The Great Newspaper Comics Challenge Part 1

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A couple of days ago I noted that Dick Tracy, in a recent strip, cracked that he didn’t really have time to read newspaper comic strips anymore. Aside from the meta reference there, I found it to be a sad but true commentary on the state of the funny pages.

I haven’t made a daily devotion of newspaper comic strips since the passing of Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side. In the newsroom where I worked, we made a daily ritual of weighing in on The Far Side each day. Who got it? Who didn’t?

So I’m checking out the daily funnies again, hoping something will catch my eye and become a regular thang.

For Better or For Worse: If I hadn’t heard that the strip had virtually stopped production and dipped back into its own history, I might wonder why the family’s kids were little again and there was less drama and tragedy in the strip. So there’s a “been there, read that” feel to the strip now.

Baby Blues and Crankshaft: Strips that mine the dawn and sunset of life for humor, these two are pretty dependably amusing.

Beetle Bailey: Hmmm. Has anyone else noticed this trend? It seems like Sarge can be pretty hard on Beetle.

Blondie: Dagwood makes a joke about food or sports. Blondie makes a joke about shopping. Repeat.

Lockhorns: This couple is always kind of insulting each other. I think this is a bad sign for their marriage.

Pickles: After the cantankerous old guy observes his wife putting on makeup and notes, “My grandpa had a saying … Even an old barn looks good with a fresh coat of paint,” He finds himself out on the stoop. “I just realized why grandpa got locked out of the house so often.” Pretty good.

Dilbert: The strip might be most appealing to office workers, but you’ve got to admire Scott Adams’ diligence in exploring the many facets of idiotic bosses and shiftless workers.

Today’s strip is fine, but my favorite Dilbert — maybe of all time — was a few weeks ago.

Be back in a couple of days with part two.

Hey Dick Tracy: Read this

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The blow, when it came, was like a swift punch to the kidneys: Dick Tracy, the peerless comic strip detective, doesn’t read newspaper comic strips anymore.

My first thought: They’re still publishing Dick Tracy?

My second thought: Maybe ol’ Dick is right.

Let me fill in the backstory: I was perusing the Interwebs today when I saw a link to a story on Examiner.com in which writer Brian Steinberg notes the current Dick Tracy strip, in which the sharp-chinned cop, when asked if he reads comic strips, replies, “Usually don’t have time.”

At first I thought, “Well, the hell with Dick Tracy. If he’d turn in that two-way wrist radio and get an iPad or even an iPhone, maybe he’d keep up with the news a little better.”

Then I thought, well, to be honest, I’m not reading newspaper comic strips every day either.

Regular readers of this blog might have noticed that I’ve mentioned Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, a long-gone adventure strip along the lines of Dick Tracy, as well as classics like Calvin and Hobbes and the inexplicably popular Family Circus.

But since Calvin hurtled off this plane of existence on his sled, I haven’t spent a lot of time with the funnies.

That’s a shame too. I work for a newspaper and read it, in print and online, every day. But I haven’t paid as much attention to the comics since the heyday of not only Calvin but the Far Side.

So when I realized that I was no better than Dick Tracy in my inattention to newspaper comic strips, I decided to rectify the situation.

Beginning tomorrow, I’m going to take a few minutes and check out the comics, both in print and online. I’m going to find some new favorites. Maybe I’ll catch up on Funky Winkerbean. Are those crazy kids still in high school?

I’ll let you know how the comic strip reading is going.

I can’t promise I’ll read Dick Tracy every day, however, That guy’s attitude is just annoying.

 

The romance of radio

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The radio was my best friend growing up.

That’s only a mild exaggeration. As a kid growing up on a farm, I didn’t have neighbor kids my age close by. So I spent a lot of time exploring the fringes of my family’s 20-acre farm, the nooks and crannies of our hundred-year-old barn, the nuances of 1960s comic books and the inside of my head.

And the wonderful words and music that came pouring out of my radio.

