Don't Be A Shtalker!

Okay, I'm a little concerned about Brad in the "Luann" strip. If he wasn't obsessed with Toni Daytona before, he's approaching stalker material now. The poor guy might just be setting himself up for a fall, one that begins with "I just think you're a neat guy and want to be friends." At this stage in the game, all bets are on - and how incredible it is that a "will she or won't she?" mantra can be inspired by a freakin' comic strip. "Luann" rocks.

Don't know if you get this one where you live, but "Mutts" has quickly won my heart as one of the best strips in The Orlando Sentinel. From its advocacy of compassion for animals to its endearingly funny bits, if you haven't seen this strip, go check the link!

Major Hectic and the Troops

Such a busy week - and a busy morn as well. I wish our paperperson would stop throwing them into the DEAD CENTER of our dog's Poop Palace.


As I'm sure most papers get "Doonesbury", then you're probably aware of the current featured storyline featuring old rocker Jimmy Thudpucker and his statements about the state of the music biz. It's eerily on-key with my own personal feelings; that the music industry that is powered by radio and super-saturation is about to fall victim to sat-radio and iPods. In today's strip, he says "We need a new model. A post-pop star model, where music is free, and performers make a modest living through touring!" Leave it to Trudeau to always have his finger on some kind of pulse-point.

www.doonesbury.com

A comic serial with your cereal?

At least in The Orlando Sentinel, the traditional serial comic strip has no representation. No "Mary Worth" or "Dick Tracy" or even "Ric-O-Shay and Hipshot" or "Gasoline Alley." Perhaps alluding to the short attention spans of folks in the central Florida region (must be all the Disney), most strips are get-the-joke-out jobbers that don't require you to follow along with any idea about character development or situations.

There are a few exceptions, like "For Better Or For Worse" and the always-excellent "Doonesbury" (I wonder how Duke will act now that his namesake, Hunter S. Thompson, is dead?) But a constantly-evolving strip that I've actually followed since my junior high school days (and that dates back to the late 70's) is also dishing out continuous story lines, one of which reached some incredible completion today. In the strip "Luann", brother Brad has finally become a firefighter after barely surviving a punch to the stomach during academy graduation from love-interest Toni Daytona's jealous boyfriend Dirk. Dirk was arrested, Toni coddled Brad, and today - he's announced his assignment location.

It's a tribute to Greg Evans, the strip's creator, that I actually thought "yes! he finally did it!" Of course, he's not at the same station as Toni, but something tells me that it's a good thing, for the sake of us, the comic-reading public.

Funny but true...

For quite a long time, I've been wanting to start a forum for folks who frequent the funny pages. Not all papers have the same comic strips, but many share the most popular. You can really tell a person by the strips they enjoy and the ones they tend to frown at or avoid altogether. I thought it would be fun to compare notes and thoughts with other comic section enthusiasts who find that it's true what they say about the things that make us laugh: it's funny because it's TRUE.

Mahalo,

Bing