Quite Good Cartoons
Every decent publication has cartoons. So this should be no
exception. We're too mean to pay for any cartoons, but you can
see some of our favourites by just following our collection of
links.
Here a few words on some strips we have been reading lately.
- Li'l Abner.
A classic long running strip from the heyday of newspaper strips.
Full of detail, these reruns have to be scanned much larger than
contemporary strips. Wide ranging satire on (then) contemporary
America has a timeless charm and a mastery of comic pacing.
- Dilbert. Still a personal
favourite. The strip has less variety these days, as it focuses
more and more on the irrational world of work,
but in some ways that has made it funnier.
- Stone
Soup. One of many "family" strips, but the only
one I read regularly. It takes time to get to know the characters,
but there has a healthy mix of cynicism and family bonding. The
characterisation of the dog, biscuit, is a delight.
- Calvin
and Hobbes. Marvellous evocation of a small boy and his incidental
connection to his reality of school and parents. This strip ran
for only 11 years, but is now being rerun day by day with an
apparently limitless archive. Bill Watterson's decision to quit
the strip was a great loss, but perhaps he was right to quit,
rather than, like Peanuts, spending the rest of his life recycling
the same jokes.
- Non
Sequitur. Not a character strip but individual joke panels.
Often a bit too tied to US politics for we foreigners, but at
its best a dark and witty reminder of Charles Addams.
- The
Dinette Set. A middle American evocation of worthless lives
- reminds me of TV's Royles.
- Popeye.
Popeye was originally a wide ranging action strip with rambling
continuing stories, but after the death of its creator around
70 years ago it became a tired recycling of the iconic characters.
At last, it seems in the hands of someone prepared to give it
continuing story lines. It remains to be seen whether they are
any good.
- Wizard
of Id. Now into its third or fourth wave of recycled jokes,
but intermittently entertaining if you missed them the first
time they were drawn.
- Liberty
Meadows. Full of innovation in layout, the creator is a very
versatile artist, with some off the wall ideas. If only it were
actually funny, it would have everything.
- Andy Capp.
Apparently Reg Smyth, creator of the strip died several years
ago. His output shows no sign of slowing down. Sadly, Andy Capp
was an early victim of political correctness, and it is a shadow
of its early years.
- Nancy.
Perhaps the ultimate in harmless kiddie cartoons. Pure pap, but
I am often charmed by the bizarre juxtaposition of child-like
drawings of children and the realistic aunt, in a different revealing
outfit every day for "pop" to read it over "junior's"
shoulder.
- Cathy.
Still insightful, but now recycling jokes for the umpteenth time,
with the addition of internet gags.
- Hagar
the Horrible. Now, this is the right way to recycle gags.
- Our favourite fantasy web site is the Charles Addams Cartoon
archive. Still no sign of it.
The comic strip list
Most of the comic strips you see in your newspapers are handled
by one of a few large syndicating companies. They now have more
than 230 strips on the internet, most of them updated daily. Perhaps
this alphabetical list will have your favourites.
Animation and related stuff
I like animation. One of the joys of running my own company
is being able to stop for the cartoons. Or it was. I recently
moved to Scotland, and am now many miles from the nearest cable
TV. So far I have resisted satellite, substituting instead that
popular alternative, a life. I don't think I can hold out
much longer.
Updated and corrected: 2 April 2001
