Since reading the Boston Globe Magazine is a great way to depress
yourself by being reminded that you live in a small town after all, I
almost missed this feature article
on one of my favorite cartoonists, Hilary Price, who also happens to be
a local (sort of). The article is chock-full of words but offers little
insight into the creator of Rhymes with Orange. This is a much more informative (and amusing) conversation from 2 1/2 years ago, and of course you could always sign up for Hilary’s newsletter!

Rachel and I keep vowing to visit Hilary’s studio near Northampton, but, well, er… let me get back to you with an excuse.

A few Sundays ago (during my inexplicable blogging hiatus), Berke
Breathed ran an “I-dare-you-to-sue-me-for-copyright-infringement”
Sunday strip depicting just about every popular comic strip animal in
history and making the claim that there’s never been a major
female animal character in comic strip history (as “adjunct
girlfriends,” Daisy Duck et.al. don’t count). Message board pundits can
disagree, but I think he’s right (I recall an interview with Peter Molyneux about his breakthrough game Black and White
in which he explained why they dumped the idea of having female
Creatures because of, well, issues with making them look right).

Never one to allow injustice in the comic strip world, Hilary Price (a Massachusetts resident) has introduced, Monty-like, a new (disposable?) character. Bets on how long Ms. Catastrophe will last?

It’s kinda cool when comic strips communicate with each other, like
this past April Fool’s (also back in my blog hiatus) Get Fuzzy, Fox Trot, and Pearls Before Swine all ran the same strip. But the alarming thing is that Hilary reads Rose is Rose…

Oh man, this is the funniest one I’ve ever read:

The problem with not blogging for a few weeks is, well, inertia is a powerful thing. Bil Keane would know:

(Yes, this is indeed a “>Non Sequitur that I actually liked… even if it wasn’t funny)

Switching tracks entirely, Jimmy Johnson has been re-running some of his best strips these past two weeks, especially the “Daddy’s friend”
series, which features Gene’s (former) girlfriend Ruth. Sadly, Jimmy is
hinting at easing Gene out of the picture, which, if for no other
reason than eponymy, seems tragic to me.

Now if someone could only convince Jimmy to run a proper blog…