Saturday, April 5, 2008

A New Satire On Another Terrible Strip.

It has recently occurred to me that in this "internet age" of blogs, youtube, ytmnd and web comics, that the current culture has almost completely lost interest in a once very popular form of humor. I am speaking of course of non-other than the "Sunday Funnies," which can still be found in the back of any weekly newspaper. Apparently someone is still reading them, because they are still consistently being printed- but I for one am lost as to who could possibly find the least bit of interest in any of these dry, effortless, and stupid comic strips.

And I am not the only one who feels this way. For almost two years, Joe Mathlete has been consistently posting a hilarious Blog entitled Marmaduke Explained, in which Mathlete points out Marmaduke writer Brad Anderson's vast errors in logic and humor. In another mocking satire of a Sunday strip, Jim Davis' once popular work of Garfield has been transformed into Garfield Minus Garfield, which makes the argument that upon editing Garfield himself out of the original strip, "the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life."

So perhaps this distaste just comes from being born too late in 20th century to understand. More likely, I believe the reason lies in the ridiculous demand to consistently produce comics every Sunday -since the 50s- and somehow still be expected to produce something remotely laughable. Either that, or people born more than 50 years ago all just have horrifyingly lame senses of humor.

Whatever the reason, I have created this blog to do nothing other than throw my hat into the ring against perhaps a lesser known, yet equally aggravating strip known as "Love Is." I haven't actually seen it in any newspaper syndication recently, but I see no reason for that to prevent us having a little fun. Inspired by the plethora of other Sunday-Funny Satirists, I intend to partially borrow Mathlete's formula and begin "Love Is Explained." For those of you who don't know about the atrocious piece of filth Stefano Casali and Bill Asprey are trying to pass off as the "cute comic" Love Is, you can read about it here. The website still makes daily updates, and quite honestly, my reactions to any one of them range from everything to mind blistering confusion, to a stomach sickening urge to puke out my entire intestinal track.

Anyway, Love Is Explained will, as Marmaduke Explained does, attempt to shed some light on a strip that others certainly feel has existed for far too long without contest. My approach will admittedly be similar to Mathlete's. Some days I may edit the caption of the comic itself. Some days I'll just write "explanations." Today, I'll do one of each.

Enjoy.

1 comment:

Alex said...

Please don't tell me there are papers still publishing that awful, awful "comic". It's almost worse than Marmaduke.


(While I love Garfield Minus Garfield, at least Garfield started off pretty awesome.)