There have been multiple temporary characters in the world of Broom Hilda, many being one-offs, such as Senator Bullbleep, Irwin's political Uncle Harry, the Three Stooges Barbarians, Marshall the Vampire, Trouble-Magnet Fizzl, a Government Ranger, and even a robot.

But by far, the most versatile was Ferris Squink and Luwanda Lou.  While looking these names up, I was wondering if they were thinly-veiled references to any animators of the Broom Hilda cartoons, but was unable to find out.  The closest I got was Lou Scheimer, a Filmation animator.

Their role was to act as a bigger foil for the trickster witch in ways that her magic couldn't possibly cope, with their infallible logic.

For the most part, they seemed content with simply engaging in small-time cons to get what they wanted.

Mostly, their short-term goals was limited to leeching copious amounts of food from unsuspecting people.

Eventually, they no longer needed to engage in money-making schemes and could disrupt Broom Hilda's status quo just by simply existing in her vicinity.

Eventually, like so many unremarkable characters who failed to stick, they were regulated to background characters.

Usually, this was with Ferris appearing on his own, since his bald head and nose were distinctive enough to remember on their own.  His wife's mink stole and hairdo?  Not so much.
When a similar wacky couple was introduced years later, it was clear that Russel Meyers had completely forgotten about a very similar married couple he'd used before.

For the most part, Cathy is defined as a Mid-life crisis consisting of eating, shopping, working and her tortured relationship with her mother.

But every once so often, she would throw her father a bone of appreciation.

And even in these rare instances which would occur once a year, her mother couldn't help but put her opinion in edgewise.

On occasion, Cathy had the presence of Male voices that weren't strawmen, but still allowed their skewed opinions alongside women's illogic.  When you've devoted a career to amping up the Woman's Liberation Movement long past its sell-by date, it's hard not to fall back on old habits.

Even Irving wasn't immune to being exposed to the so-called pleasures of Fatherhood.  Considering the amount of time babies need constant care and attention, it's no wonder richer couples shuffle them off to Nurses and Nannies so they can concentrate on having time to themselves.

A major update to the last time I came across a batch of old newspaper Sunday Comics - I've just recently come across another large collection of old strips that had just been made available.  This latest batch helps greatly in filling in a majority of years that I had large gaps in, particularly 1980 and 1981.  So far, I've only got a few missing dates here and there, but my collection of old Gazette Comics is mostly complete.  I can't do much about the comics I'm missing from the second half of 1987 to 2000, when the pamphlet format stopped, unless someone as fanatical as me saved those as well.  I was offered some Edmonton Comics for sale, but was reluctant to purchase those without being aware of those contents.  I didn't want duplicate strips, not to mention my interest wanes the further back I go beyond my birth date.

The earliest Sunday strip I wasn't aware of that was cancelled early on was Corky Trinidad's Zeus!, a retelling of ancient Greek Myths.  Since this is a subject that's less well-known compared to Anachronistic Cavemen and Medieval Tyrants, it didn't catch on.  That should be easily remedied with a quick purvey into George O'Connor's Olympians, a retelling of the Greek Gods that've captured the world's imagination, though little is known about their history.  It's currently up to the 8th book, Apollo, as retold by the 9 Muses, but for context on the above strip, you need to look no further than the 3rd book, Hera, Zeus wife who makes it her life's mission to personally punish all of her husband's out-of-wedlock children, the most memorable being Hercules, also known as Heracles.

The very next week, it was replaced by For Better or For Worse.  In a competition for familiar territory, the former stood no chance.

Going through these ancient comics was a memorable trip down memory lane, but would've been only relevant to someone who'd pored over their contents and discarded them to be forgotten later.  Only, the scant images that stayed with me for years had been tickling the back of my mind without gleaming any content of their meaning.

A word of advice - daily Newspaper comics are meant to be consumed on a daily basis.  Marathonning a singular comic is hard enough, but can be made worse with the lack of theme or storyline.  Going through multiple strips gives some variety, but after awhile, a certain kind of numbness starts to seep through.  Unless you'd been heavily acquainted with these comics in your youth, you'd be hard-pressed to make a compelling argument for why these comics were so valued in the first place.

In a way, I was likely the first reader to ever open these comics since their printing.  This was confirmed when I found a comic that had it's pages stuck together due to a printing error, and no attempt was made to dislodge them apart so the interior pages could be seen.  They'd been lounging in a collector's long box for years, and never seen the light of day in that time.

What particularly surprised me about these "Comic Books" was the sheer variety given for the children's drawings on the covers.  For the most part, many of them were devoted to the contents of the Comics Page.  The most popular strips, such as Peanuts, Wizard of Id, BC, Garfield, Beetle Bailey and others were a given.  Some drawings had some... interesting view of some of the comics present.

Iterations of Snoopy had some decidedly weird results, with him looking more human than usual.


There were even drawings of cartoon characters who weren't even in the comics, such as Ziggy, The Pink Panther, Mickey Mouse and Popeye.  Such was the power of their ubiquitous appeal.  But there were the rare covers that would have fan art of comics you wouldn't think of having illustrations in the first place.

The Gazette comics briefly ran The Lockhorns on its pages before they were phased out for The Better Half.


Even the extremely British strip Andy Capp got an appearance, with Flo taking charge front and center.

There were other Muppet covers, but I included this one solely because it resembled the poster for Gone With the Wind so much.  (Which would be an appropriate role for Kermit & Miss Piggy, come to think of it)

The most impressive was the only fanart for For Better or For Worse, back in its early unremarkable days when it was still finding its voice.

As you've no doubt noticed, a high proportion of these covers have their characters wanting nothing more to do than read the funnies.  Since their livelihood depends on their audience, this shouldn't be too surprising.

For me, the most interesting drawings were those that didn't focus on specific cartoon characters, but on random, sometimes abstract childish drawings, perfectly emblematic of their target audience.

Expect to see more contents of my finds in the next couple days... when I've got the time.

Recently, there was the news that one of Japan's Black Hole Satellites just mysteriously reappeared with no explanation, spinning wildly and emitting strange undecipherable sounds.  In addition, it sounds remarkably close to the plot of Event Horizon, a space-horror movie that's ACTUALLY scary - a rarity in itself.

There were also claims that it sounded similar to another lesser-known Disney B-movie, that previously was only seen in bits and pieces elsewhere, either in another language or recoloured.

Back when my paper first started out printing Sunday comics in pamphlet form, their main export was various Superhero titles, such as Superman, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, with Mary Worth and the occasional family-friendly fare tossed in for good measure.  Soon, the flux of serious art would get phased over for more cartoony flair, which appealed and disappointed various readers.  Even then, there were some diehards who complained that removing these serial stories was ruining the comics page.  Nevermind that the format - a narrower panel and page margin with the risk of art and text becoming intelligible due to image reduction and constant recaps every week or day - would grate on the nerves of even the most faithful fans.

The impetus to release the Sunday comics in this format was to take advantage of the strip Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales, which would choose various movies for the Newspaper, ranging from 13-20 chapter divisions, depending on how much story they wanted to tell.  Only a handful were ever reprinted, and memory of these have been mostly lost.

At that time, they were adapting Disney's Black Hole, also known as their attempt to cash in on Star Wars.  Ironic then, that Disney would eventually purchase the Star Wars license years later with more favorable results.

Most Disney comic movie adaptions were limited to 13-20 pages.  The Black Hole weighed in at a whopping 26 pages.  More after the cut, if you dare...


First off, I'll have to admit two things.  One- I've never seen the movie, though I've certainly seen the books, and my attention span starts to drift in the same way that the Star Wars movies does.  [One Point Five - I'm also not much of a Star Wars fan either]

Looking at the setup for Black Hole now, it's clear that Dr. Reinhardt is based on the model of Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. With a touch of Dr, Moreau thrown in for good measure, only with robots instead of animals.  What is it about arrogant overconfident scientists who go into exile to devote time to their research?

Two - despite the astounding amount of work Jack Kirby's done for the comics industry, I've never really warmed up to his artwork.

For some reason, when artists have worked on as many projects as they have, they start to believe that they should be capable of doing their own stories.  The theory goes that free of editorial influence, they wouldn't be bogged down for lack of ideas.  But the reality is that, unless they have a sound idea of a solid story structure that's not heavily reliant on certain narrative beats being sounded out, they're just as likely to wind up with incomprehensible trash.

Having worked under the thumb of other writers for so long, Kirby felt that given the chance, he could write trashy fiction just like the pros.  As it turned out, there's a huge difference between writing disposable writing, and doing it well.  He fell into the trap of experience outpacing ability, and saw how easy and naturally writers were able to pull stories out of their hats (or rear ends) and figured he could do the same.  Only, when it came to breaking the patterns that he'd help establish ages ago, he wound up being unable to change beyond the most superficial elements, resulting in titles like Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers, which wound up contradicting itself within pages of its own issue.

Neal Adams had the same problem, having drawn Batman and Deadman in his subsequent runs.  He felt that his experience with these titles was all that was needed to self-publish his own stories, when what was needed was stronger editorial influence to guide him towards a specific end-goal point, and maybe tone down his over-reliance on expositionary dialogue.  (The flip side being that we wouldn't have been able to enjoy the Batman Odyssey summary as much)  A quick purvey into his other titles, such as Blood and The Coming of the Supermen showed a distinct obsession about blood for some reason.  His forays into self-published failures such as Miss Mystic and Skateman gave him gave him the unflattering namesake of the William Shatner of comics.

The Image founders had the same fault as well - they'd spent so much time adhering to the coolness of what they were drawing that they never considered that they could increase their circulation if they focused just as much on the story as they did in art.  (But then, that would've slowed down their already slow and late release schedule)

The latest roster of Image artists/writers has vastly improved since then, and filled in the hole that Vertigo publishers left after the unfortunate absence of Karen Berger, a long-running female editor, and then Shelly Bond was let go in favor of a sexual harasser.

The above controversy is just a smidgeling sample of ineptitude as detailed in a scathing point-by-point analysis of Dan Didio's failure to maximize the ability of his comic company's contribution. (unless you count driving away capable artists onto worthier comic projects, such as Paul Pope's Battling Boy)

I seem to be having trouble with having anything of much substance to say, so I'll let the remaining pages speak for themselves.







I'm just including the publication from another newspaper, because it has the title panel not seen above, and I'd spent so much time trying to find the missing gaps, and figured it'd be a shame to let all that effort go to waste.



In the process of finding old Gazette comics, I almost completed my collection, but was missing the February 17th issue.  But that's fine with me, since I've got most of the story intact.  All that's missing are the superfluous throwaway panels, but they aren't absolutely essential to the overall essence of the story.

Last month, I wrote about alternate tribute comics that weren't just simple rehashes of Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali.  (I also found this perplexing single panel Ben Wicks cartoon that's possibly a reference to something.  Since I'm not well-versed in Sports trivia, around February 1980, I'm going to admit ignorance)

That was a watershed moment in 1978, but in 1981, there was a lesser-known Superman boxing match in the Newspaper comic pages.

These comic strips were not the same ones that concluded in 1966, and scripted by the legendary Bill Finger, but revamped to take advantage of the popularity of the Superman movies.  (One of these storylines was the staff of the Daily Planet going to the production of a Superman movie, which while sounding like incestuous self-promotion, was a pretty common staple of early Superman stories)

It actually started out under the title of The World's Greatest Superheroes, before shifting its focus to its number-one cash cow (at the time).

These comics were drawn by George Tuska and inked by Vince Colletta, with a rotating writing staff, including Paul Levitz.  But to simplify things, this arc was scripted by Gerry Conway.

Please excuse the poor quality of these strips - the source came from scans over thirty years ago, and most of the dailies are missing.  Even so, there should still be some understanding of what's going on with the bare bones of the plot, such as it is.  Steve Lombard and Lois Lane are looking at the possibility of corruption in the boxing world, and whether high-profile athletes are being pressured or bribed to take a dive.

So, in order to find out whether these allegations are found, do they investigate the staff circle if there's been any suspicious activity or uncharacteristic behavior changes?  Pfft, nah.  That's too boring.  No, they decide to go right into the boxing ring and go up against the boxing champ himself.  If they manage to knock him out, then that's all the proof they need.  If the champion knocks them out... well, they'll be battered and bruised, but they'll have verification the champion's not under the take.

