NO ESCAPING THE “FUNNY PAGES,” SO-CALLED!

Art, CARTOONS, COMIC BOOKS, COMIX STRIPS, ESSAYS

This is from an unfinished storyboard that me and R.C. hoped to turn into a West Coast project with the writers on strike here in July 2023. It reminded me of the many gag cartoons that I often sell to magazines of the New Yorkers bulk and ilk to pay the bills. A reasoned essay to untangle arrived almost in full in my busy mind while me and my R.C. waited for the agent to fall.

According to McCloud, a cartoon differs from a comic strip because the latter requires at least two images juxtaposed in sequence. As McCloud pointed out, Keane’s The Family Circus is technically a gag cartoon, not a comic strip, and that is why it was sometimes on a different page than the comics’ section holding the syndicated strips. In my hometown’s paper, sometimes The Family Circus was in the “funny pages” proper, usually juxtaposed with an unrelated crossword puzzle, sometimes it was elsewhere in the newspaper, on the editorial page with the latest from Trudeau, I saw it once there, an unconscious recognition of its quasi-existence as both comic strip and gag cartoon in the minds of the uneducated, and — but the point being —

Even those magnificent Sunday spreads from Keane are technically cartoons and not comics. That arrow leading a young, red-haired — Billy? Sammy? — on his mischievous adventures of grave importance for a boy is not a border of individual panels!

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And with a proper caption, we have a gag cartoon. (Although a caption is not a requirement. Silent gag cartoons are innumerable, and silent gag reels of Hollywood were once a mainstay).

Here I must thank my R.C. for encouraging me to turn the gag cartoon into a comic strip to provide further example.

Me and My Regina Aire Corona
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No Need To Adjust The Ears. It Is Not Reel TV.
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In today’s modern world, with the AI, the news, and so forth, it is all one big fucking “funny page” of high hysteria, so that new, better worlds are born, of course, as the screenshot here so richly proves!

TRUE STORY.

ESSAYS

I retired at my customary time. I was fretting about the dying Trixie Kitty who was at the vet’s getting treatment to ease her decline. Restless, I adjusted my new household fan and returned to my snooze. I heard a flutter like a bird taking wing from the top tier of my sturdy desk. A paper like a message landed on my chest. Ah, I thought, my powerful brand new fan dislodged this. I regarded it testily, and saw this powerful image.

A box of bicarbonate of soda, the top half torn away months past to freshen the room, also had blown off to spot the carpet with what looked like moon dust and moon rocks in the room. The mess glowed in the dark, bluish and white. I better clean that up with the vacuum cleaner, I thought.

🌕 photo 01-06-2023