.

 

And now for something completely different:

Having discussed beginnings in comics, let's discuss an ending. 

As Drew Litton -- who, by the way, specializes in sports-themed cartoons -- notes here, the NFL Referee Lockout is over.

"Over" as in done, through, finished, ended. And I'm sorry for everyone who purchased striped shirts and white canes for Halloween, but, well, timing is everything and sometimes it just doesn't work out.

It has been said that the final straw was the ending of the Packers-Seahawks game on Monday Night Football, the worst possible stage upon which to make a game-changing error, since it's the only game on at the time and so the whole (football) world is, indeed, watching.

But, however that impacted negotiations, things were also becoming critical for comic fans because the growing raft of "replacement referee" editorial cartoons had, shall we say, begun to lose their inventive freshness.

I'm giving all cartoonists a few days grace during which we will assume that any replacement-ref panels that appear were submitted before the end of the lockout.

But the real refs have gone back to work and real editorial cartoonists will, I am quite sure, do the same.

Comments

[Richard J. Marcej]

Well, consider this artist in your audience who just got more than the bends seeing that "artwork" (quotes mine) for "Pirate Cove". Wow. That's just… god awful.

Aside from the poorly defined characters and weak panel layouts, his choice of fonts/color on his text (try reading the white outlined text without your eyes going cross-eyed, it can't be done) and the very amateurish photoshop coloring creates a really ugly looking strip. The writing might be good, maybe great., but I'd never know. It's so unappealing that I wouldn't check in on it every day.

On a more positive note, the look of "Dick Tracy" has improved by leaps and bounds since long time comic book pro, Joe Staton took over. Nicely done!

[Freezer]

You call the previous Dick Tracy team "tedious:, I call them "entertainingly batshit insane." Their stories were a glorious - if predictable - formula of Insane Villan enteres, incomprehensible "police work" happens, ludicrous Rube Goldberg-styled death ensues.

While the quality of DT stories has increased dramatically, the snark value has plummeted. Fair trade, I suppose.

[Mike Peterson]

There is a very fine line between "tedious" and "entertainingly batshit insane," and I say that having watched "Ed Wood" a few nights ago. But watching "Plan 9" or "The Conqueror" once or twice is one thing; watching them on a continuous loop? Nah.

And Richard, I may have even understated the art issue at Pirate Cove at bit, but I'd disagree with you on this point: He does differentiate his characters quite well. I know some better drawn strips where I can't tell who's who even after months of reading it.