Feast and Famine

The recent For Better or for Worse rerun had this little ditty that originally ran on November 28, 1985.

The first commentor on the rather redundant Foobiverse Livejournal pointed out that this date was part of a large joint effort with 175 cartoonists worldwide to create comics around the theme of campaigning for the famine in Africa.  This was spearheaded by Charles Schultz, Gary Trudeau, and Milton "Steve Canon" Caniff.  (The last one I was unable to find)


If you pay attention to the particular comics that happened around this time, the stand-alone strips from their collections becomes more significant.





Recently, I was given notice of the discovery of the fact that there were online archives of microfiche newspapers.  In addition to seeing old articles, this was also a boon to finding many old newspaper comics that hadn't been collected.  Of course, it's not completely perfect - there's a lot of gaps here and there, and there are entire years missing.  Not to mention that some pages are aligned horizontally, and most of the space seems to devoted to ads.



To make things more problematic, everything's in black and white, and the quality isn't always very good, and is sometimes out of focus, making reading a chore.

Still, it's better than nothing.

Normally, I don't include Far Side comics out of respect for Gary Larson's request not to do so, but in this case, I think I can make an exception.






In case it's not entirely clear, the Turkey is left adrift in the middle of the ocean on a barebones raft at night, which is why he's complaining despite being spared.


Some cartoonists were unable to make light of a heavy subject, leading to these examples, which were not unlike those "Very Special" episodes of Christmas, only replacing Thanksgiving as a theme.











Because of the special status Thanksgiving has in the States, some papers either printed the relevant strips a day early, or held them back for the day after.

One rather unusual installment was during an arc in Marvin which was a retelling of The Wizard of Oz.

Some serial strips were slightly more ambitious, and tried to implement the subject into their storylines with varying degrees of success.




The clumsiest attempt to reconcile this noble effort comes from Stan Lee's Spider-Man, narrative consistency be damned.  There's even a noticeable bulge along the box wall to show where the extra text was roughly inserted almost as an afterthought.

There's a reason Superhero stuff shouldn't address real-world concerns; they're basically escapist fantasy, totally unsuitable for exploring concepts where strongmen are able to brutalize purse snatchers and bank robbers in dazzling feats and displays of power, but are unable to address corrupt world powers half a continent away.  Not that that hasn't stopped adults who've grown up on the stuff from trying.

Curiously enough, going through these archives turned up the sole unreprinted Calvin & Hobbes comic.

While half of papers got the washing machine version, others got the dinner scene.  It's as if Bill Watterson realized that he had the opportunity to be part of a larger organization, and regretted it when he had the chance.  As a first effort, it's okay, but not great.  Other strips handled the theme of hunger or starvation more memorably.

One thing that surprised me amidst the sheer amount of available material was how much of it was cobbled from truly obscure sources.  The most surprising result was discovering Hartland, by Rich Torrey, which is basically a Bloom County ripoff, using Binkley and his dad as models.  (Another comic, Committed, lasted longer)

There were two comics that had Sam as the first of a duo in their title.


While going through the online archives, I only managed to make it up to the 'M's, before deciding I'd had enough.  WARNING - they get worse as you go along.

Optical Allusions

Back when comic characters having large eyes meant having ping-pong sized bug-eyed expressions instead of Manga doe-eyed childish appeal, precautions had to be made to ensure that no other tiny "dots" be seen within the interior of the eye, lest it cause confusion. A slight printing error could cause the unintended result of having two eyes, each looking in a different direction. In the sixth panel of the Broom Hilda comic, Broomie is simultaneously looking at Gaylord and Irwin at the same time. This feat can only be accomplished by similarly affected historical figures, such as Liu Ch'ung from Ripley's Believe it or Not!


































Another example would be Marvin here, where he's reacting both in shock to being found escaping, and looking at the headlight from a backwards glance. While I know that's the most logical choice, I prefer to think that he's doing a miniature version of cartoon characters looking everywhere at once during a hazardous situation. At times when I'm stressed, I find it difficult to keep my eyes still, because they're constantly darting all over the place, looking for something to focus on.

















I'd hoped to find another example, but I was unable to do so. Seems that finding these kinds of mistakes are just as rare as the symptoms they come from. So I'll expand on to another field of visual optics. Sometimes when I look at a cartoon panel, I'll have some difficulty finding the face. This isn't a form of Prosopagnosia where every face looks the same, but somewhere along similar lines when I'm not exactly sure where the face begins and ends.

As a kid, I used to have extremely vivid daydreams that felt as real as a movie screen. These would last several seconds and only faded away when the image I was thinking of superimposed itself against the background or foreground I was currently looking at. I receive this familiar sensation when I stare at these unfamiliar faces. Here, the front cover looks like a large potato-head guy anticipating using a gun on a nerdy bird picking flowers. It wasn't until I took a zoomed back that I saw where I was mistaken.

















Having been accustomed to Herman's breaking the rules by constantly showing his characters from behind (a cardinal sin in cover philosophy, where the main characters are always facing the audience), I thought that Captain Miaou's hat was his face and nose. His clenched fist, the belt on his chest, raising the gun and facing his intended target all led me to believe he was looking back instead of forwards. His lack of facial features and my lack of awareness of the character designs also threw me off. I'm sure that until you took another look, you fell to the same trap.


































When faced with something unfamiliar, I use the closest possible reference and follow up from there in the hopes that it'll match. In the back cover of The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, there was a creature that looked like one of the birds from the second Gantz mission. It sure looks a lot like a toucan doesn't it?























However, when I cracked open the fat tome, I eventually came across the page where the one-eyed Gnomelet originated, and found out that I'd mistaken where his mouth started. The colouring of the hat looked like a beak, and the stubby arms and legs were almost unnoticeable.






















There are all kinds of instances where I'll see a second face that was unintended by the artist, and wind up being like one of those upside-down double faces, only more closer to the illusion of seeing a rabbit and a duck at the same time. The absolute worst are the ones where there are extreme close-ups, making it almost impossible to tell what I'm looking at. Has this ever happened to anybody else?