See You in the Funny Pages

Good comics are some of my favorite things to read. I love Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, Get Fuzzy, Dilbert, Foxtrot, Zits (and secretly Luann). I think that Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, Dagwood, and Ziggy should all enter retirement. I think that Cathy, Curtis and Marmaduke are responsible for my low math score on my SAT and that they world is a more frightening place because they have existed.

I love a good strip (comic-, maybe New York-, but not -tease) because it can pack volumes into three or four little panels. And when they are really good they can pack movement between the panels. If you read Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, the art is so good that you find yourself filling in actions in your head that are only implied. It would be like taking a short film and selecting three or four frames to tell the whole story. It's genius when it works. It's just a joke on paper when it fails.

I'm not an expert of comics (I don't even know if it's wrong to call them cartoons. Is that term only for television animation?) But like all forms of art, I know what I like.