Yo, here’s a twisted snowman comic strip by artist Katie Skelly. Here’s why this one is so great. The visual joke itself is funny but the the line in the last panel makes it downright hilarious. It makes you wonder what kind of “issues” Teresa has.

– Click to enlarge.

Yo! Here’’s another comic strip in our Snowman Series. Yes, I didn’t realize we’d be doing a snowman series either. It is mid-March and spring is upon us so enjoy these comics before they melt.

This Foxtrot strip by Bill Amend was printed around Valentine’s Day. I think it makes more sense when you know it’s a v-day comic. Otherwise, it’s just odd for a Foxtrot. It’s not in Jason’s character to build a romantic snowcouple, even though the cartoonist tried to cover that by writing in that he was put up to it. Still…

– Click to enlarge.

Yesterday Hank posted a baffling strip involving a creepy looking snowman and small boys. Does this sound familiar? The specific origin of when funny snowmen first made their appearance in the humor pages is unknown, but this comic strip device was made famous by cartoonist Bill Waterson of Calvin and Hobbes. He even named a book after it. There are numerous ways in which Calvin has expressed himself through the creation of snowmen. Most of the C&H strips involving funny snowmen don’t even involve Calvin, rather they have his parents discovering just how deranged their child is.

Check out these great Calvin and Hobbes examples. How unsettling is that third strip?

– Click them to enlarge.

Yo! Check out this comic strip, 44 Union Avenue by Mike Witmer. First of all, I don’t get this one. I think I understand what the joke is supposed to be. The kid is scared of the snowman and it reminds him of his nightmares or he just doesn’t want the snowman in his nightmares. I think.

– Click to enlarge

If he’s so freaked out, then why does he stand and stare up at it for two whole panels before running in terror? The silent first panel indicates an even longer sense of time taking in the horrifying snow monster. And why in a state of fear does the kid turn around in panel four and strike a pose of triumphant declaration with a finger pointed to the sky?

Here’s why I really don’t get the joke. (Is there a joke?) The question posed is what the melting snowman reminds the kid in glasses of. That comment is what triggers his friend running of which he doesn’t understand. And then we don’t find out what it reminded him of. Huh?

I may have a birdbrain but I know comic strips. Please, please, please, if you understand this strip, explain it to me!!!

Yo, here’s a unique new strip called Yenny by David Alvarez. Yenny is a Puerto Rican wanna-be supermodel with oversized feet. I’ve read a few weeks of this strip and from what I can tell, her train doesn’t run on rails. She drives off to modeling college, crashes the car, hitchhikes on an ice cream truck, makes out with the ice cream guy, befriends other models at school and struggles with a bigfoot complex.

The art is well done in a modern, cartoony pinup sort of way with high-fashioned, expressive characters. However I feel the wonky perspective of the backgrounds do not fit the feel of the strip itself. David obviously likes drawing scantily clad girls over beach huts and ice cream trucks.

The writing, well let’s just say I had trouble finding one to showcase for the blog. The humor is derivative of typical amateur comic strip devices and not very original. Check this one out. Do you believe Yenny is actually thinking of giving up modeling? No. So the zinger is not much of a surprise.

If you read more of the strip, you’ll see this one stands out as an odd situation. The girls all seem fairly snobby about their lifestyle and campfire chats don’t quite fit in. Why hasn’t her friend’s hand caught fire? It almost does in panel two. Maybe it’s the power of her fireproof stick.

What do you think of Yenny?

– Click to enlarge.

Yo. I dig the modern comic strip, On a Claire Day by Carla Ventresca and Henry Beckett. The strip is about Claire (duh) who recently moved into her first apartment and learns to adjust to the real world. She still has close ties with her parents as seen in these two examples.

It is a very simple comic strip in writing, art and humor. The cartoonist, Carla, comes from a greeting card background and it shows. And it works! The art is light and whimsical. The writing in each strip follows an easy-to-follow, linear path toward the zinger at the end. What I mean is that the ’setup’ for the joke is not complicated and flows like natural conversation. Nice.

This bird gives Claire a feathers up. What do you think of it?

–Click to enlarge.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Charles Schulz died on Feb. 12, 2000. He personally wrote and drew every single Peanuts comic strip without an assistant for nearly 50 years. His death should have marked the end of Peanuts’ syndication.

Now I know what you’re asking. “But Marilla, don’t lots of comics continue after an artist’s death?” Yes they do and unfortunately, it is quite common. However in these cases, another artist picks up the brush and continues the saga. Schulz’s personal dedication to his craft would have been quite dishonored if someone else were allowed to continue the strip.

The newspapers, so fearful of losing readership don’t want to give up the immensely popular Peanuts whom millions of readers adore. United Feature Syndicate distributed it to thousands of newspapers for decades, certainly one of their top money-makers. Afraid to lose that revenue, they (along with Schulz’s estate) decide to reprint old strips as “Classic Peanuts”. This is what you see in the papers today.

Now here is the main reason why this is bad for the funny pages: There is less room for new comics! How are they (syndicates and newspapers) to find the next Peanuts level success if they limit their opportunities? Do they plan on running Classic Peanuts for another 50 years? How deep in fear will they get before readers simply get tired of rerun comics? Has this terrible precedent been set and will we one day be reading Vintage Doonesbury, Retro Ziggy, Antique Garfield and Archaic Dilbert?

Yo! You shoulda heard Marilla griping last night about “Classic Peanuts” being printed in the papers these days. She was so fired up she wrote a blog post about it for tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll wet your whistle with a good ‘ol Peanuts comic strip from 1961. This one made me laugh.

– Click it to enlarge.

Yo… To illustrate Marilla’s point from yesterday’s post, here are two Dick Tracy strips. The first is from Sept. 23, 1944 and when printed, spanned the width of the newspaper page. The second strip is from Feb. 20, 2007. Look in your paper and see how small they are printed today. There are commonly two rows of comics with ads or puzzles along the side of the page. The modern comic strip is less than a third of the width of the page. Click on the 1944 strip and check out the level of detail drawn in the background (and this example is mild). That just can’t be done in today’s comics.

–Click them to enlarge.

Tomorrow I promise to bring you funny comic strips. Enough of this adventure stuff, eh?

They used to be quite popular but the genre has been slowly dying out. Several factors affected the staying power of adventure strips, or any other kind of the more serious “continuity comic strips”.

When the adventure strip was born in the 1930s, comics were not the small strips you see today. They were printed larger, across the entire width of the newspaper page and artists had more space with which to work. An artist often had a full page for their own Sunday comic! This provided great possibilities for portraying the dramatics needed for adventure storytelling. Comics have gotten smaller and smaller over the decades, thus space limitations have taken its toll on the ability to portray adventure and suspense.

So comic books picked up the slack with the ability to fully explore and expand the devices needed to depict adventure. Artists interested in the genre then went to the booming comic book industry rather than newspapers. However, through World War II, several war hero strips popped up in the papers and continued great success well into the 50s and beyond.

Besides comic books, other forms of entertainment became competition for the adventure strips. Radio drama, television and movies grew in popularity and as they became more sophisticated (especially TV and film) the shrinking adventure strip could hardly compete. If you want action and suspense, would you read the comics or watch a movie? And these days we have the internet for people to spend their time reading brilliant blogs by stunning alligators and hip birds.

Sure you still see adventure strips in the papers. But how adventurous are they? Do you read any of them? Leave a comment and let us know!