On Mar 6, 2013, at 4:58 AM, David Bruggeman wrote: > The comic strip test cases these days are Mallard Fillmore and Prickly City. > I'm not sure MF has ever tried to be non-political, but Prickly City > sometimes is, and that's usually when you have a chance to chuckle.
Interesting you'd bring comic strips into this discussion, since one of Dennis Miller's predecessors was Al Capp during the Vietnam War era (i.e., the waning years of "Li'l Abner"), when he brought in characters such as Joanie Phoanie, a caricature of Joan Baez and other folk singers of her ilk, portrayed as dirty, smelly hippies who were just in it for the money. But hippies and other anti-Vietnam types weren't his only targets; here's a sequence of 3 Sunday strips in which he attacks, of all people, Charles Schulz... http://imprint.printmag.com/wp-content/uploads/Abner_1968-10-13.jpg http://imprint.printmag.com/wp-content/uploads/Abner_1968-10-20.jpg http://imprint.printmag.com/wp-content/uploads/Abner_1968-10-27.jpg One can't help but feel that it's sour grapes, since when these strips came out in 1968, "Peanuts" was not just one of the hottest comic strips, but one of the hottest entertainment properties in the country -- a position that "Li'l Abner" had held for a time years before. It's also disingenuous, since Al Capp certainly hadn't been shy about authorizing "Li'l Abner" merchandise and using the characters in advertising -- and unlike Schulz, Al Capp wasn't singlehandedly responsible for his strip (his assistants did much of the finished artwork based on rough drawings by Capp). -- Jim Ellwanger <[email protected]> <http://www.ellwanger.tv> -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
