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Today's the last day of "Peanuts," so you've dressed up like Pig Pen! What a nice tribute, Jason! --today's Foxtrot |
Monday, January 3, 2000 Comic Characterization I've just been reminded of the power of comic strips. No, this isn't about Charles M. Schulz's retirement, although I'll tie that in later in this entry. The comic strip I have in mind right now is For Better or For Worse. See, in the final panel of Friday's installment, Michael Patterson proposed to his girlfriend, Deanna. Due to the advent of the "Early Sunday Edition," I can never get my hands on Saturday's paper. By the time Shabbos ends, Saturday's paper is generally off the shelves. Which is why I was left hanging on Saturday night, searching the Web for her answer. To add to the fun, the provider Newsday gets its online version of comics from seems to have stopped carrying this strip at the start of this year. I finally tracked it down, courtesy of the Philadelphia Enquirer, and she said "yes." And, lo, I am happy. I have even been tempted to send a note of congratulations -- courtesy of Lynn Johnston, who writes the strip -- but I suspect that would be carrying things a bit far.
I've mentioned For Better or For Worse here a couple of times in the past. It and Doonesbury are my favorites on the comic page, especially now that Peanuts is ending. (It's followed by Stone Soup, The Boondocks, and Cathy, should you be wondering. Yes, Cathy. Don't start.) Both have won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, the only currently-running strips to have done so. I take this as evidence that the Pulitzer people know what they're doing. What sets Johnston's strip apart from every other one on the page is the degree to which she brings her characters to life. In the past twenty years or so, the Patterson family has been fleshed out to the extent that readers feel as if they know them, and care about them. All in just four panels a day, with a few more on Sundays. Comedy, tragedy, you name it, it's in there. And done in a more articulate manner than I'm managing in this entry. So when something important happens in the strip, you identify with the characters enough to care about it. Nobody else manages it quite as well. All of the strips named a couple of paragraphs back have running plot lines, but they're not in the same league. In the case of Doonesbury, the satiric point Trudeau is trying to make is always paramount; the character development is secondary, and used to serve his latest crusade, rather than driving the strip. The same goes for Cathy, just in a different arena. As for the two new kids on the block, both have definite potential in this regard, but they haven't been around long enough yet. Check back in a few years, and we'll see how they mature. As for Peanuts... it was a different sort of strip entirely. With a few limited exceptions, the characters never aged, and the strip was in a sort of timeless realm. This is not a bad thing; it's just different. Peanuts basically had a bunch of archetypical characters playing out archetypical situations over and over again, striking a familiar chord time after time. Schulz did it very well; indeed, there have been a few serious psychology books in which the Peanuts gang has been used to illustrate personality types, and how people tend to act in various situations. And while the quality of the strip had fallen off somewhat in recent years, it was still better than most of the competition. And, frankly, Schulz had earned the right to coast a bit. So, no question, I'm going to miss Peanuts. But its approach couldn't create the sort of concern for its characters that Johnston evokes. Maybe it is time I sent her some fan mail, at that.
As an aside, Newsday colorizes the daily comics. I consider this an abomination, which has almost driven me to the New York Times. The latter has no comics at all, but I like its coverage in general, and I can only afford one daily paper. Conversely, the Daily News prints the comics the way their authors intend them to be viewed, in black and white, but the surrounding articles aren't up to par. At any rate, rather to my surprise, they made an exception for the final Peanuts strip, printing it without any added color. Nice of them. Now, if only they'd show the same respect for the rest of the comics on the page...
Brief summary of Sunday: Went to see my mother in New Jersey, in a van borrowed by my brother. Almost overwhelmed by the smell of mildew in the van, surprising because my sense of smell is almost nonexistant in general. Resolved to take mass transit back, but was instead given the front seat, and permission to keep the window all the way down. Warm night (high 50's), fortunately, so made it back okay. Mother is doing okay, considering. No earthshattering developments there. Oh, and saw Toy Story with the family, in her room. Cute and fun, but flawed: the implied internal rules for toy/human interaction were broken outrageously in the end, and they didn't earn being able to do so. Three stars. Tired. Bye.
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