Rose DeShaw

PHILIP STREET’S FISHER DEVELOPING IN TORONTO PAPERS

Rose — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:10:38 +0000

While I love the iconic swish of Street’s pen, I feel his style puts up a barrier between seeing the reality of his characters, their humanity. Fisher reads like Captain Crunch on the cereal box. And I’m rooting for Street to get closer to the reader’s heart.
Like the much despised (by me) Sally Forth due to way way over the top amount of smirks per panel,

Fisher has VERY few expressions of any sort. He seems sort of smug – his wife always right, him always wrong and his kid usually intolerable, though I’m sure that’s not what he thinks he’s portraying. Art’s great. Script not so much. Characters uninteresting probably because They’re So Well Drawn.
I’m rooting for all this to change and became human and knowable.

NORM FEUTI’S ‘RETAIL’ WELL TOLD, WELL DRAWN

Rose — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:03:13 +0000

Norm Feuti has built his characters so well that even 3 panels of two guys in suits talking has a suspenseful and compelling charm. Because we know the hurt and pain these two guys have caused all the other characters in the strip in the past, especially our main (pregnant) point of view character, Marla who has been hoping to go out on her own with her own retail operation.
it is a sign of greatness when 3 supposedly unexciting panels of two wiimps in suits talking about management changes can leave us with anticipation of great changes. Feuti knows his villians and they are passive-aggressive wiith whiney overtones. We love this master storyteller for all his undercurrents as well as for a fine line portraying a never sterotypical line of characters.
I’m especially a fan of his spoiled rich girl clerks and their brattiness, considering that, as a Norm, he’s never been one. Yet he gets it right!

MOTHER GOOSE & GRIM by Mike Peters

Rose — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:47:45 +0000

Both art and exquisitely sarcastic, witty dialogue make Mike Peter’s work always tops. This particular cartoon makes fun of some of the devices of For Better Or Worse, a domestic cartoon of which I am not a fan, trying ever so hard. It’s a ‘read it and flinch’ for me, sometimes giving me agonies of embarrassment. Now it’s in repeats which makes it easier to avoid. But enough about FBOW – I had been clipping Peter’s fantastic editorial cartoons without realizing he also does Grim. What a great cartoon!

ONE BIG HAPPY – Rick Detorie’s Great Domestic Cartoon

Rose — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:55:41 +0000

Feeling of reality here you don’t get with most cartoons. I’d hate to call it heartwarming (misused term, that) but it is definitely small town with a caring attitude. All three of my domestic faves have an absence of bratty or know it all or cute kids but simply describe how it is growing up in a family. The anti in these is Family Circus, the pathetic Daddy’s Home, the inexplicable Agnes and many, many others. One Big Happy is unique and worth re-reading. The parents have more than one note personalities and actual lives.

The art isn’t as polished as the others which makes it more endearing to read, I think. Fresher. Haven’t mentioned Zits and I won’t as it is top of the line almost always and everybody knows it. Pajama Diaries is letting me down these days though I used to love it. A bit too prescriptive lately, expected gag lines, lots of listing, less time to note the personalities involved, drifting sadly into sterotype. Let’s hope One Big Happy stays free of all the pitfalls that befall the most astute cartoonist.

CUL dE SAC (Richard Thompson) a cartoon I look forward to.

Rose — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:39:39 +0000

Domestic stuff again but from a family that might sound dysfunctional to outsiders, but is accepting of all their excentricies. Two dreamy imaginative children: Petey & Alice and their very odd take on the world. Petey is a cartoonist specializing in zombis but not at all in the real world. This one’s a winner nearly every day. I e-mailed the Ms Sloppysmock episodes far & wide.

ITEMS VS NUMBERS AT GROCERY CHECKOUT

Rose — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:40:57 +0000

This authoritative sounding fellow was ahead of me in a long lineup at Loblaws this morning. There were hardly any lines at the two checkouts for 1-8 items. “items just means kinds of things he says, looking at my cart.

By that reckoning I only had 6 ‘items’ even though I had ten boxes of chicken balls (YES! They’re BACK!), 4 boxes of crackers, 2 trail mix, etc. Well,maybe. I didn’t actually buy what he was saying but it would make the time more interesting. Undoubtedly.

Try to imagine how happy the checkout clerk was with me. “She’ll throw me out on my ear!” I had predicted. Well, she didn’t actually lay hands on me. But her voice could’ve ground glass at twenty paces.
Items, it turns out, means Each Single Piece Of Their Merchandise. Period. And no one, NO ONE is to take pictures within the confines of the supermarket. I think she was afraid I’d gotten one of her. I said I was sorry and that I’d been talked into it by this guy who was ignoring me till we were both on our way home.

“My middle name’s Trouble,” he said when he heard how the clerk had threatened me with the manager although I was giving her no backtalk at all. Somehow I don’t think it’s exactly his Middle name…
But the tulips in their springtime pots were magnificent!

TWO FAVORITE PARODY DAILY COMICS 1) Brewster Rockit by Tim Rickard 2) Rip Haywire by Dan Thompson

Rose — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:01:42 +0000

Brewster is dumb as a box of astroid chunks but good hearted and well meaning as characters in the strip are always pointing out. There is a perennially evil scientist and a kid that is constantly used by him as a guinea pig (but survives), learns nothing and continues trustingly to be the subject of his ongoing evilness.
Well-drawn, great fun, especially when his female lieutenant is constantly saving Brewster from his lamebrained schemes. I particularly like the political figure it pushes which is a bucket hanging upside down on a clothes rack with a happy face drawn on it.

Dan Thompson’s Rip Haywire, a Mark Trail satire is completely necessary and elegantly styled, especially the mayhem every 3 or 4 panels. It paroides actually every action type flick ever made including Lee Child, one of my favorite thriller writers and his hero, Jack Reacher. Thompson knows comic timing and tension whcih are admirably produced in this strip that continues to deliver the punches.

JAN ELIOT’S STONE SOUP TAKES COMIC ART TO NEW HEIGHTS

Rose — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:48:34 +0000

Keep studying & admiring Jan Eliot’s artwork; the way she brings nature into a large percent of strips, her flawless anatomy drawn comic style with the four fingers, each panel designed with seeming ease giving you a lot to notice, making each one worth several looks to investigate.
Again, as a lover of domestic fiction, Eliot seems to have cornered the market. Her take on the modern/blended family is certianly mine; healthy, working but issue-aware from the unforgettable teenage party that got out of hand to the grandmother building houses in Haiti. Last year’s all in Spanish I have clipped to my bulletin board.
Always readable and real, Eliot’s a star!
NOTE – Sorry about the missed posts. Sick. Better now, thanks.

DAILY COMIC STRIPS HOUSE GREATEST MODERN ART – BARNEY & CLYDE by Gene Wingarten, Dan Weingarten & Dave Clark

Rose — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:13:31 +0000

This is part of a strip to show you the fine draftmanship, character deliniation and playfulness with the language of Barney & Clyde. Often philosophical as well as linguistically able, the strip is right at the top of my Best list.

Finally, here’s an older one about an occasional character, Bunnyneedsahug which never fails to break me up. Art, dialogue and wit rolled into a sparkling package.

GREAT DAILY COMICS – The Dinette Set by Julie Larson

Rose — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:58:33 +0000

Larson’s take on the unaware suburbanites who park badly in two spaces, swipe all the condiments at their restaurant table and hold up the line wherever they are, trying to get a few cents off, is immaculate and hilarious to those who know them.
Once I’m done noting the BEST, I’m going to rate them though it will be difficult.