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May 27, 2006
I Think I See Cleveland
We've all poked fun at Scott Stantis and his less-than stellar drawing abilities. Be it his Teddy Kennedy or Winslow fishing in the desert, at times Scooter comes across like a high school kid scribbling in the corners of his notebook, not a well-paid national comic strip artist.
Today is more of the same, but it's getting to the point that if by some miracle Stantis comes up with a decent joke it's hurt by his horrible drawing ability. Today's line is actually pretty funny, and is a nice conclusion to a week-long storyline that while unnecessary at least spared us more character flip-flops.
But look at this mess. Point by point:
- Carmen and Winslow are in a reject from The Jetsons - yet the only way we can even tell they're in there is because of Winslow's ears. Carmen is literally a smudge.
- Once again Stantis draws the moon to look like a banana with spots on it, or maybe an apple with a huge bite taken out of it. What the heck? The guy screws up the MOON?
- In the near future the earth will apparently be ravaged by not one, not two, but FOUR hurricanes.
- There's a very half-assed attempt at drawing North and South America. We can tell it's the U.S. because of the Great Lakes, even if Florida is somehow bigger than Mexico. Africa and Europe are a series of scribbles - he doesn't even ATTEMPT to draw them.
Okay I know, the point of the strip is the cutesy punchline and even if it's not drawn well we get the gist of it. But seriously - for newspapers across the country should this be acceptable? What if one day Doonesbury or the Boondocks or even Marmaduke was drawn like this? Really - can anyone name one nationally syndicated comic strip that is drawn as poorly as this one?
Unfortunately it comes back to my complaint that the only reason Prickly City is still around is because there's a need for a "conservative" comic strip to balance out all of the "liberals" (i.e. anyone who questions Bush). But yeesh - can't they find another conservative out there who can write coherent characters, come up with good storylines, and draw like a professional? Is that asking too much?
Comments
PS - now that I think about it for a while the punchline isn't even that funny. I mean you can't see houses from space, right? Ugh.
Posted by: The Furnace at May 27, 2006 11:07 AM
I think Winslow was just being a smart ass in that panel.
As for strips drawn more poorly than this...one word - "UNFIT" by Mike Belkin. http://www.comics.com/comics/unfit/
Another reason why Stantis is syndicated is because he's an established cartoonist. His editorial cartoons is syndicated to roughly 500 newspapers, had another comic-strip from United Features called "The Buckets", etc...
Syndicates tend to select cartoonists if they have years of experience. Stantis does, so he qualifies.
In fairness, "Prickly City" is better structured than "Mallard Fillmore". Have you seen the last few strips? VERY racist!
Posted by: Charles Brubaker at May 27, 2006 12:20 PM
Charles is dozy, as it is 2 AM in his home in not-so-sunny Japan.
Okay, "structured" is a wrong word..."less hatefilled"...perfect.
Posted by: Charles Brubaker at May 27, 2006 12:39 PM
I see London, I see France... hey, Opie has no underpants! Yeah, this week wasn't so bad. A nice break.
And YIKES at the art in Unfit and the story in the last couple Mallards.
BTW, I found that the Houston Chronicle's comics site has a couple that I don't usually see online (like Mallard), and has a pretty good selection overall when other places aren't working. Also, the black and white comics (including Prickly City) are supersized! Carmen still looks like a smudge though:
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComics.mpl
Posted by: JB at May 27, 2006 04:12 PM
