From: tssmith@netcom.com (Tim Smith)
Subject: Re: Fusco Brothers!
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 92 04:32:47 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 


> = Raymond Flournoy
> > = Tim Smith
>
> >I always read Blondie.  It evolves slowly, it's not funny, but I really
> >like the drawing.  Maybe it's just a tradition?
> 
>   No agreement here.  You like the drawing?  I'm sorry to bring up
> this slightly vulgar point, but why are all the women in the strip
> (including the teenager daughter and her friends) drawn with *huge*
> chests?  This strip is worse than a lot of comic books with their
> women with amazonian endowments.  (And that's saying a lot!)

I never really looked at it that way.  Now that you mentioned it, I
went back and looked at last Sunday's Blondie.  You're right, all the
women in the strip have these hourglass, "ideal" figures, like
something from a Vargas Esquire drawing.  Maybe Chic Young just liked
to draw that kind of figure.  It looks very 1930's to me, and I never
paid much attention to it.

A few months ago, I read an article about Blondie in the local
paper.  Apparently, the strip was started over 60 years ago, and at
that time, Dagwood was the heir to a railroad fortune, and Blondie
was portrayed as a "golddigger". (That's a term before my time, but I
guess it just means a fortune hunter.)  So Dagwood was disinherited
by his father, and settled down with his sexy wife.  They later
matured into the straightlaced, not to say boring, suburban couple
that we have today.

But, dammit, I still like the drawing.  There's a sense of action in
the drawing, like the scenes where Dagwood is late and trying to
catch his bus (oops, car pool now), but unfortunately, it doesn't
carry over to the writing.

Interesting to contrast that with Lynn Johnston's characters, who are
much more real looking, with their somewhat dumpy bodies.  I like
both strips.  The bodies are very different, but there's life in both
of these strips.

> >Peanuts, to put it mildly, sucks.  I read an interview with Bill
> >Watterson back when C&H was just starting, and he was full of praise
> >for Peanuts.  Almost made me stop reading C&H. :-).
> 
>   *No* agreement here, whatsoever!  Peanuts has undoubtedly
> deteriorated in quality, but there is still much that is wonderful
> about the strip.  And as a point of praise for Schulz, he, unlike so
> many other authors, old and young, has never used a staff of writers,
> artists, or letterers (to my knowledge).  He is very serious about
> retaining the integrety of the strip and characters.  This is part of
> why Watterson has respect for Schulz.  Schulz has great respect for
> the medium and his creations.

I guess I'm just 180 degrees to the rest of the civilized world on
this one.  I've never liked Peanuts, not then, not now.  And I've
been looking at it for, what?, 20 years now, trying to find in it
what everybody else seems to.  I just can't.  I appreciate that
Schultz doesn't have a Jim Davis-type cartoon-creation factory
working for him, but he has sure made out like a bandit on the other
gimmicks.  But this is not why I dislike the strip.  It just seems,
well, flat and insipid are the best words I can think of.  There's no
vitality there at all.  Even the famous football-yanking scene never
made the strip come alive for me.

>   Anyway, thanks for sharing your opinions; just thought I'd toss in
> mine too!

Sure, thanks for the comments.
 
> --Raymond Flournoy        

--Tim (tssmith@netcom.com)