Michael Cavna follows up from an earlier post regarding Candorville creator Darrin Bell’s cartoon about Trayvon Martin with another post about how readers reacted to the cartoon.
While I frequently laugh out loud while reading the comics in The Washington Post, I don’t remember ever crying over them. But Friday’s strip [April 6] brought tears to my eyes. It was poignant, sensitive, and beautiful. And I think it got right to the heart of the matter. Trayvon Martin’s death wasn’t about hoodies or Skittles or ridiculous Florida laws. It was about a young man’s life cut tragically short. Thank you for the idea of a Starbucks at the end of the world where kids who die too soon can live their possible lives.
Nice.
This is why Darrin Bell is one of my real influences and obviously one of my favorite cartoonists in the comic pages.
Ok, that’s really superb strip by a truly talented artist about a real tragedy – I don’t know if Trayvon punched Zimmerman or what the witnesses actually said or saw or if Zimmerman’s nose was actually broken or much at all, really. I don’t have remotely enough info to decide guilt or innocence of either one of those involved and I await the information that will come from the court proceedings which have, FINALLY, now begun…
Nonetheless, I gotta say…
Is there a missing sixth panel? You know, where his kid grows up and volunteers for Neighborhood Watch? And an angry kid of the same race punches her face and she falls down and hits her head on the concrete and dies and her death is completely ignored by the press because black on black crime has no ability to sell advertising or attract mobs of vigilantes?
I love everything Darrin Bell does. And this is beautiful. Really poignant.
Darrin always has remarkable work, but I have to say this is one of his best comics yet. very touching.