Monday, September 7, 1998: The irony of it all

[NonsenseWords]

[Happy Rutabegas year]

modern avery would have said the first thing about kablammo, and the second thing about clothing. except for the fact that this strip is way too weak.

[Bocaj Claw]

I remember I once listened to an interview with "Maus" creator Art Spiegelman, in which he said the ironic humor of, say, MAD magazine was the perfect antidote to the over-the-top sincerity of 1950s advertising, but in the modern era, advertisers had begun selling our own ironic cynicism back to us, and what was called for now was a different kind of humor-- straightforward, unironic, declaring simply that the emperor has no clothes. In the 90s, I definitely think that was true. This cartoon was based on those "image is nothing, thirst is everything" ads one soft drink company was running at the time. The irony of being lectured by a catchy slogan about how unimportant image was inspired this cartoon.

This passes for long-winded for the commentary in this book. On the whole, DCS generally doesn't have more than a line or two to say about the comics in Prehistrionics.

[Cactus Jack]

Thats an odd tv watching set up.

[Bocaj Claw]

I fully believe that Avery asked Ozy over to hang out, got bored waiting and started to watch TV. When Ozy came over Avery was so engrossed that he couldn't tear himself away from his theory of irony and cynicism to tell Ozy where another chair could be found. And Avery had pulled his chair so close to the TV that the only way Ozy could get a good view anyway was via ottoman setup as demonstrated in the strip.

[Tom_Radigan]

I think you two are overexplaining things. The cartoon was probably drawn that way because it was impossible to do a side view in one frame showing them seated next to each other.

In any case, it was a weak strip and should have been left on the cutting room floor.