And the artists won’t complain because it’ll give them a free plug and a link. I hope. Stay tuned for further updates.But I digress.

I could not remain silent when one of my all-time faves had not Jumped the Shark, but Jumped INTO the Shark, like this guy. And I don’t mean Schlock Mercenary, in spite of its current digression out of Space Opera into Creative Near-Death Experience, complete with knocking a hole in the “Fourth Wall” big enough to drive a Mothership through (Or maybe Nuking the Fourth Wall from Orbit). I am still fairly comfortably on board for this Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride With Alice in Wonderland From The Enchanted Tiki Room To The Haunted Mansion, but if comicker Howard Taylor detours into It’s A Small World, I’m going back to the front gate to demand a refund.

No, it wasn’t Schlock but one of may favorite Krispy Kleenex Komix that has served me up a massive disappointment on a shingle. The offender is 9 Chickweed Lane, the stylishly-drawn home of independent sexy women, a cat who doesn’t need to talk to show attitude, a madman philosopher in over-alls, and scenes from the seemingly un-comicky fields of Academia and Ballet. For some time, comicker Brooke McEldowney (whom I was disappointed to learn is a guy) has been brewing up one of the better “we’re gonna get nasty letters about this” plotlines about an emerging romance between a lapsed nun and a semi-lapsing priest. At the beginning of July, the whole Chickweediverse was shaken by a prediction from the madman philosopher that apparently the lapsing priest was taking very seriously.

At this point, the plotline slowed to an agonizing trickle, making room for a sitcom’s worth of misunderstandingsand arguments, AND taking a week off while the syndicate showed some surrealistic rerun strips from two years ago…

(Personally, I feared that the distributors had vetoed McEldowney’s storyline, or were at least trying to talk him out of it). After two long months, all the confusion had been de-confused and the disagreements agreed upon and the not-so-young lovers had decided to choose Love over God when, on the Saturday of a Labor Day weekend, when readership was sure to be at its lowest, Brooke hits us with this:

(Try to remain calm, Wendell, try to remain calm)
A FREAKING ASTEROID/HEMORRHOID PUN? THAT WAS THE ULTIMATE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND ONE OF NEWSPAPER COMICS’ MOST TABOO ROMANCES?

That hurts, Brooke, that really really hurts. It’s going to take a long time to forgive you for this. (And it’s why I have no qualms re-weblishing four of your strips without permission) It’s a good thing I ponied up for the “Comics Extra” so I can go back to 1993 and re-read your first Chickweeds, back when we were all a lot more innocent, and a lot less Hemorrhoidal.

So, for what he refers to as “Book VI” of the Tales of Schlock Mercenary, creator, writer, artist and deity Howard Tayler used not one but two devices that have been known to get serialized comic strip writers into trouble before. First, he dropped us in media res, meaning smack in the middle, and quite a middle it is, with a small contingent of the regular mercenary company stranded on a strange planet, stripped of everything high-tech, including their Scifi-military uniforms and fighting off predators not too different from some we have on earth. In fact, Howard chose to give them a familiar-sounding name: Jeopards.

Well, not exactly, but in this situation, you knew that somebody was going to end up in dire need of high-tech something, and, with devious logic, it is the strip’s number one human master of technology, Kevyn Andreyasn. One of the comic’s favorite characters, and one who has been as important to the storylines so far as any. (And the one who physically most resembles the cartoonist… [Freudian Hmmm])

Which drives us full-speed into Howard’s second high-risk pot-stirrer, a near-death halucinnation in which Kevyn comes face to face with the God of his universe… the cartoonist. (When I called Howard ‘deity’, I meant it.) This is Fourth-Wall^ damage in the First Degree (as well as an opportunity to show off that Howard/Kevyn resemblence). In his forums, he commented that his preferred terminology is ‘opening a window in the Fourth Wall’, which I guess is appropriate - if it was the window of a pressurized airliner flying at 50,000 feet!

And now, after a brief stop for exposition and clarification, we return, gasping for breath, to a moment soon after the end of Book V to begin filling in the story leading up to this. It is hard to believe that all this took only 18 days in a comic that has been updating reliably daily for six years. It seemed a lot longer. But then, I, personally, have never gotten accustomed to shows which spread 24 hours out over 24 weeks.

But dedicated followers of Schlock can’t approach the next few weeks of plotline as they usually do, knowing what they know of what will happen… and knowing that we are less than 4 weeks away from Howard Taylor’s annual pre-Halloween scarefest that he calls “Schlocktober”, and that is the one time of the year that a beloved character is most likely to get killed off.

The trademark “ominous hummm” of the title character’s weapon of choice is going to be drowned out for a while by an even more “ominous hummm” coming from the cartoonist’s pen.

After the “kiss that changed everything” in the Garfield comic, it probably was inevitable. I’m just surprised they showed it in a Sunday comic. (Yeah, I know it happened Saturday Night…)

But still, is this or is this not the totally obvious grin of a guy who “got some” for the first time in… how long has Garfield been running? Whew!