The other day I was explaining to someone how world-changing a shift the change from AM to FM radio was. I had grown up listening to a local AM radio station, WERK, that featured such personalities as Bill Shirk, David Letterman, Bruce Munson, Tom Cochrun and Gary Demaree. The WERK station and transmitter were not far from where I grew up — along the banks of Buck Creek in southern Delaware County — so it felt like my radio station in a way.

WERK was on the radio on the school bus, if we were lucky and the driver was in a good mood. I still remember one morning when a group of us on the bus were terrified and tantalized when a WERK announcer reported, in mock seriousness, that a Loch Ness-style sea serpent had been spotted in Buck Creek.

Not that I didn’t love the allure, the romance, of far-away stations.

As I drifted off to sleep each night, Chicago’s WLS was my lullaby. I loved imagining the studio of the big-city station, where giants like Larry Lujack worked. I thrilled to imagine the booth where records were spun and the spot where the jocks broadcast and announcers recorded commercials.

Magic.

I’m not alone in being fascinated with the allure — mysterious and personal at the same time — of radio. Remember that scene in the 1973 George Lucas movie “American Graffiti” when a character seeks out real-life DJ Wolfman Jack, finding him holed up in a little building in the California desert, sending his voice out into the night?

There’s not as much magic in radio these days. Maybe it’s because I know how radio, like other businesses, works now. It’s a little like learning how movies are made, or how small TV studios are.

And nothing could hope to equal the memory of lying in bed, small radio on the bedside table, listening to the hypnotic words of a DJ. The guy spinning records was hundreds of miles away — or maybe just a little further south along the banks of Buck Creek — and thousands of people were hearing his voice.

But he was talking to me.

iPhoneography: Fall is here

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Yes, yes, I know that fall officially arrived more than a month ago, and we’ve had enough cool temperatures in Indiana to warrant switching on the furnace.

But there’s something about November that really reinforces the idea: It’s fall.

With Halloween over and the holiday season rushing toward us like an oncoming train, maybe there’s time to take a breath and contemplate the change of seasons.

These photos were taken with my iPhone in my neighborhood in recent days.

This green leaf — hanging precariously on a gate above a pile of leaves waiting to be raked — sums up how I feel about fall sometimes. I see it coming but I hate to give in because of what follows.

Most have given in already.

Fall’s colors are beautiful.

Just a few months ago, this little ditch was teaming with wildlife. This morning it’s frosty.

A nice spot for watching the change of seasons.

Enjoy fall!

Halloween horror: ‘Walking Dead’ rocks, ‘Simpsons’ sucks

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Here we are, on the eve of Halloween, and various movie channels are having marathons, ranging from the classics on TCM to later, lesser “Halloween” movies on AMC.

Into the mix comes the latest episode of “The Walking Dead” on AMC and the latest installment of “Treehouse of Horror” on “The Simpsons” on Fox.

First, let’s make short work of “The Simpsons.”

After being a zealous fan of the show for its first 10 seasons or so — we just re-watched “Mr. Plow” on DVD the other week — I fell out of love with “The Simpsons.” A dozen years ago, the show seemed to lose most of its creative edge. Maybe you really can’t do 500 episodes of a TV series and expect it to continue to be good. Duh.

Tonight’s “Treehouse of Horror,” the show’s annual Halloween special, had a couple of funny moments but overall was pretty lame. Judging by tonight’s episode, the show has traded pointed, harsh humor and wonderful characters for cheap and crude laughs. When a joke revolves around the similarity of the words tentacles and testicles, you know the show is spinning its wheels.

On the other hand, “The Walking Dead” continues to feature some of the most gripping — as in gripping the arms of my chair — suspense on TV.

As the survivors of a zombie apocalypse take refuge on a remote farm, where their injured are treated by the kindly resident veterinarian, tensions external and internal build. Watching Shane, the conflicted deputy, make a stomach-rolling choice tonight made me wonder where the producers are going with the character.

