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July 15, 2007
How To Ruin A Decent Joke, By Scott Stantis
As if to flip a huge middle finger to Pellucid and his misunderstanding of how the comic publishing industry supposedly works, Stantis carries over his current "Winslow for the Democratic nomination" storyline onto Sunday. Then he flips a huge middle finger to the rest of us by being unfunny. Again.
Stantis has all kinds of fun with a bunch of buzz words, even though none of them really make any sense in this context. You see Carmen is all worried for her best friend - he has to address this major issue that the base of the party is demanding he respond to. And what's this major issue that the news has been covering for 24-7?
Winslow wears fur. Um, ha?
Yeah, it's a decent gag. All smelly stinky dirty liberals hate people who wear fur, so of course they're going to go after a coyote. But then Stantis has to try and modernize the "joke," having Winslow say that since he was a pup he's worn "sustainable, bio-degradable, carbon-offset fur." Oh, and don't forget the zinger about waxing his unibrow.
But why ruin a gag with all that global warming talk? It just distracts from the main point Stantis is making, which is "wearing fur is bad according to lefties." That's kind of amusing. But then you toss in all that other stuff and it feels like a Republican piling on "just cuz."
And it seems as though Stantis is just a wee bit confused (shocking, I know). The base of the Democratic party isn't the hardcore PETA folks like Republicans seem to think - they're more along the lines of the base of the Green party. They're the people who voted for Nader in 2000. Unlike Stantis's Republican party, where the base really truly is the hardcore Religious Righties who place party above country (just ask Karl Rove), the base of the Dems aren't the radicals Stantis and the rest of his conservative buddies love to rag on. But in Stantis's world the "true" liberals are eco-terrorists who only eat mulch and throw paint on supermodels. Sorry, not the case.
I think my favorite part of this strip is that Stantis wastes a third of it with nothing but white. No real reason, other than I guess to emphasize the impact of that hysterical punchline (well, punchlines - can't forget the unibrow). Maybe it was a subtle slam on conservationists - Stantis is such a Republican that he has no problem wasting valuable trees that he'll devote a third of his strip to nothing but white. Nah. He's just a lazy azz comic strip writer who can't be bothered with actually drawing enough to fill up an entire comic.
