The Comic Strip

The comic strip has long been integrated into our everyday lives and yet it is considered one of the lowest levels of art.  Just the other day, my friend who works at one of our Ringling galleries over heard someone denouncing one of the Illustration faculties work because it was entirely Garfield comics.  However, of all of the other professors, he had procured the most work with some very witty stories.  To us in the art field, being in the comic business is considered one of the hardest jobs because of the quality expected with a very fast turn out rate while being paid minimal wages.  I think the general public underestimates how much the comic strip has shaped our lives, personally.

I didn’t even realize that a lot of humor came from the newspaper comics I would read as a kid until I reread some Calvin and Hobbes.  Even then, I only primarily remember Peanuts comics and Garfield.  That being said, there is an overlying sense of humor that all of them share where it’s kind of okay to make fun of society for it’s major faults.  They blatantly refer to our lack of tack and sensibility with issues we don’t care for along with our innate laziness.  They also play upon childlike innocence to point out what is truly silly but inevitably true about some of our cultural norms.  All in all, the comic strip pushes at boundaries and I fully believe it’s one of the few mediums that can get away with it and yet be beloved by all (unlike other mediums such as fine art whose meaning often is lost on the majority).

After Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo I realized that a lot of the popular comics we love now such as the one’s I listed above play off of McKay’s work.  McKay was one of the original founders of the format that we have grown used to today where every panel greatly enforces the actions of the scene in the now.  Some would even consider it very slow paced.  In fact, nothing greatly happens in each scene depicted but together they work to create a good story even if it’s simple.  Just think about those four panel comics of Calvin and Hobbes. 

He also set in stone that even “weird shit” topics as well as satire on societal concerns such as racist characters are okay to use for humor.  That might be a harsh way of putting it but I actually quite appreciate how far McKay would take his stories.  If that didn’t become accepted then we wouldn’t have the lovely comics we have today.  That being said…I am thankful that comic artist today rely more on the visual to tell the story rather than words like McKay did.  As wonder as an artist he was, all I could see while reading his work was wall of text and it became very distracting.  It was also unnecessary but there is only so much he could do while figuring out this new medium.