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August 26, 2007
Suggestion Box
Single panel throwaway today. Yet another instance of Stantis writing a strip he could have done two years ago and pulled out of the mothballs because he couldn't be bothered with coming up with something original.
Instead of just bitching about Prickly City, which is fun all by itself, let's make this an interactive Shrubville today. How would you, dear readers, improve on the strip?
A summary as to how bad things have gotten this year: PC went from short, mini-storylines usually involving a political hot topic from two weeks prior, to one loooong storyline about Winslow running for President that went nowhere and had no real direction. Other minis focused on things like hating technology, bitching about pretty blond teenage celebrites, or digging up obscure research studies in order to make a conservative talking point. Instead we're getting things like the Winslow bond story, where something happened outside the realm of anything we've read in the comic but, in keeping with the strip, wasn't funny and had no real point.
I'm the first to admit that I was wrong in suggesting that Stantis pick a storyline and stick with it for longer than a few days. I feel partially responsibe for the "Winston for President" epic, that Stantis was apparently making up as he went along. One of the keys to having your characters go through something that last weeks and weeks is to know where you're going with it. That clearly wasn't the case. We had the Prickly City primary with Winslow winning with two votes, but then Stantis remembered Iowa was coming up, so he couldn't decide if Winslow should be in Iowa or not (giving us that oh-so-memorable week of "Winslow is such an idiot he doesn't know what Iowa is"), and to this day we still don't know if Winslow ever made it (on one hand his volunteer campaign workers think he's in Iowa by mistaking Kucinich for him, then they told Carmen not to send him, then Winslow was making a campaign speech which we're probably supposed to think is him in Iowa).
But then Stantis dropped it without any rhyme or reason. Instead we got Winslow bonds.
If we were given the reins to Prickly City for a few months, what would you suggest as a quick fix-it to put things on the right path? I have a few thoughts...
- If you're going to do something for a month, know what the heck it is. Going back over the last few months I still don't know what Stantis was trying to accomplish, and I doubt he does either.
- Prepare one-offs to insert into the storyline that make sense but don't take away from the overall story arch. Things like the "you're wrong" strip don't make any sense if Winslow and Carmen haven't been fighting for months. If Winslow hasn't whined about technology in ages, we're not going to understand that the whole point of that one strip where Winslow's head blew up was Carmen was trying to get Winslow to survive without his cell phone for a few panels.
- Get Carmen and Winslow back on to their conservative and liberal paths. Winslow has become so stupid we don't know where he stands on anything (other than "corn is dumb") and Carmen has been strangely quiet on the issues for quite some time now. It's as if Stantis is afraid to admit he's a conservative, yet he still loves to make fun of liberals - but has decided it's enough to just say they're stupid and leave it at that. That's not what you're paid to do, Stantis - be loud, be proud, be a Bush neo-con like we know you are.
- Give us a new character. For the love of god, please, give us someone else to focus on. This has been the number one issue around Shrubville for years now. With Winslow being an idiot, and Carmen losing any sign of personality, we're left with pretty much nothing at all.
- Tackle the big issues. Talk about playing it safe - Stantis hasn't gone out on a limb all year. What happened to the guy who lied about Howard Dean and stirred up the hornets nest with his heartless Terri Schiavo and Sandra Day O'Connor strips? What, are we supposed to believe that nothing major is going on right now? Come on Stantis, tackle the FISA issue and explain why it's a good thing to give up our rights. Defend Alberto Gonzales. In two weeks, praise President Bush for flip flopping and now saying that Iraq IS like Viet Nam. Give us SOMETHING to talk about.
That's it for me - what recommendations would you make to help Prickly City at least be readable in the near future?
Comments
Here's a suggestion: how about doing a strip two weeks from now on how horrible it is that Winslow's supporters forced that nice Alberto Gonzales to resign?
Posted by: Annie at August 27, 2007 01:29 PM
