AUTHOR: Dave Sypniewski DATE: Saturday, August 27, 2005 ----- BODY:
this is an audio post - click to play
Leave it to the fine people at our neighborhood newspaper to always be the last in line when it comes to picking up new comic strips for the Sunday paper. It's almost like grade school dodgeball where the good kids were picked first and the fat ones were left standing around waiting to see not what team picked them, but who would get stuck with them. The comics in our paper are just like the fat kids, and the newspaper got stuck with them. Everyone remembers Popeye, but chances are, you only remember the Popeye on television. Well, there was actually a comic strip first. I'm sure your Grandpappy remembers...Popeye is alive and well in 2005 and still fighting and 80 year old fight with Brutus over that beanpole Olive Oyl and Sweet Pea. What a tramp Olive is, running back and forth between those two saps. She was never married to either of them but manages to have a baby? This was big stuff back in the 1930's. As long as everyone's still in the picture, perhaps the cartoonist should work Maury Povich into the strip. He and all of us would know who really IS the Father after one of Maury's patented "Paternity Tests." How about those wacky Lockhorns? You gotta love 'em. He calls her fat and lazy and she calls him fat and lazy. All they do is bicker and fight and argue over little things like a spider web on the ceiling, the burnt pot roast in the oven, him staring at the bikini clad neighbor with binoculars, and she going out and buying two fur coats because she couldn't decide on just one. I love it! I don't think there's a single person on the planet that can't relate...if they're married of course! Then there's the ones that should've been retired a LONG time ago like Andy Cap who has slept his whole life away, Frank and Ernest, Hi and Lois, Nancy, Shoe, Gasoline Alley, Momma, and B.C. Ziggy can stay however, he's had nothing but bad luck in life. To "fire" Ziggy from his one frame spot may cause him to go into therapy or on a shooting spree! Now, one thing I can't understand is the comic strip known as "Funky Winkerbean" and it's spinoff "Crankshaft." These two comic strips have been around for years and have entertained and provided a lot of yuck yucks to me since I was old enough to read. Why all of a sudden must this cartoonist Tom Batiuk suddenly insist on writing these strips around real happenings around the world? Terrorism, suicide bombers, racism, war,,,as well as medical problems, handicaps and other things? Hey, the comics are mainly geared towards kids. If your 8 year old is so smart to get the political messgaes embedded in a comic placed in the middle of Marmeduke and Heathcliff, he should be reading U.S. News and World Report. I tried to contact Mr. Batiuk for his reasons for making a comic that one day is silly and the next day is somber...Wouldn't you know it, I could only get to his publicist who said I can't talk to the man unless I was with the press. This gig is really getting me far, isn't it? Well, wherever you are, enjoy your Sunday Funnies anyway. What the heck, THAT'S the way I see it today.
-------- Squealing Pig WORLDWIDE!: Poking fun at the Sunday Funnies!

Squealing Pig WORLDWIDE!

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Poking fun at the Sunday Funnies!

this is an audio post - click to play
Leave it to the fine people at our neighborhood newspaper to always be the last in line when it comes to picking up new comic strips for the Sunday paper. It's almost like grade school dodgeball where the good kids were picked first and the fat ones were left standing around waiting to see not what team picked them, but who would get stuck with them. The comics in our paper are just like the fat kids, and the newspaper got stuck with them. Everyone remembers Popeye, but chances are, you only remember the Popeye on television. Well, there was actually a comic strip first. I'm sure your Grandpappy remembers...Popeye is alive and well in 2005 and still fighting and 80 year old fight with Brutus over that beanpole Olive Oyl and Sweet Pea. What a tramp Olive is, running back and forth between those two saps. She was never married to either of them but manages to have a baby? This was big stuff back in the 1930's. As long as everyone's still in the picture, perhaps the cartoonist should work Maury Povich into the strip. He and all of us would know who really IS the Father after one of Maury's patented "Paternity Tests." How about those wacky Lockhorns? You gotta love 'em. He calls her fat and lazy and she calls him fat and lazy. All they do is bicker and fight and argue over little things like a spider web on the ceiling, the burnt pot roast in the oven, him staring at the bikini clad neighbor with binoculars, and she going out and buying two fur coats because she couldn't decide on just one. I love it! I don't think there's a single person on the planet that can't relate...if they're married of course! Then there's the ones that should've been retired a LONG time ago like Andy Cap who has slept his whole life away, Frank and Ernest, Hi and Lois, Nancy, Shoe, Gasoline Alley, Momma, and B.C. Ziggy can stay however, he's had nothing but bad luck in life. To "fire" Ziggy from his one frame spot may cause him to go into therapy or on a shooting spree! Now, one thing I can't understand is the comic strip known as "Funky Winkerbean" and it's spinoff "Crankshaft." These two comic strips have been around for years and have entertained and provided a lot of yuck yucks to me since I was old enough to read. Why all of a sudden must this cartoonist Tom Batiuk suddenly insist on writing these strips around real happenings around the world? Terrorism, suicide bombers, racism, war,,,as well as medical problems, handicaps and other things? Hey, the comics are mainly geared towards kids. If your 8 year old is so smart to get the political messgaes embedded in a comic placed in the middle of Marmeduke and Heathcliff, he should be reading U.S. News and World Report. I tried to contact Mr. Batiuk for his reasons for making a comic that one day is silly and the next day is somber...Wouldn't you know it, I could only get to his publicist who said I can't talk to the man unless I was with the press. This gig is really getting me far, isn't it? Well, wherever you are, enjoy your Sunday Funnies anyway. What the heck, THAT'S the way I see it today.

posted by Dave Sypniewski at Saturday, August 27, 2005

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