Tag Archives: Popeye

The Saturday Comics: Calvin and Hobbes.

29 Oct

October, 29, 2011

I hold Peanuts in very, very high esteem. In some ways it is THE epitome of the comic strip. I may think more with The Far Side, and I believe that Popeye in its classic era is the epitome of sequential and serialized story telling, but none make me feel the way Peanuts makes me feel. It is not simply a strip about a group of little kids, it is a peek into the innocence of youth, and a glimpse into human nature. I’m sure some of you will agree with me, and some of you will think I am reading way too much into it, but legions of people worldwide feel the same way I do.

Calvin and Hobbes comes very, very close to Peanuts. Simply, it is a celebration of the innocence of youth and the wonders of the world as seen through the imagination of a young boy named Calvin and his best friend, a stuffed tiger named Hobbes. Like Peanuts, it tells universal truths hidden inside everyone’s everyday life. It is a beautiful strip.

From wiki: The 3,160th and final strip ran on Sunday, December 31, 1995. It depicted Calvin and Hobbes outside in freshly fallen snow, reveling in the wonder and excitement of the winter scene. “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy… Let’s go exploring!” Calvin exclaims as they zoom off over the snowy hills on their sled, leaving, according to one critic ten years later, “a hole in the comics page that no strip has been able to fill.”

Precedents to Calvin’s fantasy world can be found in Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby, Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts, Percy Crosby’s Skippy, Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County, and George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, while Watterson’s use of comics as sociopolitical commentary reaches back to Walt Kelly’s Pogo and Quino’s Mafalda. Schulz and Kelly particularly influenced Watterson’s outlook on comics during his formative years.

Peanuts, Bloom County, Krazy Kat, Pogo. And Calvin and Hobbes.

No selection of strips can do it justice. I’ve also made sure to include some of the Spaceman Spiff strips, which are among my favorites.

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Someone’s Been Hitting The Hookah Pretty Hard, featuring Popeye

20 May

May 20, 2011

Well that explains everything or it explains nothing. Clearly, everyone in the Middle East is nuts, and if you don’t believe me just watch the news one night.

With all the killings in the name of religion, all the border wars and ethnic bloodshed, all the lunatic fringe elements and not-quite-as-lunatic majority elements running around trying to kill anyone who is not them, and especially anyone as not them as The United States, this Arabian Nights story seems downright quaint in its old school loonyness.

I know it is a losing game to apply logic to this, but if the ruling party could summon and control djinns I’d assume that arresting them would be impossible. They would be impervious to attack, and they would have destroyed their enemies long ago. The fact that you can arrest these magicians means that A- they are pretty crappy magicians or B- they are not magicians at all.

Of course you have to be careful summoning djinns. They are not all Barbara Eden in MC Hammer pants. Most of them can be pretty tricky or downright ruthless. If you were trapped in a lamp (and it doesn’t have to be a lamp- though it is usually oil or another liquid) and got a chance to you’d do your best to stay out and get someone else stuck in the lamp for eternity.

All in all, this story is a funny throwback to the days of mad sultans, genies in lamps, and Max Fleischer

BTW, I added the Popeye picture to the article. The day The Guardian starts editorializing like that is the day I subscribe.

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