Also, the strip was running during 9/11, although Girl has changed so much since then (both in design and in personality) that that era’s girl may well be a different person– also maybe Girl is ageless and lives on a floating calendar.
i think Girl`s a representation, not an individual (at least in this strip). i have 2 11year old cousins who dont remember where they were when 9/11 happened. how could they? their world is different than mine. i also know kids who never had the enjoyment of playing N64, having 007 parties and giving the controller w a broken joystick to the n00b. talking to kids today makes me feel old. and im only (already?) 24.
I always got the impression that Girl is perpetually a young age, like Calvin always being in (1st/2nd?) grade in Ms. Wormwood’s class. I tend to picture her in a perpetual adolescence, however cruel a sentence that is.
“Isn’t anything ours?” Well, I’ve always find a bit absurd that kind of comparisons, like “Coldplay are the new U2”. Things can be themselves although History sometimes repeats itself.
Think of the strips where the characters age – funky winkerbean? for better or for worse? They’re awful. They have to adhere to reality, instead of existing in a place of metaphor. I think she’s perpetually a girl, like MrJM said
It’s only just now that I’ve realized that while Cat was coaxing his formerly impeccable posture into a full-on hunchback, Girl has been teasing her hair out into antennae that would make both Ultra Magnus and Professor H. M. Woggle-Bug green with envy. It’s fascinating to watch cartoon characters evolve.
If something starts out one way, then changes over the course of a year and stays that way forever, it just looks like the artist hadn’t properly designed their characters before they started.
If art is in a constant state of evolution, it doesn’t seem like the initial design was ‘wrong’, just that it was at the beginning of an evolutionary arc. Evolution becomes the constant rather than the art itself.
If art is constant, then that is Disney. Safe and clean and not real. Webcomics should always do what Disney is not allowed to do.
I was just thinking about that this morning; I have friends, adult friends with degrees and nascent careers, who were toddlers when the Soviet Union dissolved. Fair’s fair, though; I can still make Boomers feel old by telling them that I was born three weeks after Elvis died.
It’s troubling to me that Girl seems so envious of Cat having lived through consists of nothing particularly good in any way. All of the things she mentions are things we’d probably been better of had they never happened.
Yet the same time, she seems miffed (and rightly so) at the crappy legacy Cat’s generation (basically everyone older than her, which is most of us) has left to her.
Apparently she doesn’t see the problem with wanting her own “Bad Moments in History and I Was There” memories, knowing it will suck, but wanting it anyway.
@Jamal: Don’t mess with the timeline, man! If Kurt hadn’t died, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened, and then we’d all be speaking Hungarian as we swore in the first Japanese president of the Uber Senate of America!
I felt really old for the first time when I realized that there are people with college degrees who don’t remember a time when “The Simpsons” wasn’t on. I remember when one of my classmates got kicked out for the day because she was wearing a Bart t-shirt.
July 9, 2010
very profound
July 9, 2010
do you mean disks?
July 9, 2010
One of the tricky parts of growing up is going from the state of having no past, to potentially being totally overwhelmed by it.
Friends don’t let friends buy tickets to nostalgia tours.
July 9, 2010
“Our 9/11” out of the mouth of a… wait, how old is Girl supposed to be?
July 9, 2010
“Our 9/11” doesn’t make sense. Girl must have been a teenager on 9/11. Besides, what would the younger generation’s 9/11 be?
July 9, 2010
Also, the strip was running during 9/11, although Girl has changed so much since then (both in design and in personality) that that era’s girl may well be a different person– also maybe Girl is ageless and lives on a floating calendar.
July 9, 2010
i think Girl`s a representation, not an individual (at least in this strip). i have 2 11year old cousins who dont remember where they were when 9/11 happened. how could they? their world is different than mine. i also know kids who never had the enjoyment of playing N64, having 007 parties and giving the controller w a broken joystick to the n00b. talking to kids today makes me feel old. and im only (already?) 24.
July 9, 2010
I always got the impression that Girl is perpetually a young age, like Calvin always being in (1st/2nd?) grade in Ms. Wormwood’s class. I tend to picture her in a perpetual adolescence, however cruel a sentence that is.
July 9, 2010
“Isn’t anything ours?” Well, I’ve always find a bit absurd that kind of comparisons, like “Coldplay are the new U2”. Things can be themselves although History sometimes repeats itself.
July 9, 2010
Girl’s age = the age of a girl.
July 9, 2010
Phillipe is five.
July 9, 2010
Honk if you love Cheeses!
July 9, 2010
Think of the strips where the characters age – funky winkerbean? for better or for worse? They’re awful. They have to adhere to reality, instead of existing in a place of metaphor. I think she’s perpetually a girl, like MrJM said
July 10, 2010
It’s only just now that I’ve realized that while Cat was coaxing his formerly impeccable posture into a full-on hunchback, Girl has been teasing her hair out into antennae that would make both Ultra Magnus and Professor H. M. Woggle-Bug green with envy. It’s fascinating to watch cartoon characters evolve.
July 11, 2010
I like it when art evolution itself is constant.
If something starts out one way, then changes over the course of a year and stays that way forever, it just looks like the artist hadn’t properly designed their characters before they started.
If art is in a constant state of evolution, it doesn’t seem like the initial design was ‘wrong’, just that it was at the beginning of an evolutionary arc. Evolution becomes the constant rather than the art itself.
If art is constant, then that is Disney. Safe and clean and not real. Webcomics should always do what Disney is not allowed to do.
July 11, 2010
love the last panel.
July 11, 2010
Excelent. They have given so little, and lots of work in progress (awfully started)…
July 12, 2010
I was just thinking about that this morning; I have friends, adult friends with degrees and nascent careers, who were toddlers when the Soviet Union dissolved. Fair’s fair, though; I can still make Boomers feel old by telling them that I was born three weeks after Elvis died.
July 13, 2010
It’s troubling to me that Girl seems so envious of Cat having lived through consists of nothing particularly good in any way. All of the things she mentions are things we’d probably been better of had they never happened.
Yet the same time, she seems miffed (and rightly so) at the crappy legacy Cat’s generation (basically everyone older than her, which is most of us) has left to her.
Apparently she doesn’t see the problem with wanting her own “Bad Moments in History and I Was There” memories, knowing it will suck, but wanting it anyway.
July 17, 2010
@Jamal: Don’t mess with the timeline, man! If Kurt hadn’t died, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened, and then we’d all be speaking Hungarian as we swore in the first Japanese president of the Uber Senate of America!
February 18, 2011
I felt really old for the first time when I realized that there are people with college degrees who don’t remember a time when “The Simpsons” wasn’t on. I remember when one of my classmates got kicked out for the day because she was wearing a Bart t-shirt.