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?

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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.

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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?

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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?

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Yo! Here’s the first internet-only comic strip (a.k.a. webcomic) we’re featuring here at Zingerding. It’s called ‘Rip Haywire‘ by cartoonist Dan Thompson. The strip is both an homage and a spoof of classic adventure strips like ‘Steve Canyon’ or ‘Captain Easy’ mixed with a contemporary edge and sense of humor. Plus it’s beautifully drawn!

Rip is the captain of a cargo plane and his dog/sidekick’s name is TNT. Cobra Carson is the girl and so far I can’t tell if she’s a love interest or a “bad guy”. She’s probably both. Oh the drama! What will Rip do?

Here’s a sample strip from the middle of an ongoing storyline. I dig the action in this one!

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Yo! Here’s a weird Willie the Penguin comic strip advertising Kool cigarettes. I don’t have a date on this strip but I do know they were printed in comic sections of the paper along with the regular strips. Something tells me that wouldn’t fly these days.

I’ve heard stories about Willie from some of the old-timer comic characters. They say he was a sellout and once he got hooked on nicotine, it was all downhill from there. I think he was probably drunk in those first two panels, skating with half-lidded eyes into a sign right in front of him. And did he remove his feet in panel three? They don’t have the skates on the bottom and they match his girlfriend’s feet. Hmm.

Joe Camel got a bad rap for presumedly marketing cigs to kids. I think Willie is worse. What do you think?

Yo, here’s a Non-Sequitur strip with a poignant social message. I like to see when cartoonists use the power of their medium to make a point about a larger issue than the daily laugh. The artform of comic strips lends itself to a whole range of subjects and genres, not just humor.

The freakin’ vertically formated strip makes it hard to layout the blog. Click it to read it!

Yo! I thought I’d vanilla it down for today’s comic. Here’s a sweet, charming, oh-kids-are-so-cute, little Family Circus by Bill Keane.

I’ve got a bit of cartoonist trivia to go with it. Bill’s son, Glen Keane, is one of Disney’s top directing animators and the man behind the character of Tarzan, as seen in today’s comic. That might make this the most interesting Family Circus comic ever.
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Disclaimer: We don’t condone the use of illegal substances here at Zingerding. Our position is strictly about the publishability of the comic strip.

In the last several posts, Hank posed the question of whether those Get Fuzzy strips are appropriate for the mainstream press. We believe they are. Why? Two reasons.

First, although the humor is centered around marijuana, the strip isn’t taking a position on the subject. In fact, the joke itself is that Bucky is completely ignorant of his references to the drug. Rob never makes mention of them as related to drugs. He acts in a neutral, bipartisan way, that they are “misleading” and “could use a little editing.”

And editing is what they got when they were banned from newspapers. The second reason we believe they should be published is the right to free speech and equality in the press. Why in a newspaper could there be in-depth articles about the war on drugs detailing the hardship of users and dealers, but not a purposely ambiguous comic strip where the zinger is based on ignorance? Comics come in all kinds. If you want sweet and innocent, read Family Circus. If you want off-beat and sometimes edgy, read Get Fuzzy.

We think cartoonist Darby Conley did a masterful job of handling a subject he knew would be controversial. Controversy is okay. It doesn’t need to be banned from the public eye. Controversy sparks thinking and the formation of one’s own opinions. That’s a good thing.

Yo, here’s the latest installment of the controversial Get Fuzzy series from the past two days. Today is your last chance folks, to give us your opinion of these strips! Never again will I ask you about them. Are they acceptable? Click on ‘comments’.

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