Full Half-Tone

Episode Two Hundred Thirty Three: Full Half-Tone.
In which we finally beg.

1 comment:

  1. This is the second (?) cartoon on this site that doesn't exist in physical space - the strip being created completely on the computer. I feel weird about this one. It's a cheap pop-art gag and takes a classic Blondie strip, plagiarized, and makes a couple of cheap pop-art comments on it.

    All of the internal figure depictions have been replaced with a blanketed half-tone pattern, and all of the dialog replaced with a repetition of "NO MORE." It feels simplistic and lazy to me, and I also feel odd about the out-and-out plagiarism it codifies. (I see this level of plagiarism a lot in 'hot' pop art that sells for good cash, and I can't fathom the thought process behind the purchasing of it.)

    Even worse, I fear that the simplicity I dislike about it (and the popular pieces that share that feeling) makes it more accessible and perhaps clearer (and 'better') as a result. And then I feel like a moron for worrying that this confusing mess represents my having sold out to the popular tastes. Everything I do will always be intangible.

    I fancy that the 'No More' shouted repeatedly, and the anonymizing effect of blanketing half-tone over the individual features, elevates this to a stand-in for the modern (Western, suburban) human condition. (This is an analysis after-the-fact - I wasn't consciously thinking this as I frantically scrambled to make deadline that week.)

    This is no longer Blondie; this is Everyperson, and they are - as are we all, particularly during this pandemic - EXASPERATED. We want a break from that anonymizing effect caused by the frame-by-frame processing of events as we are ground through this dispassionate, deterministic universe.

    Yet, their outlines are recognizable, and the viewer knows exactly what's happening here: Postal carrier arrives in the morning (who the fuck delivers mail at 7:30 am?) just in time to get unexpectedly bowled over by the commuter rushing out to catch the bus (car-pool, in this variant). Ha ha ha. Why doesn't that postal carrier ever see that coming? Isn't life just like that?

    In my version, however, the 'no more' repetition has everyone pleading for this nightmare to just stop. Constantly pleading. And yet the abuse just keeps coming. And coming. And coming. Week after week after week after week.

    Ha ha ha. Why haven't I seen this coming? Isn't life just like that?

    Anyway, it's about the awful nightmare where I work.

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