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January 01, 2008
Meet The New Year, Same As The Old Year
To begin with, I would like to wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year. We here at Shrubville appreciate that people take the time to read our rantings, and we hope everyone - even Scott Stantis - has a great 2008. Especially Stantis, because he had a REALLY bad 2007 and we all suffered because of it.
Next I'd like suggest stopping by Tumbleweedtown and checking out his year end awards. Chris is a regular commenter here at the Shrub, and was kind enough to include us in his year in review. Although it did force me to remember that stupid week where someone named "shrubville sucks" bombed the site with his Stantis love.
While I'm plugging sites, I'd like to also recommend Digby's post from a few days ago about how suddenly the Village Elders like David Broder are calling for bipartisanship when they couldn't be bothered with it for the first six years under Republican rule. It's a great counter to all of the nonsense Stantis was spewing last month about how we all need to just get along and both sides need to stop fighting - and do everything Carmen and the Republicans want.
Then there's today's strip. Dear Lord. Could there have been a more perfectly bad way for Stantis to start the year off? Let's check off the Prickly City cliche's:
- Carmen and Stantis standing in the desert? Check.
- Carmen appearing to have violentlay shoved Winslow off the edge, most likely because he said something she didn't like? Check. (yeah, I know Winslow probably jumped, but the way it's drawn it's just as likely that she pushed him)
- Winslow drawn in such a way that he's nearly unrecognizable? You betcha.
- Winslow trying to fly, a gag I thought Stantis had dropped because he had run it into the ground (or I guess flown it into the ground)? Yup.
- The part in Carmen's hair is bigger than most of her other body parts? Mmhmm.
- Stantis screwing up an easy and derivative strip with lazy drawing and just ripping off something he either did himself before or probably saw someone else do a year ago? You know it.
Stantis sure does nail a lot of the things that suck about Prickly City, all in one lazy strip. The bad "art," Carmen's violent nature, Winslow's stupidity, lame running "jokes" that never went anywhere in the first place - all in a single, lame panel.
It's gonna be a really long year if this is the best Stantis can do when it comes to starting off on the right foot.
Originally I was going to devote today's post to a yearly retrospective, going back over 2007 and taking a look at how awful Prickly City was this past year. But then I got through March and couldn't take it anymore. All today's strip needed was for Stantis to whine about how much attention the media gives to celebrities while giving them attention himself, for Stantis to bitch about technology while trying to sound like a hip geek by referencing the internet, and for Stantis to take a poll or a study out of context to make a point even though he knows it's a lie, and he would have nailed three of his other big talking points that got repeated over and over this past year (oh, and he needed to rip off the Seinfeld "anti-dentite" punchline for a FOURTH time in a year).
I did realize one thing while trying to look back at 2007: Prickly City really isn't a political strip anymore. Yeah, it's conservative - Stantis is a Bush Republican through and through, even though (much like all of the Republican candidates for President) he refuses to mention He Who Must Not Be Named Even Though He's The President And They All Agree With His Policies. But outside of Winslow's boring and unfunny candidacy, Stantis hasn't really been talking politics that much. Maybe it's because things are so bad for his party. But gone are the references to Conde Rice, and he never mentioned Alberto Gonzales or Karl Rove or Larry Craig or David Vitter or any of the other cast of thousands when there was plenty of political stories he could have tackled. Instead there were pretty blond girls to talk about or technology that must be stopped. Maybe with the primaries starting up Stantis will get back to focusing on the main reason his comic strip is supposed to exist, but I doubt there will be much more substance than him calling Hillary a witch and refusing to talk about Ron Paul*. Just more of the same lazy, unfunny garbage he's been dishing out for several years now - and instead of improving, he's getting worse.
(Quick note for the Paulbots out there: I don't endorse Ron Paul's candidacy - in fact I think he's an extremist and a racist and too many people are jumping on his bandwagon simply because he wants out of Iraq. However he's a conservative and he's raised the most money on the Republican side, so it's strange that Stantis has yet to mention his candidacy even though he's already talked about the other candidates and even endorsed Huckabee. Why not talk about the guy? Plenty to make fun of there, especially when Paul says there isn't a single war we should have fought in the past century or that Lincoln ruined the country by his starting the Civil War because slavery would have just gone away eventually.)
So I have a new wish for 2008. I wish that another conservative comic strip writer, who isn't afraid to tackle the big issues and can actually draw, shows up in the comic world - and uses his talents to replace Scott Stantis and Prickly City. Much like with the President, we might not be able to fire him (thanks, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, for nothing) but we sure as heck can replace him. Too bad we'll have to wait a year to do it with Bush - but newspaper editors, please feel free to replace Stantis as soon as possible.
Again, Happy New Year - and don't let Prickly City ruin it.