This foolhardly plot seems too risky, short of throwing yourself out the window and hoping Superman will save you at the last possible minute, so Clark Kent (secretly Superman!, but don't tell anyone) decides to take matters under his own hands.



Here, we see the wild strongman in his natural habitat, undergoing his ritual for implementing his impenetrable disguise.  Step one - Super-compress his outfit into a ball, and firmly stuff the wad into his pants, where no one will notice a subtle bulge.

Step two - apply silly putty to his face so he'll be rendered indistinguishable from any other muscle-bound schlub flailing their beefy arms around.

Step three - get instantly recognized by Lois Lane.  Seriously, this is a woman who's dedicated her career on proving Superman is really Clark Kent.  For an investigative reporter who gets constantly waylaid by something as simple as a pair of glasses, something as flimsy as silly putty on the face shouldn't be that much of a deterrent.  Or maybe he didn't disguise his voice well enough.

The man Clark Kent is facing is none other than Mohammed Sphinx, a cross between Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks, the only man to take a title from Muhammad Ali in the ring.


Lois is obviously incapable of watching the bloody boxing match between the heavyweight championship of the world, and the strongest 98-pound weakling reporter that ever lived, but that doesn't stop her from sneaking a peek through her fingers.

Rather than engage in exchanging fisticuffs, Clark goes for the tactic of dodging his opponent's blows instead.

This tactic of wearing out your opponent while he whales upon you was what Ali used in his later years when he was no longer as light on his feet.  Even so, there was the impressive round against Michael Dokes where Ali dodged twenty-one blows with his back against the pole.

Eventually after six rounds, Lois is amazed that Clark hasn't fallen yet, and is managing to hold his own, all while having yet to throw a single punch.

And then, amazingly against all odds, Mohammed Sphinx who'd been doing so well up to this point, suddenly starts feeling unwell.


In the same way that boxing fans were upset over Ali's "upset" at winning his matches through dexterity rather than brute strength, so do the audience feel cheated at the champion fainting without once having a single leather-bound glove on his person.  These people came for blood, and if they don't get it, they'll darned well get it any way they can.

And of course, it turns out to be a previously unnoticed third party that's responsible for these high-vaulted matches from faltering at the height of their climaxes.
 
The boxing fan's bloodlust has reached such heights that the body of Clark Kent has been reduced to a puddle of sweat and his boxing gloves.  (No facial silly putty to be found)


Having recapped the Sunday pages for those who weren't fortunate to get a subscription, Superman makes his way to the roof... where he's instantly caught off guard.


And here's the mastermind behind the whole ordeal - a D-lister named The Fixer, whose modus operendi is limited to pointing weakening ray guys at olympic athletes.  Truly, a force to be reckoned with.


There's almost a whole week of redundant fighting missing here, but chances are you're not missing much.  After holding Superman at bay, The Fixer sets his sights on Steve Lombard and Lois Lane who've taken the stairs to the roof to see another unfair mismatch between a powerhouse and a nameless unknown.

Superman figures that if he can't get close to The Fixer, then he might as well deal with him from a distance.  And the best way to accomplish that is to bring the whole roof down around him.


"No one deserves a fate like that!"
"I might as well save him."
"...any moment now."
"Any minute now..."
(Peers over hole) "Let them have their way with him a little longer..."
(Examines his hand) "Hmm.  These nails are getting dirty."
"Alright, that's probably enough for now."

After undeservingly rescuing the Fixer and locking him safely away (or removing his bloodied body, which we never saw), the device he'd been using is examined at the Daily Planet, which is given hokey bad science to rationalize away any potential plot holes it'd been building up over the course of the story.

Of course.  Kryptonite!  Because if you want to weaken Superman, just use the nostalgic radioactive material of metals from his home planet.  With a cursory glance, The Fixer's only power source and appeal is melted and thrown away where it can't do any more harm.  I wonder what he'll do for an encore?

And the story ends off with Perry White playing a prank on Steve Lombard.  There's a few more strips along those lines, but I figure you probably wouldn't be that interested in seeing them.  They're not exactly memorable or clever.

So yeah, it's not as memorable or well-known as the Neal Adams comic, which explains why it quickly fell out of public memory.  The boxer is hardly acknowledged or followed-up, the villain behind the schemes is a complete no-namer, and the dialogue is clunky, repetitive and unconvincing.  I suppose you forgot that Lois dislocated her arm at the beginning of all this.  Don't worry - so did the writer.

It's also fairly typical in its treatment of Black people.  Having defeated the boxing champion, there's no need to go back and ask for a rematch, having exposed the rogue element that was exploiting these athletes in the first place.  Once the Black Man's gone down, all that matters is confirming the old ways are still tried and true.

From this point on, the remaining Secret ads have cameos of UFOs as reoccurring... well, not characters, but more like reoccurring vehicles.

Another foreigner who doesn't know the secret!

There's some potential cow nudity in the remaining Not-Far Side ads, so avert your eyes if you're easily offended.  Very very easily offended.

Nudist Ranch

Next up is one of the more perplexing punchlines that probably loses something in the translation.

"Did you fish already?" "Yes, once... in a stream."

"It's days like these we don't notice how quickly the time goes!"

When new ideas start out, they have the promise of unlimited potential that's only hampered by the imagination and ability of the user.


Sadly, as so often happens, their full ability stops being explored, and continues to be reverted back to old ingrained habits.  So when that happens, you try doing the idea again from a different angle in the hopes it might turn out better the second time around.

The above strips can hardly be counted out on their own, since were printed three year apart, and audiences can't be depended on recalling age-old jokes that long ago.


However, there can't be much excuse for these reuse of the same apple gag, just one month apart.  What's particularly sad is that the latter comic was actually printed first, and had the better joke.  I rearranged it so there wouldn't be as much sensation of loss.

In some instances, reusing a joke is a convenient way to create a kind of running gag for that comic's universe, and helps saves time thinking up a new one.  The only problem with this tactic is when you start heavily depending on these as strip filler rather than venturing out into new unexplored territory.



If the above Snake-catching comic looks familiar, you're not imagining things.  With so much head-related injuries inflicted on cartoon characters, forgetting the occasional detail or whether you've used a joke before or not can hardly be faulted.




The worst instance of going through repeat disasters is a constant failure of learning from mistakes.  But then, people have been repeating the same mistakes throughout history, because they've been too bored with the subject to pay attention in the first place.  Oh, the irony.

If only there was some dependable way of recalling tiny details using some kind of mnemonic device or something along those lines...  What was it called again?



In conclusion, some parting words from our senior resident turtle, whose message has been repeated several times before:

After much upheaval and resistance, Hillary Rodney Clinton has been vetted as the Presidential Candidate for being the first Female President.  There was some general disappointment eight years ago when she gave up her closest margin of victory in the last Presidential nomination to Obama, but now she's more than made up for that in spades with her behind-the-scenes tough-as-nails negotiations with politicians on both sides.  In reality, among the bridge-building, outright listening and relentless promotion of values, she's the most capable candidate compared to the competition.

And yet, there are still people who are heavily resistant to giving any support her direction, out of base loathing rather than reasonable decisions.  It's an emotional choice, not a logical one.  Her only sin, other than not appearing friendly enough to have a beer with (as if that was the only qualification a President needed) was being too competent in doing her job.  If she got so many people to agree with her, then she must have gotten ahead by doing... unsavory acts with multiple members of Parliament.  Failing that, she must've undergone some underhanded deals in order to get ahead.  This has put her in the impossible position of being multiple things at once.  If Hillary pushes too hard on an issue, she's criticized for being too hawkish.  If Hillary softens her image, she's criticized for appearing inauthentic.

This isn't helped by a Media that's more interested in paying attention on whether she's wearing a pink dress, or bakes cookies, rather than her political ability.  And that's not even getting into the matter of her wardrobe costs, which no male politician has to deal with, whose costs range in the $12,000 range for a suit that's interchangeable with every other tie combo.

Even playing the woman card doesn't wind up being a benefit, since as it turned out, even women are against Clinton.   These Faux Feminists weren't advocating for the equality of all women - they were railing against the injustice of a woman in power who wasn't conforming to the equality of all women.  These women were only content if other women were in the same power bracket as them.  That is, rather than helping push them against a resistant glass ceiling, they were aspiring to drag them down to join them in the muck with the others.

Feminist reaction basically boiled down to "Women's finally gotten recognition and rights.  What's more is there?" How naive they were, thinking that respect only ended after being included as a token thought.  You have to constantly fight for your rights, otherwise events just revert back to a regular status quo.  And there are many violent offenders who would be more than content in having things go back to normal than do outright change.

The supposed reason for this extended suffering lies upon the fallacy that the wife should bear the sins of the husband.  It seems hard to believe, but when Bill started out, he was considered unlikable and unpopular to the Democrats who felt his cavalier attitude was detrimental to the Democratic party.  It was only until his stint with Monica Lewinski that he gained popularity for outright lying, which rankled both sides so much that he was considered being up for impeachment.  Even more damning - the majority of the committee that wanted Bill Clinton impeached have wound up being called out for infidelities of their own.

The fact that Hillary was on equal footing with Bill Clinton (a known adulterer) rankled many, because they were never entirely certain whether any words of recommendation came from his mouth or hers.

That association came to light when some Benghazi emails were improperly sent under improper procedure using her private email instead of the State Department email (that she herself asked for extra security) that turned into a literal witch-hunt lasting years, going nowhere.  Despite the fact that the contents of the emails were improperly classified, they could find no concrete evidence that she'd done anything wrong.  Mistakenly doing something wrong isn't a crime in itself, even if the results don't hurt anyone.  Owning up to the mistake is a worthy character trait.  But admitting these faults was all the justification needed to jump down her throat and go over her procedure in painstaking detail.  And after all the hullaboo, the intensive investigation intent in breaking Hillary down revealed... absolutely nothing they could tie to her.

Even the very fact that James Comey, the FBI director who personally investigated the Clinton emails (and served under George Bush Jr.), was unable to find any concrete evidence that Clinton did anything illegal along the likes of other data security leaks along the likes of David Petraeus and John M. Deutch.  The Republican's constant returning to this "scandal" has been a costly non-issue that's gone literally nowhere, and their constant harping caused the FBI director to move away from the political party he most identified with.  And yet, the Republicans keep going back to this well in the flimsy hope that maybe, just maybe they'll be able to go GOTCHA! this time around.  Despite the fact that the Clintons thrive under adversary from their opponents.

Comey: "She did not have public relations with her phone."
Republicans: "That just proves he's moved over to Clinton's side! TRAITAR!!!"

Currently, there's been more media coverage about the "outrage" over her supposed email scandal compared to Donald Trump's child rape charges which has been buried among all the other scandals he's built up for himself over the years.  Why is one considered acceptable, while the other is considered unacceptable?

Which brings up another question - where does all this animosity come from?  One possible culprit may be the funny pages, where wives' only purpose, other than aggravation seems to be stopping men from having as much fun as possible by nagging them at every opportunity.

One thing I've discovered upon binging months and years of Newspaper comics is that there's a certain sense of confirming conformity.  Just as various papers will focus on specific aspects of the news in order to reassure their readers that certain values are being upheld, while outside parties are threatening to overturn said long-held values.  If those comics re-enforce gender norms and 50's values, then all the better for their aging audience.

While there were token statements of support for Feminism, the majority politics of the comics page remained sexist behind the scenes.  That's also not accounting for the numerous unreported accounts of elder cartoonists demonizing the competition for not being "team players" from an openly hostile comics world
who were upset at the presence of women for "violating" what was mostly a male profession, and thus, degrading their profession.  As if the majority of their daily output wasn't subject to scrutiny.

Despite all the advantages men have gotten, they won't hesitate to put down their reputation, even if it means browbeating potentially worthy competitors.  After all, if other "weaker" people managed to succeed in ways they weren't able to achieve, that would invalidate all their claims, and make all their effort be for nothing.  To exert their fragile superiority, they will discredit women's research, no matter how much they agree with it, or openly plagiarize their groundbreaking research into previously unexplored territory.  Only made possible, from seeing the data from a previously unrecognized view that only gained credence when given a male name attached to it.  Go ahead, name the most famous women scientists who aren't Marie Curie (defaulted because of her husband's unintentional influence).  Apparently, discovering Pulsars, Bacterial Viruses, Nuclear Fission and Chromosomes, as well as Stem-cell research, Breast Cancer treatment and the discovery of AIDS isn't considered worthy of immortalization unless you're a man.