The show is, of course, all about characters and choices. Tonight’s episode saw some discussion of a point that I’ve been expecting for a while now: What if your reaction to the end of the world was not to fight to survive, but to opt out?

If characters are considering putting themselves out of their misery on “The Walking Dead,” might it be too much to hope that Fox would consider euthanasia for “The Simpsons?”

Again, duh. After wrangling over salaries, the talented vocal actors on the show recently signed for two more seasons. There’s simply too much money to be made for Fox to consider leaving any on the table.

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Graduation Day’

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At the close of “Graduation Day,” the final episode of the third season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the character Oz, the laconic werewolf, observes that their band of monster slayers had survived. No, not another epic battle with a demon. They had survived high school.

The 1999 episode — which aired months after it was originally supposed to because some panicked TV executives thought the plot was uncomfortably similar to the just-happened Columbine school massacre — marked a high-water point for the series.

In our household, we’ve made it a habit of re-watching episodes of “Buffy,” which aired for seven seasons and pre-dated the recent “Twilight”-inspired vampire craze. (And topped it in every way except for notoriety. But I digress.) Before the series was available on DVD, we watched old VHS tapes from original airings.

So, in a Halloween frame of mind, we were thinking tonight about what to watch and decided on “Graduation Day.”

If you’ve never seen “Buffy” — maybe you were put off by the deliberately ironic title, or the earlier but vastly inferior movie — you really should. As created by Joss Whedon, the series is about a typical California teenager, worried about school, friends and dating.

Buffy Summers, quite reluctantly, finds herself proclaimed as “the chosen one,” the one-girl-in-a-generation selected to battle vampires and other demons. In a tradition dating back thousands of years, as the show eventually explained, the slayer — endowed with near-superhuman power and a knack for killing vampires — is all that stands between us and the creatures lurking out there in the darkness.

Surrounding herself with a core group of friends — Xander, whose love for Buffy was unrequited, Willow, the nerd-girl pal who grew into one of the most complex characters on TV, Cordelia, the vain rich girl, and Giles, the school librarian who turned out to be a member of the Watchers Council, the group that oversees the slayers.

By the third season, Buffy (played with appealing vulnerability by Sarah Michelle Gellar) had saved the world more than a few times as she balanced the demands of school, her increasingly concerned mom and her relationship with Angel, the vampire with a soul who fought on the side of right. As played by David Boreanaz, Angel went on to star in his own spin-off series.

With graduation in the wings, Buffy’s life was complicated by the appearance of Faith (Eliza Dushku), a slayer with few of the moral complexities and doubts that plagued Buffy. By the end of the season, Faith had changed from ally to enemy and was helping the plans of the town’s mayor (the priceless Harry Groener) in his plan to transform into a huge, snake-like demon.

And eat all the newly-minted graduates.

The episode was funny and poignant and, as the series always did, defied expectations. Faith and the mayor had the kind of complex, caring relationship that the villains of most series would not. Angel took advantage of Buffy — even if it was against his will — alienating her friends.

Maybe “Graduation Day” wasn’t the scariest choice for pre-Halloween viewing. Like most “Buffy” episodes, the show was less about vampires and demons and more about the everyday horrors we all face: alienation, loss and heartache.

 

iPhoneography: Last of the Halloween photos

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With only a couple of days left until Halloween, let’s wrap up our first annual look at the stuff that caught my eye in Halloween stores (and in the aisles of department and dollars stores), shall we?

I saw a lot of creepy stuff this year. Some of it intentionally so.

I’m still not a fan of the extremely gory decor and props. And the Zombie Babies are just too much.

But there’s some whimsical stuff out there. Like this Michael Jackson costume.

And some that were whimsical and creepy, like the Charlie Sheen collection.

I think my favorite piece of decor was this floating ghost/skeleton. Check out these eyes. I would have nightmares if I walked into a dark room where this was hanging.

And you want to see something really scary? Look what season is lurking right behind the Halloween stuff:

Happy Halloween and happy holidays!

