Stripped of Glory
1) Since the semester ended, I've been slowly (savoring every moment) working my way through Jerry Robinson's excellent giant historical survey, The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art. I picked it up for $9.95 at a local used book store.
I've really become fascinated/obsessed with old strips, and have begun looking for more and more reprint/republication volumes and magazines.
2) Not too long ago Rundy commented on Abigail's blog and recommended the Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Edition Book. Most likely, under normal conditions, I would have noted the recommendation and then proceeded to do not much about it. Recently, within the last week, (before I read Rundy's comment), I was at Borders and saw this very book on sale for $5.99 and considered picking it up. I decided against it since I knew that the Complete Hardcover Collection is coming out in the fall. But, the providential coincidence of the recommendation and the recent sighting was enough to make me take the family on a special outing tonight to buy the book. Mostly Rundy's mentioning that it contained essays and commentary (that I don't think will be included in the future complete collection) was what convinced me to go out and get it.
3) After coming home, I spent some time looking on the internet for an article about Watterson that I had read a couple of years ago. I found it after some simple searching, but, even better, I found the Derkins Library for Calvin and Hobbes Research.
I especially enjoyed reading Watterson's speech, The Cheapening of Comics, which relates back to #1, my newfound passion for old comic strips. Go read the speech and weep with us. Then wipe your eyes, and pull out your Complete Little Nemo, and dream of a better time in the future, based on the past.
"Amazingly, much of the best cartoon work was done early on in the medium's history. The early cartoonists, with no path before them, produced work of such sophistication, wit, and beauty that it increasingly seems to me that cartoon evolution is working backward. Comic strips are moving toward a primordial goo rather than away from it. As a cartoonist, it's a bit humiliating to read work that was done over 50 years ago and find it more imaginative than what any of us are doing now. We've lost many of the most precious qualities of comics. Most readers today have never seen the best comics of the past, so they don't even know what they're missing. Not only can comics be more than we're getting today. but the comics already have been more than we're getting today. The reader is being gypped and he doesn't even know it."
4) I also recently signed up for DailyInk and My Comics Page. I had been buying the newspaper every day simply for the comics pages. I don't read the news (though Abigail does). Doing the math, I decided that getting strips online, for about $27 a year, is much more affordable than buying the paper for the comics at about $240 a year. MyDailyInk and MyComicsPage also have strips available (that I enjoy) that aren't available in the Buffalo News.
I'm toying with the idea of starting a comic strip commentary blog, pretty much a complete rip-off of The Comics Curmudgeon
1) Since the semester ended, I've been slowly (savoring every moment) working my way through Jerry Robinson's excellent giant historical survey, The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art. I picked it up for $9.95 at a local used book store.
I've really become fascinated/obsessed with old strips, and have begun looking for more and more reprint/republication volumes and magazines.
2) Not too long ago Rundy commented on Abigail's blog and recommended the Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Edition Book. Most likely, under normal conditions, I would have noted the recommendation and then proceeded to do not much about it. Recently, within the last week, (before I read Rundy's comment), I was at Borders and saw this very book on sale for $5.99 and considered picking it up. I decided against it since I knew that the Complete Hardcover Collection is coming out in the fall. But, the providential coincidence of the recommendation and the recent sighting was enough to make me take the family on a special outing tonight to buy the book. Mostly Rundy's mentioning that it contained essays and commentary (that I don't think will be included in the future complete collection) was what convinced me to go out and get it.
3) After coming home, I spent some time looking on the internet for an article about Watterson that I had read a couple of years ago. I found it after some simple searching, but, even better, I found the Derkins Library for Calvin and Hobbes Research.
I especially enjoyed reading Watterson's speech, The Cheapening of Comics, which relates back to #1, my newfound passion for old comic strips. Go read the speech and weep with us. Then wipe your eyes, and pull out your Complete Little Nemo, and dream of a better time in the future, based on the past.
"Amazingly, much of the best cartoon work was done early on in the medium's history. The early cartoonists, with no path before them, produced work of such sophistication, wit, and beauty that it increasingly seems to me that cartoon evolution is working backward. Comic strips are moving toward a primordial goo rather than away from it. As a cartoonist, it's a bit humiliating to read work that was done over 50 years ago and find it more imaginative than what any of us are doing now. We've lost many of the most precious qualities of comics. Most readers today have never seen the best comics of the past, so they don't even know what they're missing. Not only can comics be more than we're getting today. but the comics already have been more than we're getting today. The reader is being gypped and he doesn't even know it."
4) I also recently signed up for DailyInk and My Comics Page. I had been buying the newspaper every day simply for the comics pages. I don't read the news (though Abigail does). Doing the math, I decided that getting strips online, for about $27 a year, is much more affordable than buying the paper for the comics at about $240 a year. MyDailyInk and MyComicsPage also have strips available (that I enjoy) that aren't available in the Buffalo News.
I'm toying with the idea of starting a comic strip commentary blog, pretty much a complete rip-off of The Comics Curmudgeon
posted by trawlerman at 8:55 PM
1 Comments:
Interesting collection of C & H links.
When Bill Watterson first quit the strip I was heartbroken. Even up to this present day a lot of people hold out hope (and speculation) that he will come back. Myself, with the passage of years I've come to understand why he made the decision and why he won't be coming back.
I think when you understand how Watterson viewed his strip you come to realize that his quitting was a foregone (and necessary) conclusion. As is evident if you've read what Watterson has to say about his fights over licensing he did C & H for love, not money. Also, it was a creation he used to explore ideas more than just simply telling a series of silly jokes. When you read his notes in the 10th Anniverary book you begin to see the effort he (usually) expended to not be repititious. If you're not going to repeat then eventually your ideas will reach an end. Most modern strips are an endless series of (usually) limp jokes. With C & H Watterson couldn't (by his own standards, I mean) simply continue the strip as an endless repeat of the same worn ideas. It, as he said, became increasingly hard to write certain sequences as he had to keep toping his previous episode (the babysitter stories, etc).
If you must keep toping yourself you will eventually reach an end. C & H is finished, just like a novel is finished. Watteron completed his ideas for that "Story." People are not surprised when a novelist completes his novel and moves on to a new story. Why should people be surprised when Watterson finished one story and felt the need to move on to another. His creative cycle made it necessary.
Well . . . that was a lot of blathering. But I do think that in all the stuff that has been written about Watterson and his comic strip few (if any) people seem to have realized the very logical arch of his work and what motivated Watterson to act and work as he did.
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