And if any complaints come up?  Women are silenced by the claim that they're making too much out of an insignificant thing, and talking too much.  A study conducted about Mansplaining showed that in cases where there were men and women talking about their fields, men were more likely to interrupt women in telling them exactly where they were getting facts wrong, even if they were experts in the subject.  The fallacious expectation is that women will just ramble on and on, constantly putting down the man, so the man should get their opinion out first, otherwise they won't be heard in the first place.

Even Disney Princess female leads such as Frozen had their dialogue dominated by males by 59%.  And gender-neutral scripts were outright turned down by Hollywood directors who were convinced that audiences (i.e., the typical target audience of 18-39-old Males) wouldn't be interested in any scenes that had women talking about seemingly insignificant details not related to the overall plot.  Even if those women had relevant scenes, they were considered less significant, simply because they were female.  Because unless the topic happens to be men, audience's interests would glaze and wander off if anything uninteresting happened for a fraction of a second not filled by explosions.

The default target audience type has always been a Male for so long, that venturing out into unexplored territory feels like taking a step onto a broken glass floor.  Nevermind that neglected people have been wandering around a broken glass ceiling for ages.  When a certain gender is marginalized to the extent of all others, diversifying can be considered risky.  Women are allowed to like guy's stuff, but guys are ostracized if they admit they like stuff aimed at... girls.  And even when girls like a guy show, they're discouraged if they outnumber the boy audience because "Girls don't buy toys", even though they will buy other merchandise related to their favorite hobbies.  But aiming at other markets is too difficult for these executives.

As a result of having been pandered to for so long, men instantaneously feel left out if there's any attempt at branching out to less developed minorities who haven't gotten as much screen time.  Chalk this down to reptilian brain mentality.  If women have something, or are part of a group that excludes men, no matter how insignificant, they instantly want to be part of it.  Unless it deals with menstrual cycles and bodily functions.

There's a certain fear that men are being emasculated by the very presence of women, that if they admitted there were certain faults that needed to be improved upon, and not just say "sorry" and move on for the sake of some nookie, they would be constantly harped upon for not being good enough in the first place.

As if women's worth was reduced to being little more than arm candy or trophy wives for the male gaze.  As far as they're concerned, they've already gotten their worth by latching onto the most successful men.  What more validation do they need?  Surely their silly little opinions wouldn't matter for much, would they?  Given the gains that women had gotten, what more could they possibly want?

While legacy strips can reuse certain themes into the ground, some of them can fade out over the ravages of time, depending on the relevancy or obsolescence of said jokes.  The Better Half had reoccurring characters such as Stanley's Boss and Harriet's Mother, until Vinnie Vinson was replaced; at which point they disappeared.

And then there were the various times Blondie was responsible for causing a major dent in Dagwood's bank account.  Though to be fair, Dagwood's children were also major sponges as well.

Back when Blondie first started out, it was a comedic look at the foibles of upper class society.  Then the Great Depression happened, and suddenly, reading about rich snobby people wasn't seen as a lucrative market anymore.  So in order to gain the sympathy of the readers, Dagwood gave up his wealthy inheritance in order to spend time with the love of his life, Blondie Boopadoop.  (Yes, apparently, her Maiden name was Betty Boop's catchphrase)

At times, Dagwood would try to foil his wife's attempts at draining his money by hiding stashes of it around the house... where it would be found anyways.

This was such a popular tactic that it was used multiple varying times with the same result.

Eventually, Dagwood would just succumb himself to the inevitable.

Blondie's love of the flush greenery was such that it would overwhelm all other sense of need, such as food or sleep.

Then in the 90's certain household traits were considered to be too old-fashioned, and were phased out to be more relevant for latter-day readers.  Running after the bus was replaced by carpooling.  (The Mailman, Mr. Beasley, is still delivering mail, though)  By the same token, when Blondie started her catering job, all jokes about her being a wasteful moneyburner promptly disappeared.

This comic marks the last visible time she went on a compulsive buying spree.  She probably learned the value of a buck there and then.

Doc Brown: Tell me future boy, who's the President of the United States in 2016?
Marty McFly: Donald Trump.
Doc Brown: TRUMP?! The Millionaire? Hah! Then who's Vice President? Arnold Schwarzenegger? And I suppose Howard Hugh is in charge of the CIA? And Ivana Trump is secretary of the Treasury? Good night, future boy.

When the Presidential Campaign started, I looked on in mild amusement over the drama playing over the Republican side.  What started out as a typical winnowing down of candidates ballooned into a Reality Show that was hijacked by the presence of a real Reality Show host, Donald Trump.  In the past, his attempts at running for president was little more than a national joke, not unlike Ross Perot running a Third Party before bottoming out.  But Trump being there changed the whole nature of typical campaigning.  While other politicians would be slightened by the merest hint of potential scandals show a sense of shame, Trump is impervious to such slights.  Rather, they just bolstered his popularity, no matter how outrageous his claims.

Their moderate candidate, John Kasich, barely registered among their voters.  Jeb Bush was practically a non-starter, Marco Rubio was suspected of being an outsider, Ben Carson failed to connect, and the one gathering the most votes, Ted Cruz, was considered even more repulsive than Trump. Basically, it boiled down to what one commenter said best: "The Republican Party is checkmated a dozen ways from zero."

I started saving some of the more noteworthy articles and commentary in a hope of recording these events for posterity.

How the Republican Party Created Trump:

THE BIRTHER FIRING SQUAD HAS GONE CIRCULAR: Cruz and Rubio are thought of being born out of the country, and thus, ineligible running for President.

Trump winning a GOP debate:
Jesus.This is how well he does with Rubio and Cruz tag-teaming his ass like the Hart Foundation, AND after he DEFENDED PLANNED PARENTHOOD. 

Trump on a Tweet he sent, supporting Mussolini:
Obama: I want to give Americans more affordable healthcare.
America: TYRANT!!!
Trump: I AM AN ACTUAL FASCIST.
America: I like the cut of this man's jib. 

Farrakhan Praises Trump For Not Taking Money From 'Jewish Community':
CATS AND DOGS, LYING TOGETHER.
Aaaand this is why, for all the positive things I acknowledge they've done, I can't support the Nation of Islam.
Trump brought the Nation of Islam and KKK together. That's either beautiful or he' the anti-Christ.
[Walks in, read headline, turns around and walks out]
That awkward moment when a "pro black" spokesperson hates Jews so much he'll throw Black folks under the bus too. 

Ben Stein Flips Support to Hillary and Bernie Because of Trump:
HOLY SH*T.
This is the man who STILL carries a torch for Richard Nixon.
These people are SCARED SH*TLESS.

Obama: Trump No Worse Than The Rest Of The GOP Field:
See, so many people don't give Obama nearly the amount of credit he deserves for being a passive-aggressive troll par excellence.  If you're one of the non-Trump candidates, how do you respond to this?  If you dispute it, you're basically telling the Trump supporters to go bugger off, and automatically losing their potential support.  If you don't dispute it, you're not only telling mainstream voters that you're just as extremist as Trump, but you're also implicitly agreeing with Obama.
Now that even Nate Silver is starting to get edgy about Trump's chances, I'm getting SERIOUSLY worried about this guy.
Bizarrely, we might see the most insane Democratic/Republican teamup in the Congress EVER just to keep Trump from blowing up the country. And even then it'll be contentious, because half of what Trump wants is stuff they secretly want themselves but are afraid to admit, and the other half is stuff they couldn't possibly ever support. They'll happily go along with the border wall and banning all Muslims as long as someone else has to sign the final bill, but the insurance companies? The big money? There's a REASON those guys control politics, and it's precisely to keep someone like Trump from screwing up the gravy train.

Even the last Republican candidate, Mitt "Binders Full of Women" Romney was considered.
"The announcement immediately kicked off speculation that Romney plans to jump into the Republican 2016 race, as Trump's path to the party nomination becomes more and more clear."
OHHHH SH****T
Oh god, please do it, Willard. Announce you stole a nomination.
He's about to tacitly announce he's worked out a deal ahead of time with the pit bosses and he's going to get the nomination, delegates be damned. I guarantee it. And we will see CHAOS. Because if they make a play this naked and transparent, TRUMP WILL FINALLY SUE FOR REALSIES. And probably Rubio and Cruz too. And this is not shit you want taken before the courts.
Remember when Mitt did his thing unscrewing each of the three legs of a bar stool and said those three legs are the three branches of the GOP?
Remember when we thought the end result of the civil war would JUST be three distinct conservative parties?

Mitt Romney slams ‘phony’ Trump: He’s playing ‘the American public for suckers’:
Sh*t which had previously not been real continues to get so much realer that if it were any more real, it would be a sh*t-shaped Pinocchio.
The Mitt Romney speech is the whole mess in a nutshell–Romney can’t get enough distance to attack Trump, because he IS Trump. He just has more tact and less charisma. He’s standing up there saying, “Well, yes, heartless capitalism is good, yes, letting the brown people into the country is bad, yes, Obamacare will doom America, yes to all of Trump’s actual positions…but saying it the way he does is uncouth!” It doesn’t sell, especially not to people who think “couth” is a kind of malt liquor.

Trump In 2005: Outsourcing Jobs ‘Not Always A Terrible Thing’:
If THIS doesn't damage him (and it probably won't), then NOTHING will.
Making a pro-outsourcing argument to working-class whites is actually MORE likely to offend them than telling them you plan to sell their blonde daughters into white slavery in Africa.
Ha, this will have zero effect. Firing people is LITERALLY HIS CATCHPHRASE.

Donald Trump’s distinctly American authoritarianism draws equally from the wacko right and wacko left:
Trump’s authoritarianism is an amalgam not of left and right but of wacko left and wacko right: He thinks that George Bush was to blame for 9/11 and that Muslims should be barred from the U.S. Believing both of those things does not make Mr. Trump a centrist—it makes him an eclectic extremist. When it comes to policies, he actually has none in the conventional sense.  

Why, Exactly, Is Trump Driving Conservatives So Crazy?:
"Trump has also exposed another, equally deep insecurity among right-wing intellectuals: the fear that their movement appeals to rubes. The conservative movement’s tightening grip over the Republican Party has coincided with its elevation of leaders incapable of explaining their policies cogently. Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin all drew the disdain of liberal elites for their reliance on simplistic aphorisms and poor grasp of detail, humiliating conservative intellectuals, who defended the keen minds of their heroes. Whether or not Donald Trump the human being is intelligent, there’s no question that 'Donald Trump,' presidential candidate, is not. His entire campaign operates well below the level of rational thought — it’s all boasting, absurd promises, repetitive sloganeering, and abuse. Just as email scammers intentionally salt their messages with typos in order to weed out anyone educated enough to see through their swindle, allowing them to focus on the most gullible, Trump seems to consciously repel anyone possessed of a brain. When he says he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any support, or that he appeals to 'the poorly educated,' he is broadcasting his contempt for his supporters."

Surprisingly enough, despite remaining rather divisive in his views, Trump's fan base is surprisingly diverse, ranging from a wide swath of varying opinions.

Questions About Trump's Ties To N.J. Mob-Linked Figure:
Not only did voters already know about all of the Clintons' scandals, but they KEPT ON ELECTING THEM after learning about them.
By contrast, Trump has about a MILLION skeletons in his closet like this, and while his supporters don't care that he's the Antichrist, everyone else in America does.
Trump has more skeletons in his closets than a necromancer. 

Donald Trump’s political triumph makes it official — we’re a nation of idiots:
"The people are getting what they want, and what they want is to have their idiocies and their discontent beamed back at them. Trump is clearly more than a media construction. He’s everything dumb and regressive about our political culture distilled into a single candidate. And he exists only because a sufficient number of Americans want him to – that’s the problem."
As much I get into arguments with fellow liberals online about whether Clinton or Sanders should be the nominee, I would vote for Nixon if he was running as a Democrat, because even he would be demonstrably more liberal than the modern Republican Party of Trump.
The truly scary thing is, I worry that neither Bernie nor Hillary might be venal or corrupt or unprincipled enough to defeat Trump, who is beloved precisely because he is evil to a degree that makes him a literal Antichrist, and his supporters love him because they're all irredeemably evil too. 