I am not going to make it a practice of reviewing the comic strips that are not supposed to be funny (except when one of them really really IS funny), but the highly esteemed Comics Curmudgeon is midway through changing servers (which from my experience is a whole lotta NOfun), so this may be my one and only opportunity to scoop him on the surprisingly dramatic story of Mary Worth and her stalker (who very uncomfortably resembles Captain Kangaroo):

Yes, she is striking back against Mr. Bad Haircut with a full army of Old-People-Who-Look-The-Way-Old-People-Are-Supposed-To-Look. Intervention, eh? Is there a Creepy Comic Characters Anonymous (CCCA) chapter in Mary’s town? Oh, silly question; that’s probably where it was founded.

“Big Top”, which is probably the second-funniest comic-most-folks-have-never-heard-of at a syndicated comics megasite (#1 is “Sheldon”, but he’ll have to wait for later.). Like so many others (”Sheldon” included), “Big Top’s” main character is a young boy who is upstaged by other wacky characters, primarily Wink the Bear, your basic big goof…
Dusty, a circus dog with identity issues..

Manfred, a monkey inventor with the serious design flaw of looking like he has a birds beak…

As you can see, “Big Top” is not afraid to deal with contemporary issues, and can be somewhat ‘edgy’ in its depiction of inter-species dating…

As well as some of those death-defying moments the circus is known for…

And the utter weirdness that is Stucco the Clown.

“Big Top” is on my IRIEDEIIWDTB* list.

Speaking peripherally of clowns, via the deeply and seriously strange new comic “Lio”.

Nothing I can use at the top of the page, but this is not the last you’ll hear from this weird kid.

*I’d Read It Every Day Even If I Wasn’t Doing This Blog

If you have more than a passing interest in comics, you know about the often absurdly long lead times between creation and publication. So it really comes as no surprise that “The Quigmans” featured a “Snake on a Plane” gag on Labor Day.

(if you can’t read the second line of the caption, it’s “I ordered kosher rodent.”)

Now, that’s not nearly as awkward as the plane crash scene in the opening to the Emmy Awards show after the all-news networks had spent all day reporting a fatal plane crash, but, the Snakes movie premiered 17 days ago, earned the adjective “disappointing” 15 days ago, disappeared from the pop culture radar 6 days ago, and just last Friday, the last website finished scrubbing all mention of the movie from its archives (”No, we weren’t the ones who got caught up in all that nonsense… you must be thinking of some other blog”). Of more immediate concern for me was the fact that soon after I first saw that comic, the one of the mousetraps I had put in various locations here at One Foop Manor caught the mouse who had been eating my instant oatmeal. And that rodent did not look kosher.

What’s really awkward is Irregular Webcomic, the photocomic featuring genuine LEGO® thingies, ran a pre-scheduled gag today featuring LEGO® Steve the Croc Wrangler in which he survived but the Croc died. Of course, everone has heard what happened to the real life model for LEGO® Steve. Sad, tragic, bitterly ironic and totally not funny. And David Morgan-Mar, the mind behind the Irregular, is saddened, but being one of the few true Iron Men in updating his comic regularly, chose not to let anybody’s death interrupt his schedule. He is apparently determined that LEGO® Steve will live on (and he still has more comics with that character in the buffer). I don’t know if I agree with that, but he did toss in a topical bonus strip featuring LEGO^® Death:

Of course, Fleen, the tabloid rag of webcomics, tried to conflate the issue by pointing out that the delightfully snarky Questionable Content had also done something “vaguely crocodile themed”. Sorry, Fleensters, but Pintsize the AnthroPC referred to “wrestling alligators” while leading up to a joke about wrestling college chicks, and if you can’t tell an alligator from a crocodile, or for that matter a college chick from a crocodile, maybe you guys should be reviewing a less visual medium.

Did you know that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have joined Spiderman, James Bond, The Pink Panther, Winnie the Pooh and countless past failed crossovers on the newspaper comics page? Well, maybe not your local newspaper, if you still have a local newspaper. But I digress. Yes, the Turtles are in the Funnies. And they’re trying to be funny.

I remember the original comic books having kind of a sly sense of humor, but not like this.

I must admit that I used to enjoy “Tumbleweeds”, but then, it’s been around since I was 10 years old, and that’s about the right age to appreciate it. To this day, it’s best known as the place where “Garfield’s Jim Davis apprenticed and learned all the evil ways to make a mediocre but phenominally popular comic strip. Still, I haven’t seen the ‘Weeds in quite a few years, and when I was assembling and organizing my Daily Strip Surf for this blog (Why didn’t I just name the blog StripSurf? Oh, it’s taken.), I discovered it was still updating daily, with the latest strip as follows:

Well, danged if’n I didn’t reckanize the joke (something about a Western comic makes me talk like that) from readin’ Tumbleweeds a long long time ago. Although, it might not have been the exact same joke, because I remember Weeds-rancher TKRyan had used the specific form several times - Tumbleweeds the cowboy camping out in the wilderness talking to himself, then getting responded to by several supposed-to-be-silently lurking Injuns (the real-life version I’ll call Native Americans, but these cartoons are Injuns) followed by the long-suffering chief making a discouraged remark… most often if not always “I miss the old days.”

