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December 24, 2006
Where Can I Buy Some Lumps of Coal?
Looks like a Stantis Christmas Original today, and it's not bad. Winslow has a really big stocking. Cute. Reading the strip though I was left with one question and one observation:
The question: Why are there three stockings? Winslow's is labeled, and I think it's safe to say that one is Carmen's, but who is the third stocking for on the mantel? The usual suspects (Dio, Kevin the Bunny, Shelly, heck even Conde Rice) haven't been around in ages. Is Stantis foreshadowing, or did he just lose track of how many main characters he has in his own strip?
The observation: If Carmen was a real little girl, the part in her hair would be four inches wide. Poor girl.
As I mentioned in yesterday's post I was taking a walk down memory lane the other day and stumbled upon my post from exactly one year ago - Christmas Eve, 2005. So did anyone in the Stantis household take my advice to heart and pick any of them up for him for the big holyday? Let's take a look:
- There was the handy dandy course on becoming a pro cartoonist in 12 easy steps. Like I mentioned last year he's already a pro: I was just hoping that it would help him act like more of a professional. No dice. While I'm sure he would blame it on his shoulder troubles, Stantis's drawing got progressively worse as the year went along. We're talking acceptable to downright embarrassing - and this is months ago. He also went a long way towards getting his ass canned instead of securing his pro job. Terrible go-nowhere storylines, the same basic premise every week (Carmen and Winslow standing in the desert spending the first panel of every day reminding us what the storyline is, then standing there and making lame "jokes"), and then a series of guest artists that showed how weak his writing has become. Definitely not the best year for our boy Stantis.
- If there's one gift people must have gone out of their way NOT to get Stantis last year, it's the course on Character Development. Yeesh. This was the year of the Prickly City Flip Flop, with Stantis flipping and flopping between making Carmen and Winslow the dupe in his gags because he never wanted his proxy Carmen to be the butt of the joke - even though his precious Republicans were the ones doing most of the stupid things all year long. By the end of the year their personalities were more blurred than ever. 2006 started with Carmen as a member of the "liberal" media reporting on the "desert war with the hamsters" and ended with "liberal" Winslow helping Carmen beat up Nancy Pelosi during manga week. Stantis's characters were so weak that he feared bringing in any new, long-term characters - something the strip has desperately needed for ages - because he wouldn't be able to keep their political positions straight even in his own mind (I'm assuming - I don't have a portal into his mind - yet). Oh, and the prick never gave us Carmen vs. Winslow in the mayoral race. He teases ONE major storyline at the beginning of the year and didn't follow through on it. Prick tease.
- We all know Stantis didn't join the military, and I'm curious if he'll even mention the "surge" in troops that only John McCain and George W. Bush support (yes, certain generals are coming out now to say they support it too - that's after the original generals resigned because they adamantly oppose more troops, and let's face it, the job of a person in the military is to do whatever the Commander in Chief says, so of course they're going to support whatever Bush wants). The only time Stantis delved into the military conflict in the Middle East was the unfunny and offensive desert hamster storyline - and that got him hate mail from the Republicans who usually support Prickly City (and are probably part of the 21% that still think Bush is doing a heckuva job over there). As the year goes along it's going to be even tougher for Stantis to avoid the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, since they've been the biggest story for months (well Iraq anyway - seems most people don't want to talk about Afghanistan for some odd reason), it was the biggest story during the election (outside of Republican corruption), and it will probably be the biggest issue in 2007. I think we can all hope that for Christmas Stantis gives us the gift of never revisiting the desert hamsters, though.
- There's still time to find out if Stantis got his Republican Corruption Checklist since that issue will carry over into 2007. I don't think he's ever really talked about how corrupt his Republican party is - heck, he even made up that bumper sticker saying people should vote for accused child stalker Mark Foley because he's not a Democrat. The only excuse he might have is some of the more corrupt members (Frist, Ney, Foley, Allen, Delay) aren't in office anymore.
- Obviously, after a year of sucking Bush's you know what, Stantis wants HIS president to listen to his private phone calls and monitor his emails. While he pretended not to be a Republican, 2006 let us know that he's a Bush man through and through.
- And finally my favorite gift, because he needed it the most: the 2006 crying towel. Boy, it must really suck to be Stantis. He spent the entire year as the biggest Bush/Republican cheerleader, only to see things fall apart when the Democrats won in a landslide on November 7th. Bush has struggled all year long and now he's on some bizarre quest to justify his actions for fifty years from now instead of, you know, right now. And Stantis has watched as a parade of various comic strippers came in and did a better job with his strip in a single day than he has all year. Oooh, that's gotta hurt.
For this Christmas I want to give Scott Stantis just one gift: a pink slip. Sure, it's fun "kicking the guy while he's down," to quote one of his substitutes, but Prickly City has gone from tolerable to outright horrible over the course of 2006. It was one of the most politically active years in recent memory (especially for a mid-term election), yet Stantis stumbled and bumbled and mumbled his way through the year, confusing his own characters, intentionally changing their points of view to suit his own position on issues, dwelling way too much on Hollywood gossip and tech trends, and continuing his streak of laugh-less strips. The Republicans lost control of the House and the Senate this year, and the American people decided to give the Democrats a chance to take over. I think it's about time we let someone else take over the space on the comic pages devoted to Prickly City. Because as most voters said to themselves on November 7th: they couldn't do any worse.
Merry X-mas, everybody!
Comments
Let me dwell in (aka, my excuse to give my knowledge on the comic-strip business)
Well, the syndicate can't really fire their cartoonists. Syndicates, really, are like "agents" of newspaper features. They get newspapers to run their comics and also help in editing it. That's it. So, Scott, technically, is self-employeed (with "Prickly City" at least), and Universal Press is his "agent."
The only way for syndicates to cancel their contracts is if their feature isn't in minimum number of newspapers by certain newspapers, and even then, the writer can continue their relationship (although that depends on the syndicate, and most of the contract cancellations are from the WRITER's part).
And missing deadlines only result in heavy fines on the cartoonist's part. Bill Amend, for example, missed his deadlines for "FoxTrot" A LOT, but he's still syndicated.
So, in order for Scott's contract with Universal Press to end, it pretty much has to be done in HIS part.
Posted by: Charles Brubaker at December 24, 2006 10:26 AM
In that case, I'm hoping Stantis writes "I quit" on a pink piece of paper and turns it in.
Posted by: The Furnace at December 24, 2006 06:32 PM
