Flipping Out

There's been a lot of talk lately about the viability of the comics syndicates. Some people, like Scott Kurtz, of PVP, say that there's no reason to have them around anymore.

Kurtz then offered to run his strips in any newspaper that would have it for free, as long as the paper would provide a weblink for his site. His reasoning is that the added site traffic and increased marketing and sales would more than pay for his way of life. Considering he gets by fine right now, between his comics and a nice deal with Image Comics, I'd say he's got a good point.

He's caught some flack from people like Wiley, who draws "Non Sequitur", but that really just draws a whole lot more attention to his cause. Wiley inexplicably devoted two strips to mocking Kurtz, and it seems to me that devoting valuable newspaper space to Kurtz's cause (in a way that only people already aware of it would understand, I might add; if you were confused about a Wiley comic in the past few months, that was likely the reason), would only serve to inflame people on Kurtz's side and confuse Wiley's everyday reader.

I'll link to them if I can find them, but considering Universal Comics has a limited archive for people without subscription, I probably won't be able to find either of them.

But if anything shows the decline of long-time comic syndicate staples, it's today's Garfield

Now, this, the Feb 21st Garfield, appears to suggest that Jon Arbuckle is either some kind of Satanist that enjoys sacrificing goats, or that goats like living in furnaces. I don't know what to make of it. Someone explain this to me.

Seriously. What. The. Heck. I know Jim Davis has a squad of people to draw his comics and stuff, but I have the feeling he's hired one too many jaded kids, or Satanists, or jaded Satanists. Either that or he's been chasing the dragon.

Of course, comics like "Peanuts" can rerun their contents forever, and it will never get old, but Charles Schulz was something special. For instance, this strip remains funny and will always be funny.

Schulz didn't need politically commentary, although he often included some (his NRA / Gun license strip remains the most blatant comic on gun control I've ever read).

He didn't need kitchy relationship humor, or cats kicking dogs off tables or sending other cats to Abu Dhabi.

Schulz was so good at what he did to the point that today, years after his passing, Peanuts is one of the few strips I will read on a consistent basis on Yahoo's comic page.

Boondocks, Foxtrot, Doonesbury, and Get Fuzzy pretty much round it out. And from today's Garfield, I'm not sure I'll ever be reading THAT comic ever again. Again.

What. The. Heck.




Oh yeah. RIP, Hunter S. Thompson. Your lunacy will be seriously missed.

I would really rather have heard that J.D. Salinger had shot himself. I don't think I would have minded as much. Hunter S. Thompson was a truly wacky, tripped out guy that had a way with words.