A talking point between Trump & Cruz:
"On Obamacare, Cruz said, sure Trump would get rid of Obamacare but he also wouldn't let people 'die in the streets,' whatever that means. Cruz would get rid of Obamacare and also let people 'die in the streets.'" 

How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable:
Found a link to this on the blog of Mark Evanier. It explains a lot about Trump and his seemingly unstoppable campaign juggernaut, tapping into fear, anxiety and anger. A billionaire who sells himself as champion of the common man? No wonder Taibbi speaks of him as a con-man. 

If You Think America’s Enemies Will Be Afraid of Donald Trump, You’ve Lost Your Mind:
This was printed in the National Review, but you could reprint it in Mother Jones with zero revisions:
Drumpf is and will continue to be seen as a joke by any world leader out there. Some may meet with him, but they'll lose respect for the US for selecting him as our President, and he'll be laughed at privately while he's visiting and mocked publicly once he's out of the country.
They will fear him like we all fear Kim Jong Un.
I'm pretty sure that's the best oxymoron of all time. (re: glorious leader) 

Inside the GOP Implosion and the War to Stop Trump:
"Here is a New York Times article you may have seen. It describes the GOP's panicked, hyperbolic and yet utterly ineffectual rush to stop the Donald Trump juggernaut. As I've said before, the GOP's Trump problem reminds me of the regional and global powers' efforts to destroy ISIS. Every party sees the problem, is terrified by the problem. And yet every player has some other angle or priority that's just a bit more pressing or important. The Saudis, Iran. The Turks, the Kurds. The US, Assad. And on and on. Yet it goes without saying that Trump isn't the real problem."
"Trump is very little different from the average candidate Republicans elected in 2010 and 2014, in terms of radical views and extreme rhetoric. All he's done is take the actual GOP issue package, turn it up to eleven and put it on a high speed collision course with RNC headquarters smack in the middle of presidential election year." 

News Panicking Mitch McConnell Says GOP Will Help Hillary Beat Trump If He Wins The Nomination:
This needs to be reiterated, because if Trump wins the nomination, he won't just be running against the Democratic Party, but against the Republican Party as well.
I just --
... you know, I still cannot BELIEVE this is happening. This is a best-case scenario that I would have MOCKED anyone for saying even six weeks ago. Yes, we all knew the Republican party was going to put as much distance between themselves and Trump as possible, but we all assumed it was going to be sort of a de facto thing, kind of like how everyone running in 2006 just tried to pretend Bush didn't exist even as they technically supported him. But this kind of outright intraparty treason -- I swear, I have never seen anything that even comes close.
Think back for a moment to how intense we THOUGHT the Clinton/Obama thing got in 2008. Even as wild as it got, and as much as people were wondering if Hillary would come around to support him, imagine if Nancy Pelosi had come right out and said "If Obama gets the nomination, we'll do everything we can to stop him." THAT is how screwed up this is, on a literally unparalleled basis on this scale of national politics.
The Republican Party bosses realize they cannot win a national election with their current base of voters, so since they ALSO cannot win an election WITHOUT those voters, the only choice they have left is to try and BULLY them into submission.
Of course, the scary long-shot possibility is that Trump STILL wins, because that really WOULD prove that he has a popular mandate of support, for all of his WORST positions, because he would have defeated BOTH political parties.
If Trump can win over the juggernaut of his intense unpopularity, Hillary's overall strength, AND his own party trying to torpedo him? We would DESERVE what comes to us as a result.
That's all well and good to say, but you and I both remember the last time that Democrats said that about a possible Republican victory, and we are STILL recovering from the Bush years.
All this said? I STILL have not completely dismissed the prospect of this being the greatest Clinton false flag operation of all time, or a massive practical joke Trump is carrying out for his own amusement.
I love how the Republicans have turned Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, two people who together embody everything that the Republicans have fought against for decades, into infinitely preferable alternatives to anyone they're offering to the public. I thought that the 2012 lineup was bad because they didn't have their starting bench in it, but this is inarguably far, far worse.
If a week before election day as RNC nominee, Donald Trump calls an emergency press conference and does this, calls Republicans all a bunch of lunatics, says that he's paid off all of the debt on either Bernie or Hillary's campaign, admits it was all a farce, and walks off laughing and shouting "Obama was the best ever!", Donald will go down in history as the greatest showman and ADD anti-hero in American politics of all time.

Eventually, I had to stop out of sheer exhaustion, because the amount of news and commentary was overwhelming my capacity to keep up.

If you haven't reached Trump saturation point yet (and there's little reason to), there's more cartoons after the cut.


What brought my interest back was how much of the recent Trump shenanigans was strongly resonating with things that the political reoccurring character from Shoe, Batson D. Belfry, was emulating.  The ironic thing was, Shoe was penned by a Republican cartoonist (the rare kind that's actually topical & funny) and was originally a take-off of former Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neil or a barely disguised stand-in for Ted Kennedy, depending on your source.

What's amazing is how much the definitive stand-in for any politician looks and acts remarkably like Trump down to the hairstyle.

Well, maybe not that hairstyle, but his later iteration, with eyebrow implants.

Adding further to the irony is that Trump started out as a Liberal, and a close friend of the Clintons, even saying that Hillary would make a fine president, before moving over to the other side.

The biggest problem with the GOP’s attacks on Trump is that they have no credibility to their outrage. They’ve taken most of the positions he’s taken, right down to the big crazy wall across Mexico; they’ve just been slightly more restrained in the way they’ve said them. That means that any attack they make is mostly going to be about the nuances of their positions vs Trump’s positions, and if you’re arguing nuance in politics, you’ve already lost.  Trump compensated for his weakness in debating issues by always being in attack attack attack mode against his competitors, all of whose personalities paled in comparison.  Furthermore, his method of simplifying speech also meant that he was outright repeating the claims that Republicans had been supporting on for years.  Only in a stripped down method, rather than using hyphenated inflated weasel words that were incomprehensible to the common layman.

Much like how Martin Shkreli (also a Trump supporter) whose price-gouging of cheaply available Cancer drugs was vilified because of his cavalier attitude, which led to more reasonable rates available elsewhere,
so too does Donald Trump's magnitude reveal the gaping holes of logic in the GOP.  And yet, the GOP can't seem to tear themselves away from Trump, out of the single reason that they're scared.  Half of them want to stay in power and solidate their base, and half of them are unwilling (or unable) to compromise their values.

Leader: We need to band to get her in ord er to stop Trump fro m ruin ing our part y any further!
Group: WE AGREE!
(Five minutes later)
Group: ...We stand solidly with Trump.
Leader: Wha t happ ened?
Group: We need to band together to stop our party from falling apart.
Leader: But it's Don ald Trump!! We ag reed on this.
Group: You didn't make a very convincing argument.

Trump's popularity is bolstered further by his unflinching Politically Incorrect views, and a tendency to "tell it like it is", like the politician from Bulworth.  (Only without getting down and dirty with the common people)  His Fascist outlook of implementing outright order without clarifying how he'll accomplish these tasks makes him all-encompassing by saying what the voters want to hear.  Too bad that 90% of what he says are outright lies.  And that article was from four months ago.

This puts Trump into a realm that is not only far divorced from reality, but also further removed from common sense, which is where the majority of his followers live in.  Otherwise, they'd have to own up to their own shortcomings and failings, and it's far easier to blame someone else for their insurmountable problems than go the extra mile of solving them themselves.

When people have been marginalized for a long time, they start looking for scapegoats and latching onto quick solutions to problems is the go-to reaction for an uneducated populace.  A tactic that the GOP has abused for years, by telling them that everything the opposition tries to do to make their lives better, is an agenda upon their rights.  So when a political candidate comes along and not only dumbs down the material to be easily understood (at a 4th-Grade level) and talks to them in a joking manner they understand, it upsets the applecart something fierce.

So far, Trump's biggest faux pas - ONE of Trump's many faux pas - is a general unwillingness to let past vendettas against him, real or imagined, behind him.  The man is very thin-skinned, and not a day goes by that he doesn't go after those who've attacked him with a vengeance, unearthing past scandals and broken deals in the process.  Attempts to rein in these outbursts, such as reading from a teleprompter have resulted in failure, because Trump can't help but deviate from the script whenever the need strikes him.

Fixed quotes about winning:
"I'm good at whining!"
"My whole life is about whining. I don't lose often. I almost never lose."
"What separates the whiners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate."
"I'm gonna whine whine whine, and I'm not gonna stop."
"We will have so much whining if I get elected that you may get bored with whining."
"WHINING."

Furthermore, Trump's vanity is such that he can't stand the thought of having attention diverted away from him, even when it could help with his platform.  When Hillary was found innocent about her email scandal, Trump started talking about HIS scandals in comparison.  It also doesn't help that the very idea of trying to pin down the content of his ideas is extremely vague, since he'll make wide sweeping statements without actually saying anything concrete.  Trump's speeches are basically Word Salads, punctuated by short choppy sentences in easy-to-digest form, gleamed from his years working in Reality Television.


Trump makes many many promises for the numerous things he says that he'll do to "Make America Great Again", saying as many as 50 in under two minutes.  Yet, if you try to pin down specifics of how he plans to implement these plans, he'll remain vague, floundering on the issue before shifting the topic to something else, unless the interviewer continuously presses him on the question.  Good luck in getting a concrete answer, because when his back is against the wall, Trump will resort to petty tricks to keep his opponents off-guard.

There's a whole bunch of books that are seeking to popularize on the popularity of Dumping on Trump, one of which is scouring the archives of Doonesbury, the few times that a celebrity figure wasn't reduced to an iconic representation.  Possibly, because the mere existence of such a man was beyond believeablity.

As much fun as it is to bash on the so-called millionaire, the collection is missing out on not also including Duke's run for Presidency, which has some eerie parallels with Trump's disastrous mismanagement of his own.  Duke's 2000 contrasted Al Gore's "Practical Idealism" and Bush's "Compassionate Conservatism" with his platform of "Compassionate Fascism".

That outright fascism is important to remember, since Trump is a firm advocate of Mussolini, Vladmir Putinand Saddam Hussein.  (Who Americans went to war against twice) And of course, the Republicans supported Saddam Hussein... THREE DECADES AGO. Until he grew too unwieldy for their tastes. Sound like anybody you know?

Next thing you'd know, Trump'll be praising Bin Laden as a model of Muslim decency for proving to the world that all Islamics are Terrorists.

Trump: Executing him was a War Crime! It should never have happened to a nicer guy!

To further bolster his views, Trump delayed his announcement of who his Vice President would be, after the massacre in France.  And he handled this as diplomatically as possible, by bragging about how he saw this coming, and that this would be the resounding call for another war after a minor infraction.  That's his first go-to action.  How would he handle other crisis?

Aide: Sir, we've had a traffic altercation in one of the First World countries -
Trump: LAUNCH THE NUKES.
Aide: Don't you want some more details or -
Trump: LAUNCH ALL THE NUKES. THE BIGGEST NUKES. THE YUGEST NUKES. WE CAN'T LET THESE terrorists STOMP ALL OVER US.
Aide: Sir, we're getting reports of unrest in the Middle East -
Trump: BOMB THE HELL OUT OF THEM AND SEND IN THE TROOPS.
Aide: Sir, there's some overseas trouble in -
Trump: HAVE WHOEVER'S IN CHARGE FIRED AND REPLACED.
Aide: Sir, there's talk about forming a Union in -
Trump: HAVE THEM EXECUTED.
Aide: Sir, there's a little girl who's -
Trump: SEND IN THE ARMY, THE NAVY AND THE MARINES.  MERCENARIES TOO.
Aide: Sir, we're running out of soldiers to send off on the numerous Wars you've announced.
Trump: Hmm.  HAVE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DO THE JOB FOR US.
Aide: Sir, that's not really -
Trump: THEY'RE WILLING TO DO THE JOB CHEAPER, AND IF THEY DON'T LIKE IT, WE CAN SHIP THEM BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM.  IT'S WIN-WIN-WIN!!!
Aide: Sir, Vladmir Putin's recommending a show of restraint on your part.
Trump: Give him a letter of commendation of thanks for praise, and that I'll continue to be an inspiring role model as he is.

