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Panels from Herb and Jamaal, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, Shoe, and Doonesbury, 9/10/04

One of the many things about Gary Trudeau that I like is that he’s admitted that, at least initially, he wasn’t very good at drawing. A lot of early Doonesburys consisted of one character sitting in front of the TV for four consecutive identical panels, and while there was a certain pop-art charm to this, I think most people would agree that his strip has improved leaps and bounds since then, especially after his extended early-1980s sabbatical.

Anyway, for me, one of the defining features of modern-era Doonesbury is the “shadow panel,” where the characters are rendered as white against a black background (or vice versa) for a single panel. This is a technique that has spread in one form or another to other comics as well (or maybe it was always there, though Doonesbury is where I noticed it first). It’s kind of arty, and like a lot of art, I don’t have a clue what it’s supposed to mean. I think it’s safe to say that it doesn’t represent a momentary shift in ambient light, or a massive nearby explosion. Sometimes, as in both Herb and Jamaal and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith today, it’s part of a shift in perspective, generally representing something too far away to render details. (Though I should point out that in Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, the shadowy characters are not, in fact, too far away to render details; in fact, with their white hands, they look alarmingly like Aunt Jemima figurines.) With the other two, though, we’re looking at the same scene from essentially the same angle, so it’s representing … what, exactly? Time passing? A change in scene? A desire to not draw the same damn details on the same characters for a third time in one day? Anyone who knows more about drawing comics than I do (and Lord knows there must be enough of you out there) should please edify us all.

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OK, when a couple days ago I promised to tell you all about the most alarming search results that lead to my blog, I didn’t expect things to get so alarming so quickly. But sure enough, a look at my referrer logs today indicates that someone stumbled onto IRTCSYDHT by going to Earthlink’s rebranded Google search and looking for “blondie bumstead nude.”

I’ve posted a screenshot of the search page that brought my anonymous pervert fan here because I think it’s funny on a number of levels. For one thing, whoever it is apparently browsed through 19 pages of filth before deciding to click on the link to my blog.

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Gasoline Alley, 9/9/04

Take a look at Gertie, Uncle Walt’s soon-to-be nurse, in the first panel of this strip. Then look at Rover and his parents in the third. They’re all pictured at more or less the same angle, and more or less the same distance from the “camera,” but to me they look quite different: Gertie looks like a drawing of an actual person — maybe even of an actual, specific person — while Rover and company look like cartoon characters.

You know you’re in deep, comics-wise, when you spend a good piece of your day trying to eyeball this. I think it’s mostly Gertie’s eyes, which look like real human eyes, while the men in the third panel have little pupil-dots, and mom has the perfectly-round-eye syndrome that has beset Caucasian cartoon characters for generations. Gertie’s nose is also fairly normal looking, while everyone else’s has a cartoon sketchiness. Rover’s dad (OK, I’m just about out of circumlocutions that will allow me to avoid admitting that I have no idea what these people’s names are) even has the classic pig-nose that also doesn’t occur outside of the comics page (Luann’s Brad also has one of these). Gertie’s hair, too, almost looks like it’s being drawn based on a photograph.

So, here’s the puzzle: Who is Gertie? Why is she being dropped into the cartoon world of Gasoline Alley? Is the artist honoring an old friend — or is it something more sinister?

Actually, I can’t really imagine what sinister purpose there could be behind it. It’s probably just a nice gesture or something.

No doubt quite a few of you don’t really care about this issue at all and have just spent the last few minutes saying “Holy crap, I can’t believe Gasoline Alley still exists!” Well, it sure does, buster, it sure does. In fact, it not only ages its characters in real time, but it also on occasion features some of the best dialectical dialogue this side of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith.