Posts Tagged ‘ strip

Strip Search: Life According to Garfield

On alternating Thursdays, Jennifer M. Babcock reviews and recommends comic strips available in print and on the web.

I know I’ve recently talked about Garfield in this blog but a recent comics discovery compels me to turn our attention back to this sassy, lasagna-loving cat. While going down the list of comics syndicated on GoComics.com a while back, I found a strip called “Life According to Garfield.”

Actually, I shouldn’t call it a strip. Technically, “Life According to Garfield” is a panel comic, meaning that it consists of a single image with an accompanying caption. Other examples of panel comics include “Love is…,” “The Far Side,” and almost any New Yorker cartoon.

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Strip Search: Fixed Art Comics

On alternating Thursdays, Jennifer M. Babcock reviews and recommends comic strips available in print and on the web.

What are they?

Usually they look like comics that are made with Clip Artwork or have images that are copied and pasted from panel to panel (or both). Here’s one example:

Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North

Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North

Here’s another example:

Red Meat by Max Cannon

Red Meat by Max Cannon

What’s up with this? I thought comics were supposed to be about striking a balance between word AND image.

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Hippasus Gurgles: “The Average Comic”

On alternating Fridays, Michael Carlisle examines the world “outside” sequential art to find… more sequential art. Expect mathematics, a bit of madness, and a dash of pessimistic optimism.

Previously, I discussed infinite sequences; this time I would like to give an application that has changed the way humans interact with the world. And I’d like to play with comics.

One of the most important results from mathematics of the last 300 years is called the Law of Large Numbers.

Taking the sequence of sequences that is a comic strip “series” – the body of work of that strip – I propose a bit of fun.

(If you want to skip the text and go straight to the images, here you go. I’ll understand. Otherwise, read on, Faithful Lurker.)

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Strip Search: Piled Higher and Deeper

Strip Search features reviews and recommends comic strips available in print and on the web.

by Jennifer M. Babcock

Piled Higher and Deeper is a webcomic drawn by a good friend of mine, Jorge Cham. He started drawing PhD Comics as a graduate student at Stanford University. For about a year, my alma mater UCLA ran his comic in their paper (I believe on Wednesdays) and it has since been syndicated in several university newspapers and in three published book collections. On top of all that, Jorge gets to run around the country giving lectures about how to cope with being a grad student – using his comic as visual aid.

In a nutshell, PhD is a pretty big success. I don’t think it’s listed as a webcomic that is self-sufficient (meaning that the profits Jorge receives via merchandising and advertising can fully support him without a “day job”) but I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t.

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Strip Search: Cathy

On alternating Thursdays, Jennifer M. Babcock reviews and recommends comic strips available in print and on the web.

by Jennifer M. Babcock

I have a confession to make. I get Cathy e-mailed to me every day.

I don’t subscribe to Cathy because I feel like it is relevant to my life or because I necessarily enjoy it. No, I’m a regular reader because ever since Cathy and Irving got engaged on Valentine’s Day, 2004, I’ve been curious if the strip’s character dynamics were going to change accordingly. After all, one of the founding concepts behind Cathy for over 25 years was the protagonist’s “singledom” and struggles as a working woman who can’t lay off the potato chips.

When the strip first appeared in 1976, women’s rights were being newly asserted at work and in relationships; Cathy’s character was supposed to reflect that generation’s working, single, independent women along with their fears, uncertainties, and challenges. The concept was quite novel for the time – how many mainstream newspaper comics in the 1970s addressed women’s rights or even had a single, working woman as the main, and in this case, title character?
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