Man Overboard!

[miko2]

Been a lot of talk about comics lately. First, my friends talked about the fact that Berkeley Breathed was doing a new comic with Opus the penguin in it. They also talked about the comic "The Boondocks" which they thought was a lot like early Bloom County.

Then I saw the writer/artist of The Boondocks featured on late night tv. "Living Large" or something like that. Not a show I'd normally watch, but when I saw they were about to talk about this strip I stopped and listened.

Then I heard an interview with Breathed on NPR. He talked about the state of comics now and back when he first started out. In particular he talked about Calvin & Hobbes and the Far Side, and his own strip, as three highlights of the eighties that appeared more or less at the same time... and mentioned Doonsbury which of course came long before them all.

He was highly critical of most modern comics, especially Garfield which he pointed out is assembled by a staff hired by the original author and mostly exists to help sell merchandise, and "it doesn't even do much of that" these days. Breathed's new strip is guaranteed to take half a page on the sunday funnies, which he admitted annoyed many editors because it meant they had to drop some other strip, and all editors fear doing anything of the sort. When asked what strips he personally felt should be dropped, he started to duck the question, then changed his mind and attacked Garfield savagely as a strip that served no useful purpose. He then added "any strip drawn by a dead person", and went on to say that Peanuts, while one of the greatest strips of the last 50 years, really should have ended before Schultz's death and most certainly should not still be in the papers.

I found it interesting what strips he didn't mention... for example, The Boondocks. I don't follow this strip much but I'm at least aware that my friends like it and it's considered a hip, up-and-coming strip. It's also filled with scathing political and social commentary, which Breathed admits was the focus of Bloom County when he first started out, but which he insists will not be the focus of his new strip. He spoke of how these days, there are too many outlets for that sort of thing, while back when Bloom County came out there weren't that many outlets for what he called "snarky" political and social commentary. And he's changed a lot over the years and is interested in doing things differently.

So I don't know if he failed to mention The Boondocks because he doesn't particularly like it, or because he isn't even aware of it. He also didn't mention Dilbert, and I can guess why. Scott Adams embraces the idea of making money off of his strip forever and ever... and he also isn't much of an artist. At all. Personally I've found a lot of Dilbert to be funny, but it's certainly not on a par with Bloom County or Calvin & Hobbes or The Far Side. But it doesn't take a lot to stand out as funnier and less formulaic than all of the "dead artist" strips that litter the comics page wasteland.

But I tend to think that, because of the internet, we've been experiencing something of a renaissance in the comic strip. There's room for anyone who wants to to start up their own strip. In accordance with Sturgeon's law, about 10% of it is really good stuff. It's just that most of it is being ignored at present.

So anyways, one of the things all of this made me think of is a comic strip that used to run in the local paper. It was called "Overboard" and it was by a guy named Chris Dunham. I own two collections of this comic strip. They're quite funny. They remind me of early Wizard of Id or B.C. or... another strip by the same group of people that I can't remember. But basically, crude cartoons of distinctly weird characters (all members of a pirate ship) with a huge dose of very funny humor. Emphasis on jokes over characterization.

I've always wondered what happened to that strip and if there were any more books made of it. To be honest, it could still be running in a local newspaper and I wouldn't even know it. I did a quick search of the internet and completely failed to turn up anything. The only thing I learned was that my two collections are selling used on Amazon for upwards of $75 to $100.

By inference, I deduced that A) They are out of print, B) People still find them hilarious and therefore of value, C) No other book collections were apparently every printed, and D) Apparently the strip failed and the author disappeared into obscurity. That seemed kind of sad, especially in a world where Garfield and Family Circle will apparently live on forever and ever.

However another search later on turned up more information. Chip Dunham is apparently still doing the strip Overboard. Here's an interview that gives a lot of background information on how he got started and how he views his strip. Apparently it only runs in about 180 papers (as of this interview, not sure how old it is).

Evidence that the strip is still going can be found here. As one might suspect, the artwork is better these days, but the humor isn't. Oh well.

There are now two collections of "The Boondocks" out. From the few times I've read the strip and what I know about it, I'm not certain I'd like it... it has always struck me as too bitter and pessimistic. But I admit I haven't read very much of it at all. Maybe I need to pick up one of the collections and see what I think after that.