Naturally, the Media hasn't taken his multiple offenses against the public, good taste and the Media themselves lightly.  After calls for restraint, the Media has fired back by targeting the very things he's obsessive about.  From his obsessive interest in the size of his fingers to looking into bribes for Trump University.

Investigator: YOUR BUSINESS IS CURRENTLY AN UNLAWFUL PRACTICE, AND IS UNDERGOING ILLEGAL DOINGS, ROBBING HARD-EARNED MONEY FROM MALNOURISHED SOURCES...
Trump: Here's a generous contribution.
Investigator: ...And I'm proud to say that there's no conflict of interest to be found here.

Which can't be an easy pill for him to swallow, given how he still carries a torch against Spy magazine.

Trump Fan: Are you now, or have you ever been a Trump Supporter?
Guy: ...um... yes?
Trump Fan: And do you know any other Trump Supporters who may secretly be Hillary Supporters?
Guy: (eyes dart nervously around room) "That couple over there looks pretty shifty to me.
Trump Fan: Right. Many thanks friend. Hey, YOU!
Guy: (Secretly records entire interrogation conversation from afar)

Trump: Why should I have to pay to have my past investigated?  Let others buy my books!

At times, the news generates some truly bizarre stories too weird to be true, such as Trump referring 9/11 as 7/11 instead.  (September 11's gotten too commercial these days) or Trump supporters being outmaneuvered by a TwitterBot, or flying around an expired plane license that would've cost $5 to renew, to claims of bragging about dating multiple women he never went out with, to his butler threatening the President, to talking in front of a garbage pile (most likely trying in vain to resell his remaining Trump products. If they were used once, chances are they're probably still good).

Parody sites have become indistinguishable from the real thing.  An unnerving discovery was made that much like Neil Gaiman's Corinthian, Trump's eyes are indistinguishable from his mouth.  Trump refused to appear at a triple night convention under the reason that "it might make him look too egocentric." Mr. Ego said this with a straight face.  Trump once asked a Turkish reporter, "Are you friend or foe?", which may or may not have resulted the following dialogue:

Turk:  ...foe?
Trump: Wrong answer.
Turk: ...is it a Duck?
Trump: You win the prize!

A theory's been bandied about that Trump entered this race as a lark.

He was nursing a lingering grudge against Obama, and he probably saw an opportunity to promote his brand.  And then, he got a taste of the cheering crowds, and his polling went up whenever he said something offensive, and he got a rush from realizing that he could actually win this thing, which would be the ultimate validation of his lifelong quest to build up his virtual penis, which was followed by the dawning existential dread of realizing that he could actually win this thing, which would make him measurably accountable to other people in a way that he's never been before. 

So, he can't afford to win, but he simultaneously can't bear to lose, and the two biggest problems are that a) his brain-dead supporters love him all the more every time he demonstrates how unfit he is to serve as president, which means the GOP is refusing to steal the nomination from him, and b) every single time he's had an opportunity to allow one of his opponents to snatch victory from him, without making it look like he wanted to lose, his ego overrode the situation and forced him to destroy them, which is another reason why there's no one left to replace him as the nominee. 

It's like watching a Xenomorph try to force itself to throw a boxing match.

Which led me to imagine a Trump Xenophobic-Queen where every time it opens its mouth, there are multiple extendable mouths inside, each with the name TRUMP clearly labeled on the side, facing against a Exo-Suit wearing Hillary Clinton.  And the Trump Xeno-Queen just threw away it's extra-large boxing gloves, but is unable to land a punch on account of her puny fingers.  And Clinton is just holding Xeno-Trump at bay with a single raised claw-hand, the other resting on her Mecha-suit's hip, while she watches the ineffective creature flail its T-rex arms away with a bored Benghazi hearing email scandal look on her face.

For someone who's remarkably optimistic about having enough money to pay for everything out of his pocket, Trump's been looking for outside support for funding while being obliquely vague about how much funding he's gotten.  There's also suspicion that Trump may be less than he claims is actually worth.

Trump: If elected, I promise to raise Yuge taxes for Millionaires. Anybody who makes over 100 Mil a year can expect a hefty fine with no charity benefits. As a Multi-Millionaire myself, I'm willing to take the unfavorable dent in my profits for the country's benefit. I have such a Yuge income you wouldn't believe it. So Yuge, it's easily over several Billions, which'd mean I'd take an even bigger bite out of my profits.
Reporter: (Looks at badly-concealed back taxes) Aren't you compensating for something?
Trump: YUGE.

He's also remarkably laid-back, and taking pains to do minimal effort in collecting funds by simply clicking Reply All to his business contact information, hoping that one of them would respond in kind.  Normally, you're not supposed to receive money from outside foreign countries such as Saudi Arabia, but Trump didn't even bother to go that far.  No, he went after countries such as Finland and Iceland.  In the midst of an economic depression over there.  Which he celebrated and supported.  And he's still receiving outside donations despite it being illegal, because what are they going to do?  Make him give the money back?  Add it to the growing list of crimes he's supposedly done?

If he was ever arrested for any of his numerous crimes, he'd probably treat it as one of his Monopoly rip-off games.

Player: Go to Jail. Go STRAIGHT to Jail. Do not pass...
Trump: I buy the Jail.
Player: You can't buy the Jail! It's Government property! There's no price tag on it!
Trump: I buy the land the Jail's on.
Player: You mean the board? You can't do that either. It's the property of Parker Bros., formerly based on The Landlord game. Not that you'd know anything about that...
Trump: I've just released the Trump Board Game. A totally original board game that's MILES better than this silly old game!
Player: (Takes a glance) This is just a rip-off of Monopoly! With your name on it! And you just landed in Jail again!
Trump: I buy the Jail.

Hillary's attack ads are basically just repeatingTrump's words, or disparaging comments from the Republican party on Trump's behavior.  More than that, Hillary's spent an astounding $26 million on advertising her brand, while Trump spent exactly... $0.  While he's certainly saving money, chances are he's most likely pocked the excess finances to support his business, just like he's done for every other failed business opportunity.

While it looks like he's saving money on advertising, he's actually losing money for the rest of the Republicans, since sponsors are pulling out out of ethical reasons of their own.  They can't see much purpose in supporting such a poisonous man, and the few millionaires who are supporting him have issues of their own.  In fact, in the process of convincing 20 donors to support him, he actually stopped after interviewing THREE of them.

Employee: We need to get some major backing if we're going to stand a chance in hell in this campaign.
Trump: Not a problem. I'm willing and able to make a contribution. I've made great deals before. Great deals. Deals you wished you could make a killing from. I'm committed to the people. I'm willing to make grand concessions while running on a measly $10 a day. I've done it before. This shouldn't be a problem.
Employee: Well, the NRA is interested in...
Trump: Nah, that's boring. I'll do it tomorrow.
Employee: But - what about -
Trump: You do it. I'mma gonna take a nap.
Employee: But YOU'RE THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. You should be able to do this in person.
Trump: That sounds like the words of a quitter. You're fired.
(Outside, the employee is packing up his personal office stuff into his car, and is approached by a representative of the People For Trump)
Representative: Excuse me, is this where we can make a generous donation to our favorite politician who tells it like it is?
Employee: I'm sorry, you must have the wrong building. There's no Donald Trump here.

Despite his claims that he would be able to raise money with no problems, Trump was reduced to Kickstarter, begging for funds online.

Amazingly enough, despite this handicap, people are convinced they've seen his ads, when they're more likely remembering his appearances on TV, and mistaking that for actual advertising.  It's hard to fault them, since it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell fiction from reality.  Since all of his speeches are made up of sound bites of self-promotion, this memory discrepancy is understandable.

This is Trump's strategy - let the Media do the advertising for him.  The very Media that he's vilified. Recently, Trump praised networks for letting them do audio-visual interviews with him over the phone instead of talking to him face-to-face.  In other words, he's just phoning it in.

On the plus side, Muslims are going out en masse to openly oppose Trump's attempt at success by actually voting for a change.  Previously, when an inept President was in power and started demonizing radical Islamists, there was little the Muslim community could do other than offer token offence.  Here, they have the chance to avoid that from happening again.  It's much easier to go against an openly hateful party when they're still weak before they gather strength.  And the message Trump has been giving has become alarming enough for them to actually do something about it.  His racist and anti-semetic antics have gotten so bad he's actually unintentionally helped in bringing Mexicans and Jews together.

The result has been that many Red States, which were previously strongly in favor of the Republicans, have now overwhelmingly shifted over to the Blue side for the first time in DECADES.  If this happens, this would be an overwhelming shift.  That is, if the Republicans don't make a habit of trying to discourage the minority vote by manipulating the polls.  That is, if they're more worried about solidating power than surviving a Trump Presidency.

But don't worry - chances are he's not even really interested in being President in the first place.  It's very likely that he'd just quit once he's won.

Even more fatalistically, Trump doesn't even seem interested in doing the things an actual President would do, such as being aware of how many articles are in the constitution.  He just wants to win, and leave the job to somebody else more competent to do.  If the Republicans had bothered to put up more of a fight and point out his faults and failings earlier... he probably would've wound up just as popular.  That's what you get when you lob only softball questions at your opponents.

Despite the fact that he's supposed to bring his party together, all he's doing is fragmenting it.  Half of them want to vet him out, while the other half is half-heartedly trying to support him, while also refusing to acknowledge that Trump exists, going so far as to remove his image from the Republican home page.  One of his staunchest supporters, Sarah Palin, openly denounced an organization aptly named Republicans Against Trump, or RAT for short.

After cresting on an addictive high of increasing popularity, those numbers that once looked so favorable at first are now declining in a free-fall manner not seen since Barry Goldwater Vs. Lyndon B. Johnson.

Currently, Trump is scoring very lowly among Black voters, ranging from 1% to 0%.

Clinton is winning a greater percentage of the black vote against Trump than OBAMA won against either McCain or Romney.  The irony being, every other Republican nomination (save Ted Cruz) outpaced or was evenly popular with Clintion EXCEPT for Trump.

While Clinton gave her candidate speech, tearing into Trump's inadequacy, who just happened to instantly tweet the very moment she suggested Trump might be instantly bashing her online.  They couldn't be more in sync if they TRIED.  Furthermore, her team is in a better position to handle social media in a much more sophisticated manner than Trump's megaphone-at-full-volume.

To combat against these latest infractions, Trump countered the only way he knew how - by amping up the suspense by delaying the announcement of who his Vice President would be.

Trump was playing a Reality Game by keeping who his running mate is going to be a secret, even among the potential candidates themselves.  Not even THEY knew whether or not they were up for being chosen.  The choices ranged from Sarah Palin to Newt Gringrich to even his daughter.  ANY of whom could be Vice President if Trump decides to step down, which means that we could've have President Gringrich by default.

As it turned out, Newt Gingrich was passed over, not just because Mike Pence was pushed upon Trump without warning, but also because there was the possibility that Gingrich could've been just as much as a media whore as Trump was, stealing attention away from him.  And he couldn't have that.  (Trump spent almost half an hour of Pence's introduction by talking about himself instead)  That, and being in support of immigration, which was one of Trump's major issues, since deporting multiple people would've been a costly and timely venue.

One potential candidate that was touted about was retired general, Michael Flynn, which prompted the following overheard conversation:  “Trump-Flynn. I’ve heard him say that, kind of test out the sound of it,” one person said of how Trump is mulling the possibility. “I think it’s a brand he finds appealing.”  It was treated as a joke, but he was literally choosing his vice president based on how their names SOUND TOGETHER.

 Trump: Ivanka Trump for Veep! Trump-Trump! A name you can count on!

One potential Veep candidate withdrew his nomination, only for Trump to outright refuse his pulling away.

Candidate: I'm sorry, but I'm removing myself from the list.
Trump: No, you're not.
Candidate: I don't think you understand. You can't force someone to do something they don't want to do.
Trump: Well, you're staying on until I say you're done.
Candidate: You're being utterly unreasonable about this. There's no legal precedent in -
Trump: You can't stop me.
Candidate: Alright then. As long as I'm still in the running, I have a few suggestions that you -
Trump: I don't have to listen to this.

