Sunday Short Takes

Wallace the Brave is really growing on me. It's been around for three years, so I can't say that it's because Will Henry is finding his niche. I think it is just a subtle enough comic that it takes a little while for it to really get under your skin.

I've had it on my daily diet for a little under a year and have gone from liking it to looking forward to it. It's less likely to make you laugh than it is to make you smile, but there's nothing wrong with smiling. It certainly has some Calvin and Hobbes and Cul de Sac in its roots, but the tone is more like Dog Eat Doug or Red and Rover: Upbeat and affectionate rather than edgy, but not without grit.

The strip is debuting in the Houston Chronicle today, which was the occasion for this solid interview with Henry. Worth reading, and the strip is worth adding to your own routine.

Also, there's a collection of strips that has picked up an Eisner nomination, which I guess means I'm not the only one who likes it. (Note to eligible voters: Eisner balloting ends this coming Friday, so hop to it.)

 

Don't break your necks, boys

As long as I'm in that upbeat, affectionate mood, today's Zits offers a gentle reminder that it's okay to be romantic as long as you keep your cool and that, just as sometimes a cigar is only a cigar, sometimes a look is perfectly innocent.

It made me think of Irwin Shaw's classic, "The Girls In Their Summer Dresses," which -- way back in 1939 -- very directly addressed the issues of beauty, love and the sad, unwarranted suspicions and insecurities that needlessly drive us apart.

That link will take you to the story itself and it's okay to read it -- Shaw died a long time ago and won't miss the royalties -- but, on the other hand, he wrote some other really good stuff and here's a collection that also includes "The Eighty Yard Run," another story that will stick with you.

 

He ain't heavy; he's my lover

I only read Vintage Mandrake Sundays for their camp value, but this 1946 denouement ... no.

Just ... no.

Even as camp, it won't pass the ick test.

Worst story wrap-up since (Spoiler Alert) Adolfe Menjou assured Agnes Ayres that it was perfectly all right for her to love the Sheik who had abducted and all-but-ravaged her, because he wasn't an Arab after all, but a Spaniard who had been adopted by Arabs long ago.

 

This, on the other hand ...

I would not, as in the current Existential Comics, recommend inviting Karl Marx in to do a presentation on business ethics, of which this is only a snippet (here's the rest).

But sometimes very bad ideas have brilliant outcomes and, given the way things are going at the moment, we could use a few more of these workplace presentations.

 

On a serious note

Mark Streeter has what I consider the best commentary on the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain.

I'm not a fan of Pearly Gates or heavenly clouds, but Streeter expresses not only the sadness left behind but the inexplicable depression they must both have suffered. He includes a help line number, but focuses on mourning rather than, as others have, turning his cartoon into a public service announcement.  

However, let me add that I would take reports of increased suicide rates with a grain of salt.

Suicide is one of those topics that may be not more common but, rather, more commonly reported.

Suicide has typically been under-reported, starting with family shame and horror.

The idea that someone in the family "chose" to kill themselves -- and I put the verb in quotation marks because I'm using it advisedly -- is a family secret, like the fact that sister didn't really go away to help Aunt Susan for a few months but rather disappeared to have a baby, put it up for adoption and then come back to school as if nothing had ever happened.

Suicides were barred from Catholic cemeteries, until more enlightened priests recognized that depression is an illness, not a sin.

And doctors have been willing to attribute death to heart attacks or accidental mistakes with prescription medicines, not simply to spare family feelings but, more practically, to prevent life insurance companies from denying coverage.

Meanwhile, it was, and I think remains, common newsroom policy not to probe deeply into causes of death.

In the days when obituaries were treated as news rather than paid announcements, we would be frustrated with funeral homes that refused to list a cause of death for people too young to have died in the natural flow of time.

And it wasn't just suicide: Cancer somehow was also once considered embarrassing or shameful.

Our policy was that a quiet death left it up to the family to disclose or not disclose, but, if someone died in public, whether in an automobile accident or by jumping off a bridge, that was news. And it was news, because sirens blared, traffic was snarled and people wanted to know why they hadn't been able to get home on time.

The bottom line, however, is this: The tradition of secrecy reinforces the tradition of shame. It may also prevent people from seeking help because they think they're the only ones dealing with their monsters.

I'm thinking in particular of a young woman who shot herself outside her former employer's office. It was obviously a public, disruptive event and we reported it. 

Her family was furious, but I was sorry that we had missed a chance to tell the story of a one-time happy, popular cheerleader whose life spiraled down a black hole of bipolar disorder and depression, not to exploit her death but to let people know the cost of these diseases and that suicide is neither a fault, a sin nor a deliberate choice.

Because openness and honesty are better than pointless, thoughtless gossip.

 

Comments

[Bud Simpson]

Thanks for the Irwin Shaw book link.

[Bob]

As a boy, I only got to read Mandrake on summer vacations at my grandparents' house. I didn't happen to see (or at least remember seeing) the one you posted. However, I have seen The Sheik, and totally agree about the "ick factor."

[Mary McNeil]

Wait-Will Henry is ACTUALLY "Ordinary Bill" - whose strip I follow when it appears (I think it's been in reruns .) Wow W I LOVE Wallace too - I've followed it on GoComics for several years !