Trick-or-treating, Charlie Brown style

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“I got a rock.”

Charlie Brown’s lament — from the classic 1966 TV show “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” — has, for the past 40-some years, echoed in my head every Oct. 31.

Halloween is probably my favorite holiday, although it gets short shrift some years when such grown-up concerns as work prompts my family to push jack-o-lantern carving back to the night itself.

Then there was the year of my ill-advised suggestion that the family travel to a neighborhood on the other side of town to see what was reported to be an especially elaborate Halloween yard display. Of course, everyone else in town had that same idea and the resulting traffic jam on neighborhood streets meant that we almost — almost — didn’t get back to our own neighborhood in time for trick-or-treating.

But stressful Halloween memories are, thankfully, few for me.

I’ve enjoyed two great periods of Halloween in my life. In recent years, the chance to take my son trick-or-treating marks one of the highlights of the fall for me. Him too, I hope.

And of course, there’s the good old days. Halloween classic.

Growing up on a farm in a rural area, I never got to go trick-or-treating in my own neighborhood. Houses were few and far between and neighbors were so unaccustomed to having trick-or-treaters that you’d be better off expecting to find treats in our chicken coop.

But because my cousin Mary lived in the city, my family usually went to her house on Halloween and from there the kids went trick-or-treating.

Back then, in the 1960s, we went trick-or-treating for more than one night. Some people don’t believe me when I tell them this. Some people think we were deluding ourselves and were actually “shaking down” my cousin’s neighbors for candy several days in a row.

I’m sure that’s not true. Pretty sure.

Ahem.

Anyway. My cousin and I and several friends would set out at dark, costumes on and bags in hand, and it seemed like we ranged all over the south side of Muncie. I’ve previously noted in this blog the problems with wearing a mask over glasses. The glasses tended to fog up and reduce visibility. Being out at night, roaming over city blocks illuminated only by porch lights, made it even harder to see. My costume one particular year consisted of a painted-on beard, goofy hat and paint-spattered shirt. It was pretty low-rent but at least I could see.

As gratifying as the treats were, the tricks were just as good. One year, as our group approached a front porch, the resident of the house pulled a rope and caused a dummy to fall from a tree near us. As we shrieked and ran away from the house, other people, wearing masks and lying in wait, chased us.

We ran wildly into the street, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a passing car.

Good times.

Now when I go along as my son trick-or-treats, I get to enjoy the gruesome costumes on the older kids and the awfully cute ones on the little folks. I remind my son to say “trick or treat” and “thank you.” I carry a flashlight to help motorists see us.

It all seems pretty tame compared to my youth, when it seemed as if we roamed and pillaged across a wide swath of the city for the better part of the week.

But, you know, it’s still trick or treating and there’s not much better than that.

Carrying on Robert B. Parker’s legacy

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Me and Robert B. Parker go way back.

Sometime 20 years ago or more I bought a paperback copy of Parker’s “Taming a Seahorse” at a used book store and discovered his tough and smart Boston private eye Spenser. As written in spare — increasingly so, as the years went by — style by Parker, Spenser was a former boxer, former cop and intellectual “thug” who, like classic private eye heroes before him, took on hopeless cases and lost causes.

Spenser wasn’t a highly deductive detective. He was more likely to start pressuring peripheral players in a crime until they crumbled and pointed fingers at the Big Bad behind the scenes. Part of what was appealing, besides Spenser’s moral code, was his unwillingness to give up.

Spenser and another character created by Parker, Jesse Stone, have a lot in common. Sure there’s the series of CBS TV movies about Stone, a small town New England police chief (played on TV by Tom Selleck, who’s too old for the part but plays it to perfection). They share some of the same supporting characters but most importantly they share the same stick-to-it-iveness. Once Stone takes up a cause, be it an abused teen or victims of a sinister goon, he never gives up.

Parker, unfortunately, was mortal, unlike his best heroes, and died in January 2010. I was afraid his books and characters would die with him.