So far, the oneconsistent issue that he's routinely fallen back on is his support for building a wall along the Mexican border, which proved so popular the first time around.  Not his support for Planned Parenthood, not his support for arresting abortion attempts, nor his raising taxes on the rich, nor the many numerous issues he's definitely supported or rejected, depending on the time of day.  "We’re going to build the wall, Mexico’s going to pay for the wall,” Trump said in a state where Latinos account for 20 percent of the population and could make up more than 15 percent of the electorate in November.

Colonel Trumpet: Son, we live in a world that needs walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Steinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Carmen Sandiego, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of knowing what I don't know. That Sandiego's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you talk about at parties, you want me to build that wall, you needme to build that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. You use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. I use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
Coffee: Did you order the Code Dead?
Colonel Trumpet: I did the job I...
Coffee: Did you order the Code Dead?
Colonel Trumpet: You're Goddamn right I did!

In addition to being burned by the Republicans, the Democrats, and the Media, Trump's been called out by President Obama, his raison d'ere for running against the first Black prez for making fun of him in the first place.  Just recently, Trump started saying that he sympathized with Blacks, because of how much resistance he got from... the GOP.  Poor little baby.  He's never had to face so much resistance from people telling him "no". It's only a matter of time before we see him going to extreme measures to gain sympathy votes.

The unintentional benefit from Trump's spouting whatever will get him the most media attention (whether he'd benefit more from remaining silent, or let his enemies suffer from scandals, diverting attention away from him, which is something he cannot stand) is that his behavior has exposed a rift of racism that was previously hidden.  Thanks to his constant outbursts, his racist comments made other closeted bigots look normal, thus their emulating what they'd seen on TV exposed the lie that they were reverting back from polite niceties, and no longer needed to remain undercover.  But their outbursts aren't being ignored in a nation that's supposed to be "beyond racism" after electing a Black President (who's been stymied by the Republicans at every turn) and aren't being forgotten.

There's some belief that Trump is openly disbelieving what the poll numbers are telling him; that he's tanking in every majority and minority survey.  From how he's winging his campaign up to not bothering with advertising (the Media's doing it for me!) he's acting on the assumption that he's already won.  Chances are, when the next President is nominated to Hillary, like the guy from Zoolander, he'll stand up at the podium and proudly thank the little people for showing so much support his way, no matter how much his remaining staff or security tries to drag him away.  He'd even continue to keep running as a Presidential Candidate after the convention, much like Bernie Sanders did, upon the claim that "Hillary stole the election."

That is, if he isn't burned out already.  After reaching the heights that is the Presidential campaign, if he isn't jailed or outright ostracized for his actions, what else could he fall back on?

When I posted my entry for the Black Hole adaption, I was going to wait until I was either A. told to remove it, or failing that, B. move on to the next movie on the list, The Watcher in the Woods.  However, my plan to do so was upended by a rare commenter who requested I move ahead a little in favor of another property that was considered more interesting.

When it comes to comics and Condorman, most readers will zero in on the Whitman adaption.  Though for obvious reasons, I'll be highlighting the Sunday comic adaption instead.  In the wake of the surging popularity of Superhero movies, there was briefly floated the possibility of bringing back an old Disney movie that had gained something of a cult following among fans who enjoyed the goofy sensibility brought to the screen.  Not unlike the treatment given to Tron.  The thought was that if obscure C-listers such as Ant-Man could be updated with a tie-in to the larger Marvel-verse, then surely Condorman wouldn't be considered too out of the ordinary.

So, what exactly was it about Condorman that was different from all other brightly-garbed stuntmen out there?  Well, for starters, Condorman, alias Woodrow (Woody) Wilkins, is actually a cartoonist.  Just like Green Lantern Kyle Rayner.  Well, okay, he's not that much different then.  But he designs crazy death-trap contraptions while his brother works for the CIA...  If he were any more competent in his designs, he'd be a reliable Q.  But since this movie demands that he get out and go to exotic places and engage in wild wild things, he's chosen as an unsuspecting courier to deliver confidential documents all by his lonesome.

When it comes to reviving interest in old properties in the hope of saving having to think up new ideas, recreating old movies is a reliable standard to fall back on.  When it comes to certain properties, there are two ways that a beloved franchise can be shown.  The lesser used technique is to just showcase the hero already used to acting under undue pressure and circumstances, such as Tintin or James Bond.

 Most frequently, you're likely to be shown how the hero got their powers in the first place, which is normally an excuse to build up sympathy for the protagonist.  The constant harping on origin stories basically boils down to "We'll keep doing it over and over, until we get it RIGHT."

More Condorman after the cut.




The January 25, 1981 edition is the only date I'm missing the colour version of, so you'll have to settle for this microfiche copy.




How's this for some grade-A rookie mistake?  You've got a total amateur spy who's somehow staying one step ahead of the KBG using completely unorthodox technology, leaving your enemies confounded in your wake and no idea of your thought process.  But they figure out your pattern by... reading what your next mission will be in the very next issue of the comic you're working on.  Production releases notwithstanding, even for a B-movie, that's a really dumb thing to do.


Somehow, despite being dropped from a mile-high snapped cable car with no parachute and making human-sized prints in the snow, Woody & his brother manage to survive the fall with no ill effects.


So far, we've seen Woody dress up as a (badly dressed) tourist, a mountaineer, a gypsy, a prisoner, a skier, and now an Arab Sheik.  You know what we haven't seen him in lately?  A brightly-coloured Condorman suit, like he wore at the beginning of all this nonsense.

So, having improved upon the flawed designs on the costume and rescued the lovely Russian girl, you'd think the movie would be over by this point.  Nope.  There's still a speedboat chase, because, Russia.



In short, Condorman is very much a goofy affair.  And you need to be in a certain frame of mind to really enjoy it.  You've got a quasi-competent bumbling inventor who only dons a garish gliding costume for publicity purposes of his own book, which he hardly ever uses, and is otherwise useless otherwise under heavily controlled conditions.  While there's the possibility for a bumbling secret agent, the market has changed somewhat from the days of Cody Banks and closer to Spy Kids.

The typical layout of a Newspaper comic strip is tightly controlled to remain consistent.  So if another strip such decides to be more innovative in their layout, it means having to reshuffle the other strips to make room for the temporary widescreen comic that otherwise wouldn't normally fit.

For the above, readers were fortunate that Calvin was going into reruns, so anybody who were long-time fans would already know the setup to the joke on the first panel.  But new readers wouldn't be as lucky.  I've posted before how in the process of rearranging panels, some may be put out of sequence from people who aren't aware that some are being put in the wrong place.

Sometimes in the process of moving things around, there's the danger of putting panels out of order.  But another unintended consequence is the throwaway panels being affected as well.  When this happens, this can sometimes result in removing the title logo, but not the throwaway panel that accompanies it, resulting in setups with no punchlines, or punchlines with no setup.

So much of the newspaper comic page depends on the strips remaining static.  So when one strip decides to get creative or attack certain controversial issues that don't meet with the paper's fragile sensibilities, some rapid shuffling may be in order.  Such was what happened around October 1991, when Doonesbury was under danger of a hostile takeover by the more flamboyant side characters.  In the process, some panels wound up being lost.  Normally here, you'd see Michael being all jovial with April before scowling after being ordered around by his mother.

In other instances, the paper may have the option of having two throwaway panels, but only opt for one of them.  For the longest time, I only had one Doonesbury throwaway panel to deal with, and in most cases, you could pretty much figure out what was going on.  One panel or the other would just reinforce a notion that would be emphasized again.



The problem would be when both panels were needed to make the joke work, and oftentimes, I would be completely baffled as to what was happening here.  Also, sometimes the second panel would be chosen instead of the first.  it wasn't always consistent.  The red bar surrounding the panel is what I saw in the paper.  The remainder on the other side is the rest of the comic, and wouldn't find out what they were years later.


The biggest sufferer of this system is Beetle Bailey, who happens to have not one, not two, but threethrowaway panels.  A small one under the title logo, and two extra ones.

While scouring newspaper archives, I came across a particularly noteworthy example.  The above strip has the typical throwaway panels for the setup that suddenly and inexplicably jumps straight to an aftermath scene with no clue to what prompted the change.  With the missing panel in place, the sequence of events begins to make much more sense.  I can only guess at the level of frustration that readers had in trying to understand what was going on here.

Strangely enough, in Sunday collections of Beetle Bailey, the title panel was removed, presumably because it was smaller than the others.  Which ties into another pet peeve of mine - collections that don't have the necessary throwaway panels.  You'd think that with the extra space, they could afford to show them, but no, they just revert back to the same old format.

Going back to Doonesbury, the latest Sunday strips have had the title panel have an additional tag added to them to further emphasize the content of the comic.  For the most case, these are simply closeups of a character's face, being somewhat nothing special.  But in some instances, the extra panel adds a distinctive flavor to an otherwise regular comic.

My favorite so far is the logo for the latest Doonesbury comic which had the rare instance of making me laugh out loud from the reaction shots of even the most vocally opinionated people.

Sadly, it seems that save for a few instances, the majority of the latest Doonesburyonline archives don't bother showing any Sunday logos.  Apparently, you need a newspaper subscription for that.  Which surely must be a resounding selling point among the very very specific target market.

Another minus is that despite Doonesbury being available online for new readers to play catch-up, the early Sunday comics are at a reduced size, marginalized, tiny and practically unreadable, due to the small print.

Of particular notice are the Garfield reprints.  Back when Garfield made its debut, it gained recognition by reprinting virtually every single comic and doing so in a wide strip format, rather than breaking the panels up into a typical book format.  (Which could lend itself to previously mentioned accidental panel placement or unnecessary cropping or rotation of some strips)  Since it was just starting out, the early Sunday strips had no throwaway panels, save for the ones on the sides.  If there were any, they were likely the static ones, that were a compilation of the main cast, until Lyman disappeared.

That changed around March 14th, 1982 with the introduction of a new short-term singular panel before reverting back to the widescreen panel two weeks later.  The difference was, the single panel that was just the main cast, changed to an additional throwaway panel.


So what's the problem?  Well, the onlinearchive has every Sunday comic printed.  But the books have the exact same layout used since it was first released years ago!  They've been coloured and resized to accommodate more space, but they don't make effective use of that extra space!

One last historical oddity - daily newspaper strips don't have the benefit of having a title logo, so their names are place either from the top or to the side.  But Doonesbury apparently had a throwaway title panel logo of its own.

Was there a time when daily comic strips had their own title logos?  I haven't found anything to support this, but it'd be nice to know if that was true.

"You haven't seen your lil' brother?" "Nope!!"

"Don't you find that annoying in the long run?" "Yeah, especially since it's still one of their inventions." "So?  Wanna remove it?" "Why not!" "It's so freeing being connected back to the outside world!"

"I dunno why, but I feel like a calf!" "Here, put this on!!"

"...8 9 10, ready or not, here I come!" "Okay, you can get down now!" "You know... I'd never had found you if I hadn't helped boost you up there!"

When it comes to legacy strips, there's the ever-present demand to keep a popular strip running, no matter how much the fumes are threatening to overwhelm the cartoonist's family.  When a family member dies, it's usually up to the children to decide if they want to continue their passport to safe & steady income.  Only in rare cases where a cartoonist explicitly outright says they don't want their feature continued after their death (such as Charles Schultz), fearing that their vision alone would be unique and any further attempts at emulating it would be inadequate and fail to match up.

When that happens, there's generally a transitionary period between the old cartoonist and the new one.  The trick is to make the process look as seamless as possible, which can sometimes be considered tricky if there's not enough warning beforehand.  Such as if said cartoonist dies suddenly, like Jeff MacNelly.

This was the last Sunday strip that appeared on August 13th, 2000, and it was... a Mother-in-Law joke.  Hardly a thigh-slapper.  The next Sunday strip was done by the team of his assistants and wife, whose credits can hardly be seen in this (only) sample I could find.

I like to think that the comics that appeared before and after a creative team switches out has some kind of hidden commentary behind it.  Or maybe I'm projecting issues where there's none to be found.

This was the last Shoe daily strip that ran on October 21st 2000, which hardly seems like a fitting end to a man's legacy.

A far better example would've been this strip seen earlier last week:

Because of the scheduling conflict between showing comics, there was a great gap between the last Sunday strip and the last daily strips.  Which meant that for papers that still allowed Shoe to run, instead of replacing it with another comic, many never got to see MacNelly's remaining comics.  Which is probably just as well, considering the episodic nature of the strips and lack of continuing storylines (Boot Camps and political commentary notwithstanding) the vast majority of Shoe is middling fare.

