Comic Strips and Cross Roads

 

Mark Alan Stamaty Returns to His MacDoodle St. Home

Mark Alan Stamaty’s Village Voice comic MacDoodle St. is unlike anything else in print. Each installment of the weekly strip, which ran from 1978 to 1979, is packed with sight gags and digressions, the panels near to bursting with recurring characters and critters...The final strip shows Malcolm and friends sailing out of the city on MacDoodle Airlines, promising to “be back after a while.” However, the strip never returned. This week, New York Review Comics has reissued the complete MacDoodle St. in book form. A new addendum, written forty years after the strip’s finale, reveals why Stamaty said goodbye to MacDoodle St. and how, in the process, he rediscovered the joy of being an artist.

The Paris Review reviews and previews the new edition of the MacDoodle St. collection,
including about half of the new Mark Alan Stamaty illustrated introduction.

 

 

“The paper’s decision was stampeded by multiple fainthearted publishers”

Every day our house gets three national papers, two regional papers and four local dailies.

Make that THREE, now…

Following many previous Straws, one of the papers we get dropped “Non Sequitur” by Wiley Miller, and after weeks without the comical, satirical and sometimes political comic strip, I’m saying “That’s it!”

When a paper dropped Non Sequitur, journalism professor Bill Knight dropped the paper.

 

 

“Noise and discourse is used to control and stifle free speech for all”

Mallard is a strip I read daily. In 2015, I indicated I was canceling my 30-year subscription until Mallard was reinstated — and when it was, I resubscribed. Again, I will cancel my subscription until Mallard is reinstated on the comic strip page.

Terry Ebaugh has dropped the paper before over Mallard Fillmore, and he’s willing to do it again.

 

 

Patriotic Christians for a Better America

These habits continued into adulthood, and Dickie became a rich, arrogant loudmouth who made a deal with a devilish-looking guy (who bore a striking resemblance to Vladimir Putin) and somehow got elected President of the United States.

That’s the basic narrative arc of “I’m Rich!,” a roughly 3-by-5-inch comic-book tract printed on cheap, newspaper-grade paper and lightly sprinkled with gallows-humor wit and relevant Bible verses: “You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24), “Everyone who is arrogant is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished” (Proverbs 16:5), “Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness” (Luke 12:15).

A parody of the (in?)famous Chick Tracts is appearing across the nation.

In the final image of “I’m Rich!,” Dickie Glitz stands on the White House roof, waving a bullwhip, yelling: “Mine! ALL MINE! Ha ha! I AM THE BEST!” while the Putin-ish devil grins in a corner.

The last page is blank except for the words: “… Jesus wept.”

 

 

It’s Been a Year For the New Nancy

It was the waning days of 2017, and Andrews McMeel was looking to make a change. The venerable comic “Nancy” had been around for eight decades, and the syndicate was seeking to give the once-highly popular strip a creative transfusion with some new blood.

But where to turn?

“When we were thinking about people to approach — as well as reviewing pitches from other very talented cartoonists — we weren’t only looking at people who had a track record in syndication,” says Andrews McMeel editor Shena Wolf.

Casting a wide net was wise: From the world of webcomics, they found a young woman whose comic style and original voice exquisitely suited their needs.

The artist Olivia Jaimes made her debut as “Nancy’s” cartoonist one year ago Tuesday — the first woman to shepherd the strip, as well as the first of its eight notable creators who didn’t take a traditional path to newspaper print syndication.

Michael Cavna talks to Nancy’s president, editor, and new cartoonist
on the 1st anniversary of the revitalized 80-year-old character.