Herman's Last Week

Herman remains my favorite single-panel comic, far outstripping other worthy contributors to the form.  From the relaxed macabreism of Charles Adams' New Yorker comics to the scientific absurdness of The Far Side to the overwrought narrative of John McPherson's Close to Home.

Jim Unger said that the appeal of Herman was his ubiquitous loser status, but I'd say it goes further than that.  Otherwise, Ziggy would've been a prime candidate. The world of Herman is filled with people who approach the most ludicrous situations with perfectly banal commentary.  Everybody is a straight man (or woman) and they say the most outrageous statements with a straight face.  (Or a lumpy face, since everybody in Herman has the consistency of mashed potatoes)

And then, in 1992, Jim Unger decided to quit after enjoying a long run of over 20 years.  Apart from a brief hiatus in 1989 from September to December for some well-deserved vacation time, he'd been working on Herman non-stop.  Unlike other Canadian cartoonists who produce long-lasting popular comics (such as Lynn Johnson's For Better or For Worse or Dave Sim's Cerebus), Herman had no overall story structure to worry about, which may have also helped Jim Unger preserve his sanity, not having to overthink multiple story concepts that threatened to run away from him.  Unfortunately, his last book, Herman VIII, only collected up to December 8th, 1991, leaving around seven months of uncollected material.

The last week of his run was typical Herman fare:

Absurd complaints in the courtroom.

Fraudulent usage of funds for trivial purposes.

The kind of illogical logic that only makes sense to them.

This is a complete non-sequitur.  One of Herman's many specialties.

This could almost be considered a farewell retirement comic, if it wasn't the next-to-last strip.

If this looks familiar, it's because it was the cover for The Best of Herman, a book that collected many old Herman comics, but very few of the more current ones.  But that wasn't the end of Herman by a long shot.  There were still three weeks of Sunday material left.  In the meantime, papers started rerunning old material that still remained relevant & funny.

Another notable aspect of Herman comics is how much story is packed within its small frame.  Oftentimes, we're just jumping into a scenario we know nothing about, and only have the clues to the surroundings to deal with.  The very last daily reprint (before its revival in 1997) was this one:

A week earlier, on July 19th, 1992, readers were treated to this little gem:

That normally would've been considered the penultimate Sunday comic, were it not for next week's submission, which turned out to be a reprint of the first comic seen earlier, originally seen in 1986.

Handing over the Reigns

When it comes to legacy strips, there's the ever-present demand to keep a popular strip running, no matter how much the fumes are threatening to overwhelm the cartoonist's family.  When a family member dies, it's usually up to the children to decide if they want to continue their passport to safe & steady income.  Only in rare cases where a cartoonist explicitly outright says they don't want their feature continued after their death (such as Charles Schultz), fearing that their vision alone would be unique and any further attempts at emulating it would be inadequate and fail to match up.

When that happens, there's generally a transitionary period between the old cartoonist and the new one.  The trick is to make the process look as seamless as possible, which can sometimes be considered tricky if there's not enough warning beforehand.  Such as if said cartoonist dies suddenly, like Jeff MacNelly.

This was the last Sunday strip that appeared on August 13th, 2000, and it was... a Mother-in-Law joke.  Hardly a thigh-slapper.  The next Sunday strip was done by the team of his assistants and wife, whose credits can hardly be seen in this (only) sample I could find.

I like to think that the comics that appeared before and after a creative team switches out has some kind of hidden commentary behind it.  Or maybe I'm projecting issues where there's none to be found.

This was the last Shoe daily strip that ran on October 21st 2000, which hardly seems like a fitting end to a man's legacy.

A far better example would've been this strip seen earlier last week:

Because of the scheduling conflict between showing comics, there was a great gap between the last Sunday strip and the last daily strips.  Which meant that for papers that still allowed Shoe to run, instead of replacing it with another comic, many never got to see MacNelly's remaining comics.  Which is probably just as well, considering the episodic nature of the strips and lack of continuing storylines (Boot Camps and political commentary notwithstanding) the vast majority of Shoe is middling fare.

