Photo: Tony Korody/Sygma (Getty Images)
The AV Club has a short review of the Aack Cast by Jamie Loftus radio show.
The series concluded a few weeks ago, but listening to all 12 installments of Aack Cast By Jamie Loftus in one marathon run is actually the superior experience—and if you think you don’t need several hours of content unpacking the enduring legacy of the Cathy comic strip and defending the character against her mocking detractors, prepare to feel as foolish as Cathy shopping for swimwear.
Loftus, who has already gained a dedicated listenership with My Year In Mensa and Lolita Podcast, nimbly zooms in and out on Cathy’s 34 years on the funnies page to examine the strip’s place in comics history, the realities it showcases (or overlooks), and what we get wrong about the protagonist’s perpetual state of befrazzlement.
But most memorable of all are Loftus’ lengthy interviews with creator Cathy Guisewite herself, who speaks candidly about the process of bringing her semi-autobiographical characters to the page; listeners can hear the mutual fascination that interviewer and interviewee hold for one another, each of a generation that in so many ways can’t possibly understand how things were (and are) for women of their time.
Read Marnie Shure’s mini-review at AV Club.
Then check all the Aack Cast episodes.
I have only listened to Aackt 1, so far, which was a wonderful introduction to Cathy by Cathy Guisewite from the comic strip’s inception to its current incarnation as a one panel commentary.
© Cathy Guisewite
