Is A Part Of
I mentioned before that I really didn’t want to get too much into blogging about Comic Strips, but recent events in two of my favorite comics (one web-based, one ‘krispy kleenex’-based) have changed my mind. That and the realization I now had more bookmarks for webcomics and websites for newspaper comics than I do for blogs. I had gotten into the habit of comic-surfing every evening just after 9:00PM (Pacific Time; Midnight Eastern U.S. Time) to see the latest funnies as soon as possible after they’ve been updated, and had come to realize that this was more entertaining for me than anything on television at the time.
But I will not be doing my comics-blogging here. I’m going to be using one of the several domain names I acquired for projects I never really launched… in this specific case, a webcomic that dead-ended because the concept would have required far more artistic ability from day one than I could personally muster up. I know that many many successful comics evolved into their familiar styles from something more crude, but all the characters in my comic were supposed to be clowns – and there were frighteningly few of my drawings that anyone could guess was supposed to be a clown. I know what you’re thinking, and NO, those are pictures that will not end up on the web. What is on the web is ClownsAround.com, set up for comicking using the ComicPress theme on WordPress (for all you ‘How’d He Do That?’ types), with big blank boxes into which I had hoped one day to put my clowns. But scroll down and you will see (if you hurry) scripts for the first two ClownsAround comics, introducing the concept of the town of Clown Valley and the characters of Hobart and Beau (tentative names) two of the three central characters (the third was going to move in the next few strips). But also an About page that pretty much laid out what I intended to do.
The comic may yet emerge from the bowels of the internet, but first I would have to recruit an artistically inclined partner to do the clown-drawing, and right now, on the webcomics singles scene, the comic writers looking for artists outnumber the artists looking for writers by an Alaska-pipeline-sized ratio. Therefore, I will use ClownsAround.com for my blog about comics, rather than buy a domain with a more obvious name (I was flirting with comicstripmall.com, but alas, ’tis taken). After all, some of the best blogs about comics have domain names that say nothing comicky: there’s Websnark.com which really isn’t snarky, Fleen.com and Joshreads.com, the original home of the Comics Curmudgeon who really IS snarky. And how many really successful web enterprises have had self-explanatory names: Amazon, eBay, Yahoo? Then Pets.com… I rest my case.
But I do have some plans to fix up the ClownsAround site into something that looks both comicky and clowny and will use Photoshopped Gimped variations of somebody else’s art. And the artists won’t complain because it’ll give them a free plug and a link. I hope. Stay tuned for further updates.
But I digress.
I could not remain silent when one of my all-time faves had not Jumped the Shark, but Jumped INTO the Shark, like this guy. And I don’t mean Schlock Mercenary, in spite of its current digression out of Space Opera into Creative Near-Death Experience, complete with knocking a hole in the “Fourth Wall” big enough to drive a Mothership through 
(Or maybe Nuking the Fourth Wall from Orbit). I am still fairly comfortably on board for this Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride With Alice in Wonderland From The Enchanted Tiki Room To The Haunted Mansion, but if comicker Howard Taylor detours into It’s A Small World, I’m going back to the front gate to demand a refund.
No, it wasn’t Schlock but one of may favorite Krispy Kleenex Komix that has served me up a massive disappointment on a shingle. The offender is 9 Chickweed Lane, the stylishly-drawn home of independent sexy women, a cat who doesn’t need to talk to show attitude, a madman philosopher in over-alls, and scenes from the seemingly un-comicky fields of Academia and Ballet. For some time, comicker Brooke McEldowney (whom I was disappointed to learn is a guy) has been brewing up one of the better “we’re gonna get nasty letters about this” plotlines about an emerging romance between a lapsed nun and a semi-lapsing priest. At the beginning of July, the whole Chickweediverse was shaken by a prediction from the madman philosopher that apparently the lapsing priest was taking very seriously.
At this point, the plotline slowed to an agonizing trickle, making room for a sitcom’s worth of misunderstandingsand arguments, AND taking a week off while the syndicate showed some surrealistic rerun strips from two years ago…
(Personally, I feared that the distributors had vetoed McEldowney’s storyline, or were at least trying to talk him out of it). After two long months, all the confusion had been de-confused and the disagreements agreed upon and the not-so-young lovers had decided to choose Love over God when, on the Saturday of a Labor Day weekend, when readership was sure to be at its lowest, Brooke hits us with this:
(Try to remain calm, Wendell, try to remain calm)
A FREAKING ASTEROID/HEMORRHOID PUN? THAT WAS THE ULTIMATE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND ONE OF NEWSPAPER COMICS’ MOST TABOO ROMANCES?
That hurts, Brooke, that really really hurts. It’s going to take a long time to forgive you for this. (And it’s why I have no qualms re-weblishing four of your strips without permission) It’s a good thing I ponied up for the “Comics Extra” so I can go back to 1993 and re-read your first Chickweeds, back when we were all a lot more innocent, and a lot less Hemorrhoidal.