Another common unspoken complaint is when the character design look decidedly off compared to how they looked before.  The artwork for Hi & Lois and The Wizard of Id have gotten worse in later years.

Strangely enough, this slightly off-model look for Hagar appeared later in Chris Browne's run, after he'd spent considerable time following up in his father's footsteps.  In March 24, 1990, Dik Browne penned his last Daily and Sunday co-concurrently within a day of each other.

And then Chris Browne showed his strip, which while indistinguishable from the original, seems to have some pointed commentary, while also sounding fairly typical of a regular Hagar comic:

Strangely enough, while you can clearly see Chis' signature in the last panel, credit is still given to his father in the title panel.  I suppose there must be some power in name recognition, even after retirement.
Of course, the samples I've chosen seem more logical, compared to the alternative.

If an artist is skilled enough, the change can sometimes be so microscopic that it can't be told apart despite rigorous observation.  And that's even after being told there are minute differences.  But sometimes, there are small but subtle ways to tell them apart.  The art style may remain the same, but the mentalitybehind the art is very different.

For a rather tame comic about barbed (but never overbearing) remarks aimed at the other spouse, The Better Half had some surprising saucier elements  during it's Vinson run.  Stanley could be quite smitten with the ladies who weren't his wife.
Then Harris took over, and there was a slight but subtle change in Stanley's demanour.  He was still a fat foolish husband, but no longer conspired to cajole among the ladies.  Furthermore, any jokes regarding his boss and Mother-in-Law dried up and disappeared.
 
Of course, that's only my interpretation from the Sunday comics, but I don't have the time or temperance to go through the daily strips myself.  These character designs wouldn't remain attached to this for long, and become more cartoonier in later iterations.  The Better Half has gone through many permutations throughout the years as its shifted artists, finally ending up retired by Randy Glasbergen in the end.
Of course, that's just a minor change gone unnoticed throughout the years.  When another artist takes over where one left off, and their styles aren't consistent, the results can be jarring.  The last week of Brian Basset's Adam (later renamed Adam@Home) from February 16-22, 2009 was a series of lazy widescreen comics that could've been done in his sleep.  (And probably was)
 The very next strip that showed up next week was radically different:
Rob Harrell had none of Brian Basset's scratchy artwork, and opted instead for checkmark
that was just a poorly rendered rendition of Adam's mouth being portrayed at the time.
Adam's last Sunday strip on March 15th was his last chance to go all out in self-aware commentary over what he'd been doing.  Rob Harrell's artwork and dialogue seem less inspired in comparison.
Sometimes in an attempt to keep ahead of the deadlines, cartoonists employ little tricks by employing time-saving techniques, such as reusing art rather than redrawing the same art over and over (like Blondie's bizarre SynchronizedBreakdancing)  In Blondie's case, they did so by reducing the number of Sunday Strip panels from 12 to 9, counting the new title banner.  The last regular feature of this format was on October 26, 1986.

The very next week had Dagwood being dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th Century.

This time-saving device wasn't applied to the dailies until 1996, years later.

The comic above could've been modified to remove the 3rd panel completely, but would be missing the build-up leading to the punchline.  As with the laws of Alchemy, you gain something the same time you lose something.  Whether that loss is worth sacrificing for is constantly up for debate.

Herman remains my favorite single-panel comic, far outstripping other worthy contributors to the form.  From the relaxed macabreism of Charles Adams' New Yorker comics to the scientific absurdness of The Far Side to the overwrought narrative of John McPherson's Close to Home.

Jim Unger said that the appeal of Herman was his ubiquitous loser status, but I'd say it goes further than that.  Otherwise, Ziggy would've been a prime candidate. The world of Herman is filled with people who approach the most ludicrous situations with perfectly banal commentary.  Everybody is a straight man (or woman) and they say the most outrageous statements with a straight face.  (Or a lumpy face, since everybody in Herman has the consistency of mashed potatoes)

And then, in 1992, Jim Unger decided to quit after enjoying a long run of over 20 years.  Apart from a brief hiatus in 1989 from September to December for some well-deserved vacation time, he'd been working on Herman non-stop.  Unlike other Canadian cartoonists who produce long-lasting popular comics (such as Lynn Johnson's For Better or For Worse or Dave Sim's Cerebus), Herman had no overall story structure to worry about, which may have also helped Jim Unger preserve his sanity, not having to overthink multiple story concepts that threatened to run away from him.  Unfortunately, his last book, Herman VIII, only collected up to December 8th, 1991, leaving around seven months of uncollected material.

The last week of his run was typical Herman fare:

When it comes to going through in-depth history about comics, such books tend to be filled with long lengthy essay-length journals full of investigative analysis of comic's evolution throughout the ages.  Unless you've had some familiarity with the subject material and massive plot spoiler summaries already laid out for you, or you've lived throughout the times when these comics were being printed, you're very likely to be glazing your eyes over the text, preferring to skip over to the pictures, of which there are massively few to appreciate.  Not to mention that when pictures are available, the whole story isn't included, which removes much of the context in question.  And for the most part, comic histories tend to overwhelmingly focus on Superhero comics rather than other works that would be more receptive to a general audience whose tastes run in a different direction.

With very rare exceptions, such as Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and Fred Van Lente & Ryan Dunlavey's The Comic Book History of Comics, going through information about an extremely visual art form can be an outright slog.  Now, we've got another worthy contender to add to the surprisingly small pond: Nervé Bourhis'le petit livre de la Bande Dessinée.  Or, as I affectionately (and appropriately) reChristian it, The Comic History of BD.

While there's some perfunctory attention to cave drawings and Rodolphe Töpffer, the vast majority of the book covers comic's growing trend near the end of the 18th Century all the way up to 2014.  The book highlights many comics and when they first started, along with notable cartoonist's births and deaths.  Furthermore, the sheer range of comics noted throughout each year is massively varied, covering not just BD, but also Newspaper comics, American comics and various Mangas.  It also notices when comics have been adapted to other mediums, such as movies and television shows, when comic magazines make radical decisions, and when cartoonists join up or leave various companies.

Another selling point is that various comic covers are redesigned by multiple (European) cartoonists who put their own unique spin on some of the most famous comics ever printed.  Not unlike the retired Covered comic blog.

No matter what your interest is, whether it's Superhero comics, Newspaper comics, Manga, or European comics, chances are high that there'll be something of interest to attract your eye on a history page.  And by extension, you may also find other intriguing tidbits of information you might not have noticed otherwise.

Of course, this mainly covers the three major exports of comics, North America, France and Japan.  Any references to other countries that didn't immediately gain massive commercial appeal or licenses years later are forgotten or left out.  This book mainly covers the major attention-grabbing comic stories that gripped the nation.

The only minus is that some covers may be somewhat radically different or obscure compared to what North American readers are familiar with.  Unless you were already acquainted with the wild drawings of Gotlib, you wouldn't know that this cover would be a "before", with Issac Newton & Co...

...and the cover below shows what happens "after" .

Also, the European market can sometimes change things more to their liking, which may be considered surprising.  The cover for the first Calvin & Hobbes collection was closer to a BD format with the front cover not being hand-painted by Watterson himself, but a blow-up of a single representative panel instead.

I mentioned before how some Newspaper comic collections in book form would be chopped up to meet a bookstore's shelf space requirments.  In France, Newspaper comics were rearranged in a typical BD format, four strips a page, and a vertical arrangement of normally horizontal Sunday strips.  The more experimentative comics would be rotated sideways.  To further add to the madness, in this format, a typical BD collection would only collect half the material in a regular North American comic 128-page collection.

Sometimes a redrawn comic can be close enough to the source material, while in others, they can be radically different, while still displaying the spirit of the original.

In other instances, figuring out the inside joke to a cover shouldn't be that large a hurdle.  A simple search request or familiarity with the art style should be all the clues you need.

Most likely, this license request is little more than a pipe dream.  Translating the vast amount of text would be an uphill challenge, and some parodic covers might have to be redrawn or rechosen to further reflect American interests.

The irony is, while other books with comic essays will have delightful drawings to cover up the lack of art inside, that's not the case here.  For a book that's chock-filled with nothing but multiple unique cartoonish and realistic drawings, it has possibly, the most banal cover in existence.  It looks more like a Classical Music Record cover than a book.

Of all the holiday-centric themes, the Olympics rank among the scarcest in terms of coverage.

Since Olympics only happen every four years, it's less of an annual marker, so it doesn't normally weigh in on Cartoonists' minds, unless they make a conscious effort to tie in their characters to coincide with the event.  Not to mention the Winter Olympics, which happen in between the Summer Olympics, giving people from colder climates (Canadians & Russians) equal footing.

Since ancient times, people worldwide would compete in various events to see which one of them would be the best shining example of being the best in their fields.

If there were any national events that happened to take place before the Greek tradition was revived in the late 18th Century, no records of them exist.

In Hagar's case, his Olympic event apparently consists of a triathon involving carrying two barrels of beer on a hurdle course, toasting a hundred times in a row, pillaging a castle, swinging across a moat (Moat Monster optional) and breaking through a wooden finish sign, because why make it easy at the end?

To ensure that everyone gets their fair share, the Olympics have branched out into various fields, from the handicapped, to the Deaf.  If any others are included in the future, they'll be so that no one (country) is truly left out.

I've never been one to fully embrace the trial of enduring a driving lesson, even though having a driver's license would make things easier to sign up for, as an added proof of who I say I really am.  (Because there are all kinds of frauds out there who'd like to impersonate me, without any of the emotional baggage I entail)

To me, a car is less the feeling of rebelliousness freedom, and more a golden albatross you're anchored to.  There's the cost of having to fill up the gas tank on a regular basis, keeping the tires inflated, the windshield wipers fluid working.  And on top of all that, there's the ever-persistent threat of your car suddenly experiencing system existence failure right in the middle of traffic.

Ah yes, traffic.  Home of the highway, constant stop signs and the source of road rage, where the slightest distraction is the only thing from reducing your high-tech vehicle into a twisted steel death trap.  If your body hasn't been fully damaged beyond repair in your metal coffin, you'll be lucky(?) enough to only scrape by with some amputated limbs, brain damage, and ruptured internal organs.  Not to mention the act of having to pay attention to every single functioning aspect of the car, memorizing what each gear does, and keeping a watchful eye on daredevil jaywalkers.  There's simply too many things for me to keep track of.

That's why I prefer to go the route of public transportation.  Let THEM deal with the worries, while I doze away to the comfortable vibrations in the back.  Not that riding the bus is that great a deal.  The latest designs are nowhere as comfortable as the old models (50 seats reduced to 30), seats with no place to rest your head, too many windows that allow sunlight to glare through, and a limited number of comfortable spots that are quickly filled up.  Not to mention the threat of missing your stop through inattention or not ringing the bell properly enough.  And the pressure to keep a vigilant eye on making sure your bus doesn't pass you by when you're not paying attention.  And the fares keep rising all the time, with no end in sight.

I'd also opt for being picked up by someone who knows how to drive, but waiting around for them to come is just as nervewracking as waiting for the bus, since people don't operate by a timesheet system.  But that's them breaks I guess.

(Setting: the interior of a hospital wing.  A balding detective in a trench coat knocks on the door of an office)

Detective Flinch: Dr. Tenma?
(The door opens, revealing a world-weary brunette in a laboratory coat)
Doctor Tenma: Mister Flinch?  You made an appointment, right?
Flinch: Yes.  I was hoping we could speak confidentially.
Tenma: My office is always open.  (Leads Flinch inside, closes door)
Flinch: Lately, we've had rumours that the vigilante known as Code Name "P" is planning to take advantage of the ensuing confusion regarding the upcoming election.
Tenma: (Looks a little lost)  Unless it has to do with something medical, I'm not quite sure how I can help.
Flinch: There is.  You have access to a certain illegal drug in your possession.  A controlled substance, under article C2oh25-N3O, I believe.
Tenma: (Blank look)  What are you talking about??
Flinch: There's no use hiding it.  We've known about your operation for quite some time.
Tenma: (Looks warily at the door, seeking an escape route)
Flinch: Don't worry.  I'm not seeking a conviction.  I'm semi-retired, so officially, I'm not here.  I'm far more interested in a controlled substance that I used to partake.
Tenma: You??  I find that hard to believe.
Flinch: (Inhales, exhales deeply into his hands) It's not exactly something I'm proud of.  You see, I used to be a much more high-profile detective, helping solve some of the most baffling cases.
Tenma: Baffling cases?... You don't mean to say that... you were L?

