Nothing but almosts
Three almosts today...sort of. On a grumpier day I would have counted all of these:
Peanuts 1959 reprint, Pearls Before Swine, and Get Fuzzy
During this era, Peanuts was full of silent penultimate panels. Fantagraphic's Complete Peanuts 1957-1958 is a veritable bible of SPPs. As I've said before, the silent penultimate panel is a cliche now largely because of Schulz's influence. Anyway, this is funny. It's a comic beat done right.
I think Darby Conley's cut and past experiment would have worked better had he picked a different week to copy Pearls Before Swine. If it was just a week of Pig and Rat talking, the results would have been a little more comprehensible. As it is, the original Pearls Before Swine is pretty bizarre and obtuse on its own.
Oh and Chickweed Lane gave us only one day of the cat this week. We're back to the ongoing story now. I'm glad, but I think the random and brief appearance of the cat lends credibility to the Brooke-McEldowney-missed-a-deadline theory.
But because there are no true SPPs today, I need to do a special alternative. The Spanish Ziggy thing was funny to me at first, but after a few times, it gotten kind of old. I need a replacement for the replacement.
So, today, I give you the best of the L.A. Times' Kids Jokes and Riddles section:
What does an owl us to brush it's beak?
Hootpaste.
From Zoe, Age 7
posted by Matt Gill at 6:20 PM
4 Comments:
I think the larger question in this whole Get Fuzzy/Pearls Before Swine thing is: what about the papers that don't get Pearls, but do get Fuzzy?
Is he running different strips for that segement of the population?
Or is half the country experiencing a 'Cow Tools' moment?
And really, what the frig, Darby? Break your drawing hand again?
yours is a silly topic
I think Darby's experiment isn't very funny, but I think you're missing the point, which is that somehow he DID manage to get unpublished strips in time to cut-and-paste and submit them as his own. He doesn't have Satchel pasted into some previously published strips, but they're being published simultaneously, which is pretty bizarre.
I'm inclined to think that he didn't just call up Pastis and say, "Hey, send me some of your strips. I'm out of ideas this week." Because if he had that sort of access, he probably would have picked a different week.
Conley and Pastis are friends, or at least are very good professional acquaintances. In several different sources Pastis mentions how supportive Conley was in the early days of his strip. I'm certain they spoke about this beforehand. What happened in Monday's strip wasn't a true story.
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