It seems like Grrl is always the first to get paranoid and/or emotional about a situation, followed by Girl, and Boy tries to hold on to any last shred of optimism he has before he’s trapped in another Bleak Reality. It’s like Charlie Brown and the football, except Lucy isn’t a jerk.
No they are not. They were always our ideas. They took them and sold them back to us making us doubt everything. But there is still hope because, alcohol washes everything clean again.
Marketing trends simply amplify the general conciousness of what is cool. Cool things become inundated across a society and thus slowly lose thier cool. This leads to the perception that marketing is both creating and killing cool, while cool is in fact simply moving on to the next thing.
Has anyone ever made a successful comic with characters who age, and die? I wonder what that would be like. Would character types be replaced to maintain the tone of the comic, but change the gender and other details? Or would it give you the freedom to completely change the comic whenever you felt like it. Possibly through assassination.
I think the pre-eminent example of characters aging in-strip is “Gasoline Alley”.
“For Better Or For Worse” certainly sees the characters growing older – and from the little that I’ve read, it seems that the cartoonist has been preparing the readers for the death-by-old-age of the main characters’ parents.
Yep, “For Better or for Worse” did age its characters, and quite successfully. I guess it still does, but Lynn Johnston eventually rebooted the strip, rewinding it back to the beginning, if you will. She had several reasons for this; it wasn’t just to avoid killing off the old folks on-screen.
Another successful strip in which the characters age, and die, is “Funky Winkerbean.” However, much of the aging has been in two abrupt leaps forward in time, rather than by gradual aging of the characters.
In a more general sense many good strips’ characters may not age in physically obvious ways, but they often do change as the artist changes, just as the work of painters, poets, and musicians evolves as life changes them.
Look at early Cat and Girl and then look at them today. Better yet, listen to what they say and the situations Dorothy creates for them. They may not necessarily LOOK older (or maybe to some folks they do), but they’re very different characters today. Next year no doubt they’ll have changed further.
Other comic characters age very little, presumably because the artists don’t let their characters change. They way they LOOK may change with the times, or with changes in the artist’s style, but their characterizations are mostly static. Garfield, Blondie, and Beetle Bailey are among the many that seem to be stuck in time.
I think it takes a certain amount of courage to not re-do earlier works. I love _Bone_, but the epicness of it all was slightly diminished by the different tone of the earlier chapters. Still, Jeff Smith did resist the temptation to go back and twizz up the complete collection.
It went: Mom and Pop; Offspring + two of his/her friends; Offspring + two of his/her friends; Offspring + friend, – the friend they lost to AIDS when he/she contracted the virus from working on a horror movie that used HIV positive blood unwittingly because real blood was cheaper than fake blood. It was bad for both of them. He/She still reads the obituary on the regular.
I think this scenario was accurately portrayed in the movement of the awning in the background.
August 4, 2009
I bow to your genius, Dorothy.
August 4, 2009
I want to manage a cinnabon! oops, by “manage” i meant “eat”
August 4, 2009
Ha.
August 4, 2009
It seems like Grrl is always the first to get paranoid and/or emotional about a situation, followed by Girl, and Boy tries to hold on to any last shred of optimism he has before he’s trapped in another Bleak Reality. It’s like Charlie Brown and the football, except Lucy isn’t a jerk.
August 4, 2009
No they are not. They were always our ideas. They took them and sold them back to us making us doubt everything. But there is still hope because, alcohol washes everything clean again.
August 4, 2009
cinnabon is sooo gooooddddd!
August 4, 2009
I am listening to Nirvana right now.
August 4, 2009
lol
August 4, 2009
Marketing trends simply amplify the general conciousness of what is cool. Cool things become inundated across a society and thus slowly lose thier cool. This leads to the perception that marketing is both creating and killing cool, while cool is in fact simply moving on to the next thing.
August 5, 2009
I don’t get it
August 5, 2009
These types of strips (with the various clique/trend groups) are some of my favorites.
August 5, 2009
Has anyone ever made a successful comic with characters who age, and die? I wonder what that would be like. Would character types be replaced to maintain the tone of the comic, but change the gender and other details? Or would it give you the freedom to completely change the comic whenever you felt like it. Possibly through assassination.
August 5, 2009
@idkrash:
I think the pre-eminent example of characters aging in-strip is “Gasoline Alley”.
“For Better Or For Worse” certainly sees the characters growing older – and from the little that I’ve read, it seems that the cartoonist has been preparing the readers for the death-by-old-age of the main characters’ parents.
August 5, 2009
Yep, “For Better or for Worse” did age its characters, and quite successfully. I guess it still does, but Lynn Johnston eventually rebooted the strip, rewinding it back to the beginning, if you will. She had several reasons for this; it wasn’t just to avoid killing off the old folks on-screen.
Another successful strip in which the characters age, and die, is “Funky Winkerbean.” However, much of the aging has been in two abrupt leaps forward in time, rather than by gradual aging of the characters.
In a more general sense many good strips’ characters may not age in physically obvious ways, but they often do change as the artist changes, just as the work of painters, poets, and musicians evolves as life changes them.
Look at early Cat and Girl and then look at them today. Better yet, listen to what they say and the situations Dorothy creates for them. They may not necessarily LOOK older (or maybe to some folks they do), but they’re very different characters today. Next year no doubt they’ll have changed further.
Other comic characters age very little, presumably because the artists don’t let their characters change. They way they LOOK may change with the times, or with changes in the artist’s style, but their characterizations are mostly static. Garfield, Blondie, and Beetle Bailey are among the many that seem to be stuck in time.
August 7, 2009
I think it takes a certain amount of courage to not re-do earlier works. I love _Bone_, but the epicness of it all was slightly diminished by the different tone of the earlier chapters. Still, Jeff Smith did resist the temptation to go back and twizz up the complete collection.
September 6, 2009
when i grow up i dont want to see the world as an illusion
September 28, 2009
It went: Mom and Pop; Offspring + two of his/her friends; Offspring + two of his/her friends; Offspring + friend, – the friend they lost to AIDS when he/she contracted the virus from working on a horror movie that used HIV positive blood unwittingly because real blood was cheaper than fake blood. It was bad for both of them. He/She still reads the obituary on the regular.
I think this scenario was accurately portrayed in the movement of the awning in the background.
September 28, 2009
He/she is reading it in the last panel.
February 4, 2010
@idkrash
Characters also age, grow up, die, and disappear in Doonesbury. Most of the main cast have children who are now in their 20s.
October 5, 2013
Stone Soup is another where life happens and everyone ages.