Flinch: No, I wasn't THAT good.  (Chuckles)  No, but I took some mental-boosting pills that increased my productivity.  Unfortunately, they had the side effect of cutting off my relationships.  I became too grossly invested in my work.  My wife left me, my colleagues could no longer tolerate my presence.  My arrogance began to overwhelm getting further cases assigned my direction.  Eventually, I weaned off the pills, but my reputation was never the same afterwards.
Tenma: (Confused) So, why come to me then?  Why take these pills at all?
Flinch: In order to get into "P"'s mentality, I need to indulge deeply into the deepest darkest recesses of my mind.  And my ability lately has been sorely lacking.  I've always been three steps short of him, never quite catching up.  I don't like resorting to this, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Tenma: (Picks pills from behind secret compartment)  This 'P' threat, it's pretty big, huh?  (Hands pills over)
Flinch: You have no idea.  (Contemplates pills in his hand)
Tenma:  You know, it's not too late.  You can still back out if you want to.
Flinch:  (Shakes head) I know I'm reaching.  Frankly speaking, I'm scared about what getting into his state of mind entails.  (Swallows pills)  But I'm more scared about what 'P' might do more.
Tenma: (Points towards door, hand on doorknob) Should I leave, or...?
Flinch: Stay.  I need somebody to keep watch over me.  I have no idea how I'll react, having been off for so long.  My relapse should -
(The detective stops short, his eyes bulging out.  He puts his hands on his head and starts convulsing, his whole body shaking wildly, alarming the doctor.  After several seconds of erratic movement, the seizures stop)
Tenma: (Tentatively moves within the drug-induced detective's line of sight)  ...Inspector Lynch?

(Detective Lynch removes his hands from his head in a relaxed manner, revealing the face of a smiling confident man with a cool lean predator-hungry look with razor-sharp eagle eyes constantly seeking justice)
Detective Lynch: "I am 'P'."

(The screen becomes warped and corrupted)
*Static plays*
(The Horizontal and Vertical warble)

(The face of a man wearing a smiling Pikachu mask appears on the screen)

P: Hello.  Sorry to interrupt during a pivotal moment, but I felt it was time I had a few choice words to say.
This speech is not aimed at the general populace, but at the higher rankings of so-called men in charge.

At this current rate, your party is collapsing faster than I could possibly hope to implement.

Really, you have only yourselves to blame.

You've openly supported a man who for all intents and purposes, was a reprehensible human being.  All the proof was there for everyone with a lick of common sense to see.

The only reason you started backing him up was because he gained the popular vote with the same poisonous methodology you've used over the years to appeal to your voting base.  The problem with using such a technique for so long - somebody was bound to corrupt and override the formula down to its most basic elements for maximum impact.

And what has he done since?

• Insisted on a media blackout, just because he didn't like any criticism aimed at him.
• Called for defaulting the loans to Foreign powers he may be in debt to.
• Verbally assaulted the Muslim parents of a Gold Star soldier.
• Threw out a mother and crying baby out of one of his rallies.
• Accused the current term President of founding the very terrorist organizations he's been fighting against.
• Suggested the assassination of the opposing party's candidate.
• Openly revealed national secrets minutes after leaving Black Ops briefing rooms.

Furthermore, his default first response to any perceived threat is to go straight to the nukes.  And ALSO thinks that more countries should have nuclear weapons.

ANY other politician would long have apologized for their misgivings, hoped he'd be forgiven for their slights and move on.  Not him.  When met with anything resembling resistance - not even defiance - he digs in his heels and further digging in his roots for the hills he's willing to die on.  For all your hopes that he'd change his tune once sworn in as candidate, he decided to stick to the formula he knows best, since it worked this far.
This is a man who openly admits to refuse to change.

All these warning signals should have scared you off.  It didn't.  Experience should've shown you that unscrupulous businessmen make lousy politicians.  Your last Presidential Candidate should have shown you that.  It didn't.  Maybe now, you'd learn your lesson, but experience has taught me not to rely on wishful thinking.

Your ceiling of quality, once so high and lofty has fallen so low that it now more closely resembles a cellar floor.  And yet, you continue to follow behind him, while openly resisting any serious backing.  Which is it? You can't have it both ways forever.  Sooner or later, you're going to have to make a decision.

The ONE politician who made no move to endorse him, and appealed others to "vote their conscience" was booed off the stage for displaying disloyalty within the party.  Strange that voting our conscience is considered reprehensible.  At what point does despicable actions become acceptable behavior?

This is what comes out of letting your greed dictate your political terms.  We're at the point where a corporation is considered to be a person, but people are considered property.  You've made emotional arguments that have nothing to do with policy, and scared your voters beyond reasonable margins using anti-intellectual stances.  Annoying know-it-alls were just getting in the way with their factoids.  Well, here's one for you:

I have heard grumblings of the overwhelming dissatisfaction of the incompetence of the authorities in being unable to apprehend me, on the basis that "I'm only ONE man!" Well, let me turn that back on you.  You only had to stop ONE man from rising as high into power as he did.  What's YOUR excuse?

And now, back to our regular feature, currently in progress.

(Brief flicker of snowy static)

(Interior of the Doctor's office is a shambles)

Flinch: (Looks around, confused.  Is surprised to find himself naked)  What happened?  I didn't hurt you, did I?
Tenma: (Shaking) No, you just did some bizarre pantomime actions, roleplaying multiple theoretical scenarios using my office supplies, before stopping and writing something down before collapsing.
Flinch: What'd I write?
Tenma: (Tentatively hands piece of paper over)
Flinch: (Reads page)

Page: It's already too late.  "P" doesn't need to do anything at this point.

When The Hunchback of Notre Dame was released in 1996, it was heralded as a new trailblazing path for Disney movies in moving beyond mere Fairy Tales.  But Disney had apparently forgotten that they'd done adaptations of more serious works in the past before.  Ranging from Ichabod Crane and Mr. Toad, to the first five minutes of The Jungle Book that was faithful to its source material, before becoming the Baloo show.

And then there's The Fox & The Hound, probably one of the most depressing movies ever made.

Though, if you've been browsing clickbait links, you may have come across a factoid that the book was Miles more soul-crushing.  The story changed from a parable about how our roles in society determine our motives, to a fable about childhood friends from opposite sides becoming unintentional enemies.

Finding a dead tree version can be considered costly, since it hasn't been reprinted since its publication.
Fortunately, there's an electronic version available, so it isn't completely lost to the ages.  (Too bad I can't stand the platforms, since their scrolling pages give me a headache)  The majority of the following is lifted almost verbatim from the TVtropes Literature page, with minor revisions.

Ironically enough, the book's theme more closely resembled the atmosphere surrounding the Animation studio in producing the cartoon film.  As one of the final projects completed by the remaining fabled Nine Old Men, the movie was plagued with a troubled production history.  There were numerous conflicts of interest between the old guard and the new generation on how to best do background details, and refusal to use the latest technology under budget restrictions.

The result was Don Bluth becoming discouraged over the 'stagnant' Disney, moved out with a dozen other animators to found his own company... which specialized on lengthy chase scenes and nonsensical plots.  Still, for all his faults, he was the closest thing Disney had to a legitimate rival for a very long time.
Tim Burton was reportedly so traumatized over being unable to draw a fox properly ("my drawings all looked like roadkill") that he didn't return to the company for almost a decade.

Tim Burton literally went insane trying and failing to replicate the Disney style. Highlights from his tenure include locking himself in his closet, biting people who came near his desk and wandering the halls after having his wisdom teeth pulled and letting his mouth bleed all over the floor. His time at Disney didn't last much longer.

While there is a hound named Copper and a fox named Tod, that's pretty much where the similarities end. For starters, the two never meet or spend much time in childhood to form a lasting fraught relationship that's doomed from the start.  Instead, the titular fox is raised by a hunter (not the same one who killed his parents) who's also raising a terrier puppy.  To prepare his pets for the outside world, he runs a simple experiment on them by rigging up a plate of food to deliver a shock if touched. The terrier takes several shocks to get the idea, and completely forgets the plate's unpleasantness in a few months. Tod gets shocked ONCE and never goes near it again.  A trait of learning things quickly, which is essential for survival.

Another difference is the portrayal of the animals' mindset, which is closer to Patrick Süskind's Perfume.  From their point of view, their major import of information comes from their overwhelming sense of smell, rather than sight.  Copper's eyesight is so bad that he seems to consider clear colour vision to be a Bizarre Human Sense.

Also, Tod's repertoire of hunting skills and evasive maneuvers are made up of various tricks that worked once and are repeated verbatim - he doesn't question WHY something works, he just knows that it DOES.

Copper knows that "human beings had strange powers that no dog could understand", such as the ability to miraculously scent trails where he cannot (which was more likely following footprints and broken branches). The formal foxhunters are even more bizarre and inscrutable. Tod is probably the character least awed by humans, and even then they still do things he finds inexplicable from time to time.

Untrained curs are dumb - trained hounds can smell right through most fox tricks.

The author, Daniel Mannix, spent over a year studying foxes, which included watching them in the wild, interviewing hunters and even keeping a pair of red foxes in his home. He was also extremely well-versed in how scent tracking works. It shows.

One of the few rare instances that a scene is actually taken from the book.  But there were several minor differences involved.  For starters, after Tod played a dangerous game of Chicken with an upcoming train, Chief pretty much died after this gambit.  While this was the motivation behind the hunter beginning a life-long vendetta against the fox who'd killed his beloved dog, Copper's reaction was markedly different.  Copper was actually GLAD that Chief was killed, since his mentor picked up scents by luck, rather than in a methodical way Copper did.

Another major difference is that Book Tod pretty much hates being domesticated, and as soon as he approaches puberty, he leaves his foster home to join the wild, where he learns new survival skills the hard way - trial & error.

Tod decides being a mated fox might not be so bad after his first mate helps him kill a pheasant and later proves that a hunting pair is a lot more successful than a lone fox.

There were actually two Vixens who attracted Tod's attention.  The first one was lost to a rival fox Tod fought over.  Tod wouldn't find a suitable replacement to make babies with until later.

Foxes of course do not have language (In Japan, they make a 'Kon' noise), so fox parents cannot simply tell their offspring that winter is coming and that it would be a good idea to learn hunting skills in summer. Tod cannot communicate to his family that the hunter is using a rabbit-scream call as bait.

The second vixen Tod mated with picked a birthing den that had a single tunnel leading to a single burrow. Unlike the care-free Tod in the movie, Book Tod was more paranoid..  Having spent his short time as a wild pup in a generations-old fox den with multiple entrances and burrows, thinks the new home's a death trap. He's right.  The casualty report - his vixen is caught in a bear trap, and of the two litters who were outright killed, only one pup survived, and presumably lived off-screen.

There WAS a Bear attack in the book, but it happened earlier, practically near the beginning, and it was Chief who saved the day, by attacking... the bear's groin area.  Obviously, that couldn't be shown in a children's movie, so they resorted to having him fall off a log.

Most British fox hunts last for an average of 17 minutes.  The last chapter, which details the lengthy cat-and-mouse chase between the Fox & the Hound lasted... a day and a half, covering 150 miles.  This was based on a real hunt, with a Fox named Baldy, and a half-breed bloodhound named Boston.  At the end of that hunt, both animals literally chased themselves to death, dropping dead from exhaustion.  Book Copper fared better - he survived.

...only to have his fate sealed for him shortly after.  Once Tod is killed, more through second-hand status ailments than cathartic release, the hunter has no other purpose left in life.  With most of his property gone in the process, the hunter is forcibly ferried into a nursing home that doesn't allow dogs, so to avoid abandoning his faithful friend who's stuck through him thick and thin, he's forced to shoot Copper before entering.  Cheerful, huh?

The worst part was that Copper was so blissfully unaware of what the hunter had planned for him that he kept wagging his tail.  Once shot, the hunter hanged Tod's lifeless pelt on his wall, to remember him always.

To make up for that amount of Funky Winkerbean level of funkness, here's a child's drawing of the two titular characters in happier times.