There was more comics-page synchronicity this week as both Doonesbury and Get Fuzzy
took on the subject of Iraq veterans returning home after losing a limb
(a leg, in both cases). While Doonesbury is well-known for its
political subject matter, I was deeply impressed with Get Fuzzy,
which withheld the obligatory punch line for half the week. OK, I admit
that Doonesbury could, quite possibly, be getting its edge back, but I
doubt it, even if using the term “Bitch” (as in “Son of a Bitch”) got
it banned from today’s Globe. It almost reminds me of Kerry swearing in Rolling Stone to seem cool (or is that “kewl”?).
In other coincidences, Mallard Fillmore (the other comic
strip that demonstrates how “political humor” is more often than not an
oxymoron) has been harping this week on Kerry’s calling a secret
service agent a, well, “Son of a bitch”… one month ago. Maybe it’s time to move on???
Oh — and Globe editors? (1) I don’t think readers will shrivel up
and die if they see the term “son of a bitch” in print. (2) Do you
really think any kids are out there reading your comics pages? Oh,
wait, I just realized you’re really trying to protect the moral
sensibilities of octogenarians who think Garfield is a riot.
It must be hard for Doonesbury to always find new ways to be not funny.
To be fair, he ended the week very, very nicely:
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2004/db040501.gif
Yeah, nice. But still an excuse not to have to try to be funny. Why does he put in that Family Circus-ish “whew” in the last panel? And since when does the sentimental sigh-comic get you?
I guess my feeling is that comics needn’t always be funny, but they should at least be “true.” One reason why I like “Arlo and Janis,” which is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, is that the people in the strip seem real (even if, like today’s, the artist ocassionally breaks his own rules). Likewise with “For Better or for Worse,” whose jokes I find corny but whose story lines are worth following. The problem I have with the more “obvious” strips like Dilbert or Doonesbury is that they usually run off a formula (boss / Bush = evil). The sentimental-ish ending to that week’s Doonesbury (which I agree with you, can seem sappy), focused on family and the relationships among father, mother, and daughter, and didn’t try to force some overdone point about the war. On the other hand, I was a little disappointed with how Darby took “Get Fuzzy” from a really serious, no-punchline beginning to something that really felt like it was trying to inject some humor into something that wasn’t all that funny. (Though maybe that was his point as well).
You forgot the formula for Family Circus (God/niceness = good).
Er… yeah, except God never shows up on the Family Circus, just some simacrulum [sp?] involving angels or ghosts (are they compatible? if they had a fight, who would win?). Actually the formula for the Family Circus is “Flashback to the Fifties no one really experienced but everyone seems to remember.”