Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/26/04

OK, is it the jet lag, or did the art in Rex Morgan, M.D. change while I was away? I can’t pinpoint a day in the archives when everything changed, but things just seem different. The names on the strip are the same, but that doesn’t mean a thing in the seamy underworld of comic sweatshopery. Maybe Wilson and/or Nolan took a night class and wanted to show off some new techniques.

At first, I was a bit put off — I really like the art in this strip — but after squinting at it some it’s growing on me a bit. The polka-dot shadow on Rex’s face in the middle panel look kinda Roy Lichtenstein-esque. In fact, this strip reminds me a lot of “In the Car,” a Lichtenstein I’ve always liked.

(Jeez, look at that, I go to France for a couple of weeks and I’m getting all ooh-la-la-serious-art-referency. I gotta watch some TV.)

Post Content

Not that I’m married to factual accuracy or anything, but I just thought I’d correct one misstatement in my Prince Valiant entry of a few days ago: the current author of that strip and managing editor of the Atlantic is named Cullen Murphy, not John Cullen Murphy. John was Cullen’s father, who also worked on Prince Valiant, and he just recently passed away. You can read more about them both here. Thanks to Robin for setting me straight.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading this little blog over the past few weeks. In what has been a fairly major shock to me, I seem to have attracted a core group of several dozen readers. So now I’m going to probably throw all that away by going on vacation for two weeks. I’ll be in France, and thus away from my computer and the comics section, until Friday, August 27. In theory, I could go to an Internet cafe and post about the comics in the International Herald Tribune every day, but I’m, like, not going to.

For everyone bereft by this news, I have a homework assignment. Those of you who are interested should keep track of one of the soap opera comics discussed here so far (Apartment 3-G, Mary Worth, The Phantom, Rex Morgan, M.D., or Mark Trail) over the next two weeks and send me a summary of plot developments on the 26th. Whoever can sum up two weeks of action most succinctly and amusingly gets their version published here. I’ll bet you can do Mary Worth in a sentence.

Au revoir, y’all!

Post Content

The Lockhorns, 8/13/04

One of many things I like about the Lockhorns is the set of visual cues the artists use to indicate that Loretta has been in a car accident (which happens fairly often). The fact that she’s holding the steering wheel is, well, cartoonish, but the rest of it — the purse dragged on the floor as if she’s stumbling around in a daze, the mussed hair, the torn skirt, the falling hose, and, in particular, the black eyes — are just a wee bit too realistic and painful, and thus in total keeping with the mean spirit of the strip. At least she’s smiling in this one.