from fifty years ago
Jul. 17th, 2006 08:28 pmOne of the books I asked my mother to get for my past birthday was Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo - a retrospective of the strips first ten years, with commentary by Walt Kelly. It's the book that introduced me to the strip at eight years of age.
One thing I notice now, looking at it through the eyes of a professional cartoonist, is how dense the strip is compared to today's. In a typical daily strip, you have close-ups, long shots, bits of lovely backgrounds, and up to three punchlines. And possibly even more gags than that; not only might you have dialogue resulting in a punchline in panel 2, a topper in panel 3, and another topper in panel 4, there might also be other characters in frame acting as a sort of Greek chorus, commenting softly on the main action and making their own joke, or coming in at the end to join in on the final one. Sometimes one of the jokes would be broad, physical comedy. Slapstick. When's the last time you saw slapstick humor in the newspaper strips?
And, of course, some strips have no jokes. Not ones you want to laugh at, at least.
One thing I notice now, looking at it through the eyes of a professional cartoonist, is how dense the strip is compared to today's. In a typical daily strip, you have close-ups, long shots, bits of lovely backgrounds, and up to three punchlines. And possibly even more gags than that; not only might you have dialogue resulting in a punchline in panel 2, a topper in panel 3, and another topper in panel 4, there might also be other characters in frame acting as a sort of Greek chorus, commenting softly on the main action and making their own joke, or coming in at the end to join in on the final one. Sometimes one of the jokes would be broad, physical comedy. Slapstick. When's the last time you saw slapstick humor in the newspaper strips?
And, of course, some strips have no jokes. Not ones you want to laugh at, at least.