What makes the serendipity of stumbling onto TKRyan’s Stock Joke Number Umpteen even weirder is seeing the font used in the word balloons. Now hand-lettering comics is so Twentieth Century, but most strippers use fonts that resemble hand lettering, some designed to resemble his/her own handwriting/printing. But the text in the current “Tumbleweeds” is… is… It’s Verdana, my gawd! I mean, that’s the font that Microsoft Paint newbies use to put their own dialogue over the word balloons of comic strips! How are we ever going to tell the difference between a TKRyan Original and a l33td00d37 remix? (I’m setting up a straight line here. Anybody care to provide an obvious response?)

Allow me to be the umpteenth millionth last person on the web to congratulate R. “Don’t Call Me Richard” Stevens on his totally groovy deal with United Features Syndicate to put Diesel Sweeties into krispy kleenex real newspapers as of January 2007. The way he describes it, he got the syndication contract every cartoonist has lusted after and fought for since… well, since Calvin’s parents gave him a stuffed tiger instead of a bear.

It’s a pretty cool deal: I get to do newspaper comics, while still maintaining my own copyright, website and t-shirts.

Just about the only equivocation to the joy and envy over Stevens’ deal comes from PvP’s Scott Kurtz, whose highly-publicised not-quite syndication deal a couple years ago taught him much about the pitfalls and deal-killers, as well as making him a bitter cynical troll.

The Diesel Sweeties we know and love can not exist in the family newspapers unless there has been some shift in editorial philosophy that I’m unaware of. (…) What does “maintain my own copyright” mean? That can mean that an artist maintains total creative and legal control over his property, or it can mean nothing. (…) Is UFM taking a cut of Stevens merchandising deal? I find it hard to believe that they are going to help elevate the popularity and awareness of Diesel Sweeties and not want a cut of the extra tee shirt and book sales that new awareness may bring.

RS did supply some answers to his most devoted fans (and nosiest websurfers) in his Forum:

As far as edginess goes, here is how I see it: If an idea does not work for print due to length or content, I’m using it on the website. I’ve always censored myself to a degree anyway. I don’t expect to be much different. I’m still the same antisocial nerd.

they don’t take your copyright, they just take part of the money and the rights to handle some of the media and licensing. it’s been that way for like ever.

Paper strips appear in the papers and on Comics.com. About a week later, I get to archive them on my own site myself. (Not sure if it will be BW or color versions or both) These are all standard newspaper comic format and even have a new font!

I can publish webcomics as much as I want. I just have to send the syndicate a copy which they can later put on their site if they like. These are going to be in my existing format and will contain any boners I can’t get out there any other way.

The thing that I like best so far is how these new language restrictions are making me invent new euphemisms for horrible things.

So, he’s being realistic (and creative) about ‘newspaper standards’ and censorship, while he may still be a little naive about this whole ‘rights’ thing. No response from some of the most knowledgable sources: Dave Kellett, Corey Pandolph and Francesco Marciuliano (that’s 8 straight times I’ve spelled his name right! Yay me!), but then, the last two are somewhat busy bringing another new comic into the world, (Have they never heard of birth control? - More on that later.)

Stevens’ comment about his “new font” means that none of this U.F.S. money is going to trickle down to the designer of his old font, Original Blogster jason kottke. (Correction: kottke just gives the font away, nothing for him either way)

But to me, the most important unanswered question is How will Diesel Sweeties look on a newspaper comic page? After all this time with big full-color panels on your computer screen giving us all that pixellated goodness, what will it lose shrunk down to “get me my reading glasses ma” size in black-and-white 6 out of 7 days? So, I altered some individual panels to see how they might look.

Okay, that last one will NEVER see the pages of a daily newspaper… But Red Robot just seems so much less menacing in grey. And in that second panel, Clango’s outfit just vanishes into the background. But maybe I didn’t shrink the panels enough. Well, I’ve got thumbnails and I’m not afraid to use them!

Judge for yourself.

I’ve already said I love Bizarro and get a giggle from Savage Chickens and enjoy Non-Sequitur when it avoids its ‘regular characters’ and Frank and Ernest are two of my guilty pleasures, but it seems like lately some of the wannabe single-panel free-for-alls have had flashes of yummy goodness, ranging from wry observation to full frontal punnery.

“Brainwaves” by Betsy Streeter

Rob Esmay’s “A Case in Point”

Hillary Price’s “Rhymes With Orange”

Dave Coverly and “Speed Bump” have been creeping toward my A-List lately…

(why do I get the feeling Bizarro’s already done that one?)

And an unusual non-political goodie from “Slowpoke”:

Okay, one “Bizarro”, but I warn you, it’s a punny one.

That’ll hold you til I get back…