Powered Descent posted:

The Family Circus

quote:

“I just did a book signing and a woman came up to me crying talking about Guard Dog,” McDonnell, 67, tells NJ Advance Media.

“It’s just amazing how people get attached ... it’s really touching as a cartoonist,” he says.

The Guard Dog storyline started in late October and just arrived at the decisive moment when Doozy, the girl who loves him, officially adopts the dog. McDonnell, who lives in Princeton, says it’s the longest continued story he’s ever done with “Mutts.” But this journey has a bit more mileage left.

“The story lasts a little longer just to cement that bond,” he says of Guard Dog and Doozy’s happy milestone.

“My favorite strip out of the whole seven weeks will come out this Sunday,” he says.

Darthemed posted:

Retail

quote:

Kennel posted:

Dustin

amigolupus posted:

It's still surreal how Phantom wasted all of our time. The thread put up with 3 years of Old Man Mozz's prophecy, and the Phantom being a huge dumbass every step of the way, and then the author decides to just.. give up. Phantom and Diana didn't just completely drop the ball at the last second, they actively stopped trying to avert their bad future altogether. Now they're trying to gaslight readers into thinking it's fine to let things happen as-is just because Phantom interpreted Kit's answer of when he decided to come back home as this vital clue that he's off the hook.

They've pretty much rolled out the red carpet for fate to come in and kick their asses.

Willo567 posted:

I just wanted to talk about a part of a comic strip i I grew up with, and it's the comic strips thread. I'll drop it

Murdstone posted:

I don’t want to chase you out of the conversation.

I think my issue with Calvin and Susie hooking up is it’s just plain trite and cloying. It’s cheesy. And also to me Calvin and Susie are children and always will be, like the Peanuts kids or most other kids in comic strips. They don’t grow up and I don’t want to see what happens when they do.

But, on a larger scale, the old “boys abused girls they liked when they were kids” was a lot more acceptable to me than it is now. When I was a kid, that was a common sentiment, and kids acted accordingly, but in a way it dismissed and even encouraged abuse and the idea of associating that with affection. It’s really a very unhealthy thing to teach kids.

I still love C & H but that aspect of his and Susie’s interactions is off putting to me now, because it was obvious Calvin liked her and didn’t know how to handle that, and no one ever stopped to teach him, or teach her that she didn’t have to put up with Calvin’s bullying.

Strips are products of their time and it often shows, sometimes obviously with for example casual racism and sexism in older strips, sometimes less obviously with the way characters interact, like with this or the family dynamics in foob. I wouldn’t have batted an eye at that family 20 years ago. Now? Eeeeesh.

It’s all way more than you are intended to read into that comic strip but that’s what we do here.

Selachian posted:

I think fiberglass hulls were still relatively new back then, so mass-produced plastic hulls isn't an unreasonable assumption. But the car/boat hybrid doesn't look likely. Can you imagine how many people would drive their cars into the water trying to dock with the boat hull?

Murdstone posted:

I think my issue with Calvin and Susie hooking up is it’s just plain trite and cloying. It’s cheesy. And also to me Calvin and Susie are children and always will be, like the Peanuts kids or most other kids in comic strips. They don’t grow up and I don’t want to see what happens when they do.

Mr. Squishy posted:

It's apparently a Scandinavian thing for a girl to have candles on her head for the feast day of Saint Lucia.

Some Guy TT posted:

The Demons of Baseball

Murdstone posted:

But, on a larger scale, the old “boys abused girls they liked when they were kids” was a lot more acceptable to me than it is now. When I was a kid, that was a common sentiment, and kids acted accordingly, but in a way it dismissed and even encouraged abuse and the idea of associating that with affection. It’s really a very unhealthy thing to teach kids.

Schwarzwald posted:

Certainly some of the C&H comics have ages poorly, but saying that Calvin abuses Suzy is a tremendous leap that strains the definition of "abuse" and needlessly holds the behavior of children to an adult standard.

Calvin and Suzy are six years old.

Murdstone posted:

That’s fair. It’s a strong word. Maybe bullying, but that doesn’t quite feel right either.

