'Golden-More-Tough-Than-Mean' (Episode 194) is a strip I often think of as a stand-alone triumph, a funny premise with promise. It's convoluted, and calls back to the Sunday strips that I never had the attention span to read. 'Prince Valiant' comes to mind: a beautifully drawn adventure that is quite text-heavy, as it also serves as a history education (although I never read it enough to know whether it is based in reality). Basically, as a kid I'd look at Prince Valiant and think that it looked too didactic to be fun.
The premise also tips the hat to the 1960's radio serial "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar," a noir show centered around an insurance investigator dealing with murder while touching base via the itemization of the case's expense account. It's a silly concept: elevating fiscal responsibility and sober record-keeping habits within violent storylines makes for a humorous juxtaposition, and has the air of a corporate compromise trying to justify exciting storylines while also avoiding accusations of youth corruption.
The joke in my comic strip is that it's a dark detective story that has a crow-barred premise that aims to teach ancient history/science/maths, the result of which is a wordy detective that imparts a history lesson to a thug who is in the process of essentially being tortured.
Dragnet is a serial that comes to mind that passes off a 'tough and cool' cop aspect, although they'd never openly mistreat a miscreant. That's the attitude I'm trying to convey, here, in this satire, except combined with a science/history topical education show.
As a result, each episode concludes with crooks in handcuffs, held captive and force-fed paragraphs of unrelated information that would certainly be confusing and unwelcome in the circumstance. Perhaps this is echoing the ethics-based trope that 'a little bit of book learning' is just what these miscreants need to get their lives back on track.
This strip is following on the "Golden-More-Tough-Than-Mean" style, though the look isn't nearly as satisfying, and, as with the earlier comic, the overlaid text is confusing as to who it is that is ultimately speaking the words. (In my head, I'm thinking that this has become clear to regular readers who follow the strip day in and day out.) There are a number of elements that didn't quite work, and looking at it now I just see the hours and hours put into the 'post' work trying to salvage my lack of basic drafting skills. The second panel, particularly, is not at all clear and could benefit from a re-think.
Still, the premise still strikes me as one that has legs, and if someone with actual drawing skills could take it on, I think it could be a great series. The tough-as-nails detective that used basic lessons from science and math history to solve crimes. Or, at least, loosely relate to the crimes in a way that everyone around him has to tolerate.
'Golden-More-Tough-Than-Mean' (Episode 194) is a strip I often think of as a stand-alone triumph, a funny premise with promise. It's convoluted, and calls back to the Sunday strips that I never had the attention span to read. 'Prince Valiant' comes to mind: a beautifully drawn adventure that is quite text-heavy, as it also serves as a history education (although I never read it enough to know whether it is based in reality). Basically, as a kid I'd look at Prince Valiant and think that it looked too didactic to be fun.
ReplyDeleteThe premise also tips the hat to the 1960's radio serial "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar," a noir show centered around an insurance investigator dealing with murder while touching base via the itemization of the case's expense account. It's a silly concept: elevating fiscal responsibility and sober record-keeping habits within violent storylines makes for a humorous juxtaposition, and has the air of a corporate compromise trying to justify exciting storylines while also avoiding accusations of youth corruption.
The joke in my comic strip is that it's a dark detective story that has a crow-barred premise that aims to teach ancient history/science/maths, the result of which is a wordy detective that imparts a history lesson to a thug who is in the process of essentially being tortured.
Dragnet is a serial that comes to mind that passes off a 'tough and cool' cop aspect, although they'd never openly mistreat a miscreant. That's the attitude I'm trying to convey, here, in this satire, except combined with a science/history topical education show.
As a result, each episode concludes with crooks in handcuffs, held captive and force-fed paragraphs of unrelated information that would certainly be confusing and unwelcome in the circumstance. Perhaps this is echoing the ethics-based trope that 'a little bit of book learning' is just what these miscreants need to get their lives back on track.
This strip is following on the "Golden-More-Tough-Than-Mean" style, though the look isn't nearly as satisfying, and, as with the earlier comic, the overlaid text is confusing as to who it is that is ultimately speaking the words. (In my head, I'm thinking that this has become clear to regular readers who follow the strip day in and day out.) There are a number of elements that didn't quite work, and looking at it now I just see the hours and hours put into the 'post' work trying to salvage my lack of basic drafting skills. The second panel, particularly, is not at all clear and could benefit from a re-think.
Still, the premise still strikes me as one that has legs, and if someone with actual drawing skills could take it on, I think it could be a great series. The tough-as-nails detective that used basic lessons from science and math history to solve crimes. Or, at least, loosely relate to the crimes in a way that everyone around him has to tolerate.