Comic strips Controversies

Comic strips keep pushing biting wit to limit

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Alan Gardner February 20, 2006 1 minute 2 comments

From the Atlanta Journal-Consitution comes this story how the comics have been on the front end of controversy before. Comic strips cited in this story include: Blondie, For Better Or For Worse, Beetle Bailey, Little Orphan Annie, Pogo, and Popeye.

Comic strips, often whimsical and boiling with schmaltz, have been the province of pointed commentary, opinion and incendiary ideals for decades. And while reactions to themes and content have been obviously tame compared to current happenings ? no one’s burned down a building because of “Blondie” ? cartooning has long provoked passion.

From Harold Gray’s “Little Orphan Annie” ? which criticized Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal ? to Aaron McGruder’s more direct and racially charged “Boondocks,” the ideals and values enforced in these tiny narratives have long challenged ideals and sensibilities. Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” as well as McGruder have turned subversiveness into an art form, so much so that many newspapers run the strips outside the traditional comic pages.