They both really liked each other and he was way too mean to her too often and it didn’t have to be that way and shouldn’t have, but it was more or less expected behavior at the time. That’s what I’m arguing.

John Allison posted:

Time travel is a really stupid thing to write about. After all, history is a mystery. That's why those two words rhyme - it's no coincidence.

For years I'd been thinking about doing a new comic called "Real True History", where I would provide amusing and fictitious perspectives on the events that have shaped man-kind. In a sense this was a trial run. And it taught me a few things: research is hard, history involves drawing a lot of items that are brown, and the past was extremely smelly.

What a story like this really needed was a lot of very opulent pictures of carriages and town squares and people being drunk in the gutter on gin. Unfortunately, on my tight schedule, I can only manage to draw one opulent building a week.

So I tried to show how Shelley and Amy would use their particular individual skills and talents to succeed in 1840s England.

Some people wrote to me to say that this story ends quite abruptly. I wrote back to them saying that this was the way of things and that it was time for a new yarn. All lies.

The truth is that I had no way to continue the story that wasn't so desperately brutal that my family and friends would have disowned me. Bob Crowley, Blackie and the Orphan are monsters, and once I let them out of the box, every plot I worked out extrapolated into Victorian nastiness played out in stygian gloom.

Here are some of my actual notes, the only other ending that was even semi-pleasant (and it is not pleasant): "Blackie stabs Crowley in his rooms. Blackie goes downstairs, drinks wine. The Orphan has poisoned it. She dies. Orphan goes outside with her jewels. Crowley in death throes falls out of window crushing Orphan. The end". Read on (and beware!)

JethroMcB posted:

Kris Straub hit the nail on the head with his "Adult Calvin" strip

Murdstone posted:

I don’t want to chase you out of the conversation.

I think my issue with Calvin and Susie hooking up is it’s just plain trite and cloying. It’s cheesy. And also to me Calvin and Susie are children and always will be, like the Peanuts kids or most other kids in comic strips. They don’t grow up and I don’t want to see what happens when they do.

But, on a larger scale, the old “boys abused girls they liked when they were kids” was a lot more acceptable to me than it is now. When I was a kid, that was a common sentiment, and kids acted accordingly, but in a way it dismissed and even encouraged abuse and the idea of associating that with affection. It’s really a very unhealthy thing to teach kids.

I still love C & H but that aspect of his and Susie’s interactions is off putting to me now, because it was obvious Calvin liked her and didn’t know how to handle that, and no one ever stopped to teach him, or teach her that she didn’t have to put up with Calvin’s bullying.

Strips are products of their time and it often shows, sometimes obviously with for example casual racism and sexism in older strips, sometimes less obviously with the way characters interact, like with this or the family dynamics in foob. I wouldn’t have batted an eye at that family 20 years ago. Now? Eeeeesh.

It’s all way more than you are intended to read into that comic strip but that’s what we do here.

Strontium posted:

Intelligent Life

Kazinsal posted:

Scary Go Round (September 16-17, 2004)

First appearances: Esther de Groot, teenage goth and future protagonist of Giant Days; Big Lindsey, school bully and semi-friend of Esther; and that other girl whose name I can't remember.

Kennel posted:

Or maybe seemingly random characters end up being important later down the line.

Doomykins posted:

I think Calvin and Susie is... eh, it's fine, but that's all it is. It's a very safe option that works best if you have a very strong feeling about the sentiment of a lifelong soulmate that can be traced back to childhood interaction.

Powered Descent posted:

Which is itself a little odd. It's actually very rare in the real world for people who grew up together to hook up as adults. People might marry their high school sweetheart, but almost never their elementary school crush. It's been suggested that this is caused by the same brain wiring that keeps you from being attracted to your own siblings.

Cowslips Warren posted:

wasn't there something about that with old European arranged marriages where they'd put the kids together at like age 5 or 7 so they could grow up together, and there was usually a very low birth rate between those couples?

Professor Wayne posted:

I think Hobbes should marry Cathy

riderchop posted:

Zippy The Pinhead

riderchop posted:

Zippy The Pinhead

Safety Dance posted:

Thank god

So, they're in Portland, Maine? Surely flying would be cheaper at that point.