Playing Catch Up

Jeez. I take 48 hours away from daily coverage and everybody decides to become active and interesting. Let's catch up a little:

The big news is Nancy's relaunch yesterday. There's a short, interesting analysis in today's comments and I'm putting Nancy on my GoComics page to see where it heads, mostly in a "show me" sense, because GoComics has added some dada to its on-line offerings, like Garfield Minus Garfield and The Comic Strip That Has A Finale Every Day. So we'll see.

There's also what Gilbert & Sullivan termed "the cankering tooth of mystery" swirling around this, because while the syndicate proudly trumpeted the fact that the new artist is a woman, she's working under what Michael Cavna termed a "nom de toon," which has created a bit of buzz at least among cartoonists.

Some of it is wiseassery along the lines of "Please don't tell my mother. She thinks I play piano in a whorehouse," but the most likely theory is that the web comic that brought "Olivia Jaimes" to the syndicate's attention is not entirely congruent with Nancy's All-American, kid-friendly image, and they'd just as soon nobody connected the two.

I expect the guessing will give way to some detective work, but perhaps only among insiders. My bet is that they'll figure it out, while the average reader will neither know nor care.

Which is kind of too bad, given what celebrities cartoonists were back when Nancy first launched.

Perhaps this is Olivia now!

Agnes is working on getting a syndicate deal, and here are the first two strips in that arc.

Meanwhile, in sort-of real life ...

Amy continues to hear back from colleges in Pajama Diaries. The reality in this story arc brings back a lot of memories, and I'm particularly heartened by her eagerness to get on with it.

I've been to a lot of high school graduations where the speakers break into tears over leaving. My class didn't let the door hit us, and, in fact, the best part of our valedictorian's speech was that it was about three minutes long.

If you're sad to be leaving high school, you've peaked way too early in life.

Meanwhile, the college thing: One of my sons had a friend who got into the college of her choice, then found out that the financial package didn't meet her needs. It was a prestigious college but not a prestigious offer and she had to decline.

And my stepdaughter's first choice didn't offer enough, either, so she went to the one that gave her a full ride, which, y'know, if you're smart enough to get the scholarship, you have to be smart enough to take it.

Both girls are grown-up women today doing genuinely fabulous things professionally. But they were both pretty fabulous to begin with.

It helps.

While, over in Divorce Court

Clive's divorce in Alex continues to drag on, and that is less an element of "comic strip time" than reality.

Also reality: I knew a woman who was divorcing a successful physician who genuinely had stashed his money in Switzerland, but I lost touch with her before the situation resolved.

However, he was storing it in the form of gold rather than cryptocurrency, which in this case I guess you could say involves a cockblockchain.

Poor Clive thus being in the difficult dual position of being victimized by a nasty woman and damn well deserving it.

And if you think that divorce is dragging on ...

Maeve continues to fraternize with her ex in Between Friends and here are two heaping helpings of bad judgment all around.

The aforementioned doctor and his wife had been in the course of building a home when things fell apart, which involved her having an affair with the contractor, but that wasn't really the start.

My friends in the building trades said it was not uncommon -- not uncommon enough -- to have a couple come in to design a house and you'd listen to them swap ideas back and forth and wonder what in hell they had in common, only to find that their marriage broke up over the blueprints in your office.

Which I mention because not everyone can afford the fantasy that, if they just had a really nice house, their lives would be perfect.

So they have babies.

Run, Simon, run. Better to leave an architect holding the bag than to put a child in the same position.

Juxtaposition of the Regime

(Ann Telnaes)

(Chan Lowe)

(Dan Wasserman)

For some time, press critics have been watching the odd way in which Dear Leader's tweets seem to follow hard upon remarks made on Fox News, particularly Fox & Friends, and how those tweets not only follow in terms of time and topic, but even in use of specific language.

We already knew that Trump's staff has had to dumb down his briefings and fill them with his name in order to hold his attention, but now the Washington Post reports that they're actually booking people onto Fox News so he'll watch them there, since he won't listen to them in his office.

I've cited the interactive TV in Fahrenheit 451, in which Mildred Montag believes she's participating in an interactive soap opera, but that's nothing.

I've also, I'm sure, told of a friend who was in his psych rotation at medical school when the Church Committee released its findings about how the antiwar movement and black nationalist groups were stalked, infiltrated and harassed by the feds.

The problem, he said, was that one of his patients used it to justify his belief that John Chancellor not only spoke directly to him from the TV, but occasionally climbed out and followed him around the room.

Here we are. Granted, a couple of these look to be slightly out of context, "Here's what I'd say ..." quotes, but others are clearly not.

How long before the Reichstag burns down?

And finally ...

Tim Eagan offers a ray of hope.

Ask him anything. The election results. His grades in college. What color the sky is.

Then either cite the 25th Amendment or impeach him for perjury.

Because, based on yesterday's meltdown, here's where we're heading:

Comments

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Spring of 2016 I watched a Trump rally on the news. And I was waiting for the Reichstag then.

Not too sure about the new Nancy. Seems more bland than Ernie Bushmiller's girl, and weird without the charm of Jerry Scott's version. Gilchrist's seemed to strike a modern balance.

Posted by: Mary McNeil | 04/10/2018 at 07:16 PM

A few days ago I didn't even know the name Mark Lasky, but his Nancy work is almost up there with Bushmiller's, and on the same level as Al Plastino's. It's possible if Lasky had lived longer, I'd be complaining about him. I've been known to complain.

On the other hand, I seem to recall being favorably impressed with Plastino's chameleon-like qualities on Nancy, and on other strips, with the possible exception of Peanuts, where his work looked about right but the writing didn't jell. I remember I first learned about Plastino when Chuck, my boss, told me, "The syndicate has a drawer full of Plastino strips that they pull out whenever Schulz starts asking for too much money."

Posted by: Kip W | 04/11/2018 at 12:03 PM