Monday, May 4, 1998: Night terrors

[NonsenseWords]

Oh those wacky politicians am I right?

(Senator Jesse Helms, Wikipedia page, for those not in the know. Including myself.)


My those are flowery pajamas.

[Maggot Brain]

(Senator Jesse Helms, Wikipedia page, for those not in the know. Including myself.)

Sounds like a douche. Now I'm scared he's under my bed. The fact that he's dead just increases the terror!

[sad jazz cantaloupe]

meh, he wasn't so scary at this point anymore. I live in NC.

This is just too political liberally to me now. I can't wait until we get to the more established strips...

[klimt]

did he just use a poor innocent little girl to make obscure political commentary? what a dick. quitting DC 4 LYFE

[Tom_Radigan]

did he just use a poor innocent little girl to make obscure political commentary? what a dick. quitting DC 4 LYFE

He was a longtime U. S. Senator from North Carolina who died several years ago. Nationally famous in his day, but evidently forgotten now. Anyone remember Abbie Hoffman?

[sad jazz cantaloupe]

He was a pretty well known senator, he was a big racist from the south.

[NonsenseWords]

Alas, back in 1998, I was... um, eight. I don't remember much of politics from back then except the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and the 2000 election. 'Fraid I don't remember this guy, either.

Now, given who we're dealing with, I could say it almost deserves to be said, but I as a rule dislike having political commentary in my comics unless -- huge unless -- its diverse characters who happen to hold these beliefs and they just kind of come up conversationally. The 'unless' really stems from it being character-centric, and in that characters have diverse beliefs; when your whole universe is set up against a particular spectrum (as becomes evident later), you are pretty much alienating half of your potential reader base immediately.

In this case, it's pretty jarring to have the cute little fox girl be afraid of a real-life US Senator. Where does she life? In North Carolina? Does she live among humans, then? Is there an alternate-universe Senator Helms? And why does a little elementary-school kid care about it? Elementary school kids have a very limited spectrum of thought, and politics does not oftentimes break into that bubble. (This sort of commentary works in Calvin and Hobbes because Calvin and Hobbes, to my memory, was always abstracted and philosophical, the discussion of human nature as opposed to the discussion of politics, which is an enormous difference.)

It also terribly dates the comic by listing specific political events or figures except those viewed historically. Mention Abraham Lincoln and it's just delving into history; mention Senator Jesse Helms and those who come later -- us, for example -- have no idea what the joke is without looking it up. And if you have to look up a joke, it has failed.

[sad jazz cantaloupe]

pretty much everyone that was at least DCS's age or older at the time knew who Jesse Helms was... he's only alienating people that are younger than him, and at the time that wasn't a very important audience.

not to mention, the political strips like this weren't all the time. they were sprinkled in here and there. So it's okay.

[Cactus Jack]

I remember when this joke was used on Fraiser.

[NonsenseWords]

pretty much everyone that was at least DCS's age or older at the time knew who Jesse Helms was... he's only alienating people that are younger than him, and at the time that wasn't a very important audience.

At that time.

Like I said, it dates the strip. It's not a universal or 'timeless' joke/observation; Calvin and Hobbes had come and gone long before I was ever aware of it, but I get everything it says because it's all universal, there aren't references to 'current events', it's merely itself. I'll be able to read my collection ten years from now and it will be just as meaningful as it is now. This particular strip, though... well, look at that. Twelve years later and I had to look the person up.

I'm not on about the comic as a whole, or even about this one specifically; just politics in comic strips. Unless you're a political cartoonist and you're paid to do things like this, it just feels wrong, it pulls you out of the world of the strip and dumps you back in the real and it's quite jarring.

[Segovia]

I'm glad that OM gets un political soon. I'm not into political jokes since I know the punchline is that we're all screwed.

[Muninn]

In this case, it's pretty jarring to have the cute little fox girl be afraid of a real-life US Senator. Where does she life? In North Carolina? Does she live among humans, then? Is there an alternate-universe Senator Helms? And why does a little elementary-school kid care about it? Elementary school kids have a very limited spectrum of thought, and politics does not oftentimes break into that bubble. (This sort of commentary works in Calvin and Hobbes because Calvin and Hobbes, to my memory, was always abstracted and philosophical, the discussion of human nature as opposed to the discussion of politics, which is an enormous difference.)

It works for Millie in the context of the strip. In the real world I don't think any 6 year old thinks about half the things Calvin did, but even if we question that a little child could be like that we accept the status quo of the comic. Children make many things, certain adults among them, into monsters. How much more real are the imaginary ones as opposed to ones that are warped to be monsters?

Though I agree completely that it dates the strip terribly. If you're going to do political jokes in a comic that's not geared specifically at politics stay away from single events and go for more of a sweeping general statement.

And if you don't want to break the world of the comic and have no suspension of disbelief, Millie was watching television and she happened on this Senator talking. Being a bright young girl she didn't like someone in power saying what he said and made him to be the ogre that hunts her.