Shrubville

"Am I the only person who had trouble figuring out just what the heck was going on with today's Prickly City? This is what happens when a guy who can't draw relies on a sight gag as his punchline."
No, you're not the only one. The joke that Winslow painted Carmen's face and put coyote ears on her is pretty difficult to understand if you can't tell what Winslow is holding in that last panel. The paintbrushes were not too hard to tell, so I was able to realize what the joke was pretty quickly, but I didn't realize that it was a bucket until I came here and read this post.

"It's not a terrible gag, but geez louise - check out that bucket! A guy who used to write a strip called The Buckets can't even draw one? At first I thought Winslow was holding a meat cleaver. Add in that one paintbrush looks like a line with a feather on the end, and it's hard to comprehend that people pay Stantis good money for this crap."
I think it's a rather poor joke, actually. I can appreciate the premise of the joke, but if only Winslow said something funnier than, "You dozed off...". Actually, what I thought was especially bad about the strip, beyond the bucket drawing was the first three panels. What was the point exactly of having three panels of WInslow staring down at Carmen. I remember a "Calvin and Hobbes" strip where Watterson portrays Calvin waking up to see Hobbes staring down at him, terrifying Calvin at first. Like this "Prickly City" strip, it showed it from Calvin/Carmen's point of view. But Watterson drew the image of Hobbes surrounded by gradually enlarging ovals of blackness, designed to give the effect of slowly opening one's eyelids. Stantis probably tried to do the same thing here, but by showing Carmen simply staring up at Winslow for three panels, it just looks like a waste of space.

"That fratboy letter CJo quoted from the other day asked something about why we waste our time bitching about the strip. For me a big part of it is Stantis's politics, but he's so terrible at simply drawing two characters that half the time I'm astounded he even has a strip. It would be one thing if he could at least be decent with the animation part of things - then I could sit here and point out how stupid his politics are (and damn, are they stupid). But when a non-political strip like this one comes along, I'm left to wonder at how he makes a living doing this while liberal comic strip artists who can actually draw sit on the shelf because there needs to be a "fair and balanced" comic page."
It really is pathetic that this strip is syndicated, because if it was a nonpolitical strip about a multiracial girl and a coyote, or even (dare I say it?) a liberal strip about a multiracial girl and a coyote, it would not be syndicated because of how unfunny it is, its lack of a large cast, and its poor drawings. And today, one of the worst parts of "Prickly City" is Scott Stantis's steadfast refusal to change any of that.

"Seriously, if not for his politics would Stantis be allowed anywhere near the comic pages?"
I really wish I could say "no," because as I said above the only reason that "Prickly City" is syndicated is most likely its conservative viewpoints. But then again, Stantis has had nonpolitical strips syndicated twice before by not one but two OTHER syndicates than the one he is with now for "PC," and one of those nonpolitical strips is still running years later in numerous papers. Somehow, Scott Stantis overcame his poor drawing skills and lack of humor to get syndicated, and then he used his conservative status to get his pet strip, "PC," into syndication that cannot be ended except by him, for fear of upsetting whatever conservative/liberal balance there is in the medium of politically-oriented comic strips.

"Prickly City." "Mallard Fillmore." "State of the Union."
Three conservative comic strips. None especially good. All in syndication for as long as they want due to newspapers being afraid of accusations of anti-conservative bias.

Maybe newspapers could stop the decline in their readership if they quit playing it so safe.

what the hell are your problems i mean seriusly why dont you just nor read it if you dont like it so much thats what i want to know i mean do you have nothing better to do than bitch about how you cant tell a drawing of a bucket honestly, i mean it see a shrink or somthing furnace and other blog writers, too lazy to look up names

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our new favorite Republican Prickly City fan!

Thanks for visiting, Toby!