So far we haven’t heard about any other authors continuing Parker’s Sunny Randall books, or his series about stoic cowboys. But Parker’s estate and publishers have announced that a good mystery writer, Ace Atkins, will continue the Spenser novels with a new one to be published next year.

And Michael Brandman, one of the men behind the Jesse Stone TV movies, was chosen to continue the Stone books.

I wasn’t certain I would enjoy Brandman’s take, which is called “Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues.” But I read it this week and believe Brandman is the perfect guy to continue Stone’s advantures.

Right off the bat, Brandman makes some choices that vary from those Parker would make. He gives us a few sparing glimpses inside Stone’s mind, something Parker would pretty much only do when Stone, an alcoholic and troubled man, talked to his therapist.

Brandman also takes us — even more sparingly, thank goodness — into the head of one of Stone’s antagonists, a felon who comes seeking revenge because Stone, drunk and angry at his then-wife, had pistol-whipped the man years before. Stone’s past comes back with a vengeance in this book.

“Killing the Blues” has a lot going on, from the revenge-seeking felon to mobsters operating a murderous car theft ring to a molesting teacher to mean girls at the local high school in Stone’s picture-postcard town, Paradise.

Brandman balances it all quite well. Maybe as good as Parker at the top of his form. Maybe even better.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Ace Atkins will do with Spenser, but I’m sold on Brandman’s continuation of the Jesse Stone books. I can’t help but think Parker would approve too.

‘The Walking Dead’ rides a zombie wave

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The zombies are among us.

Actually, they are us.

Zombies — a mainstay of published fiction and movies, both gripping and cheesy, for decades — are pretty hot for a bunch of moldering, shambling flesh-eaters.

I talked to the owner of a local costume shop the other week who said that zombies appear to be the hottest Halloween costumes this year. (There’s that “they are us” thing.)

Max Brooks’ clever and gripping “World War Z” is being made into a film starring Brad Pitt, the latest in a long string of movies dating back to Bela Lugosi in “White Zombie.” One of my personal favorites, “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” gave a macabre “real life” feel to the walking dead.

Oh yeah, the walking dead. Or more precisely, “The Walking Dead.”

You may not be inclined to sit down and watch the AMC series version of Robert Kirkman’s comic book “The Walking Dead.” I wasn’t sure if the series, the first season of which debuted about a year ago, was going to work.

But it has. The second-season premiere last week drew more than 7 million viewers — a record for AMC, the channel that has given us “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.”

If all those viewers come back tonight, despite last week’s grisly and impromptu zombie autopsy and rumors of troubles among the behind-the-scenes writers and producers, it’s a testimony to our love of zombies.

Now “The Walking Dead” isn’t in the same league, for me at least, as the FX rural crime drama “Justified” or the aforementioned “Mad Men.” It’s no “Lost,” although we can all hope “The Walking Dead” avoids that show’s pitfalls.

But there’s something compelling about “The Walking Dead.”

Clear back to George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” and its great sequel, “Dawn of the Dead,” it was pretty obvious that the heart of any good zombie tale was the people — the living, breathing, non-shambling people — it focused on.

It’s easy to say that “The Walking Dead” is a metaphor for modern life, the same way “Dawn of the Dead” was a commentary on our culture and a chance to see some poor schmuck’s guts get torn out.

But it’s not just the commentary on friendship and family and the willingness to fight the futility of life that makes “The Walking Dead” worthwhile. The characters are compelling. You want them to live. You want them to escape with their limbs and minds intact.

Even as you wonder how they possibly can.

As I watched last week’s season opener, I wondered how the kid characters in the show could possibly avoid post traumatic stress disorder or any number of waking nightmares after what they’ve experienced at a very young age. How can any of the adults, for that matter?

So while followers of Kirkman’s comic books know there are a lot of miles and a lot of twisted and twisty plot developments to come, most of us can just enjoy the show’s unfolding story.

One moldering, shambling moment at a time.