Another common unspoken complaint is when the character design look decidedly off compared to how they looked before.  The artwork for Hi & Lois and The Wizard of Id have gotten worse in later years.

Strangely enough, this slightly off-model look for Hagar appeared later in Chris Browne's run, after he'd spent considerable time following up in his father's footsteps.  In March 24, 1990, Dik Browne penned his last Daily and Sunday co-concurrently within a day of each other.

I like to think these strips were subtle commentary on how Dik Browne could no longer keep up his regular pace of work.

And then Chris Browne showed his strip, which while indistinguishable from the original, seems to have some pointed commentary, while also sounding fairly typical of a regular Hagar comic:

Strangely enough, while you can clearly see Chis' signature in the last panel, credit is still given to his father in the title panel.  I suppose there must be some power in name recognition, even after retirement.

Of course, the samples I've chosen seem more logical, compared to the alternative.

The Browne signature is barely legible on March 31st, and only next week Monday, is Chris' name added.  For a new comic, it's not that remarkable.

If an artist is skilled enough, the change can sometimes be so microscopic that it can't be told apart despite rigorous observation.  And that's even after being told there are minute differences.  But sometimes, there are small but subtle ways to tell them apart.  The art style may remain the same, but the mentality behind the art is very different.

For a rather tame comic about barbed (but never overbearing) remarks aimed at the other spouse, The Better Half had some surprising saucier elements  during it's Vinson run.  Stanley could be quite smitten with the ladies who weren't his wife.

Then Harris took over, and there was a slight but subtle change in Stanley's demanour.  He was still a fat foolish husband, but no longer conspired to cajole among the ladies.  Furthermore, any jokes regarding his boss and Mother-in-Law dried up and disappeared.
 
Of course, that's only my interpretation from the Sunday comics, but I don't have the time or temperance to go through the daily strips myself.  These character designs wouldn't remain attached to this for long, and become more cartoonier in later iterations.  The Better Half has gone through many permutations throughout the years as its shifted artists, finally ending up retired by Randy Glasbergen in the end.

Of course, that's just a minor change gone unnoticed throughout the years.  When another artist takes over where one left off, and their styles aren't consistent, the results can be jarring.  The last week of Brian Basset's Adam (later renamed Adam@Home) from February 16-22, 2009 was a series of lazy widescreen comics that could've been done in his sleep.  (And probably was)

 The very next strip that showed up next week was radically different:

Rob Harrell had none of Brian Basset's scratchy artwork, and opted instead for checkmark
that was just a poorly rendered rendition of Adam's mouth being portrayed at the time.

Adam's last Sunday strip on March 15th was his last chance to go all out in self-aware commentary over what he'd been doing.  Rob Harrell's artwork and dialogue seem less inspired in comparison.

Sometimes in an attempt to keep ahead of the deadlines, cartoonists employ little tricks by employing time-saving techniques, such as reusing art rather than redrawing the same art over and over (like Blondie's bizarre Synchronized Breakdancing)  In Blondie's case, they did so by reducing the number of Sunday Strip panels from 12 to 9, counting the new title banner.  The last regular feature of this format was on October 26, 1986.

The very next week had Dagwood being dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th Century.

This time-saving device wasn't applied to the dailies until 1996, years later.

The comic above could've been modified to remove the 3rd panel completely, but would be missing the build-up leading to the punchline.  As with the laws of Alchemy, you gain something the same time you lose something.  Whether that loss is worth sacrificing for is constantly up for debate.

Secret Vocation, Secret Vacation

It's the start of a new month, so here's some more not-Far Side Cow Milk ads!

"You haven't seen your lil' brother?"
"Nope!!"

"Don't you find that annoying in the long run?"
"Yeah, especially since it's still one of their inventions."
"So?  Wanna remove it?"
"Why not!"
"It's so freeing being connected back to the outside world!"

"I dunno why, but I feel like a calf!"
"Here, put this on!!"

"...8 9 10, ready or not, here I come!"
"Okay, you can get down now!"
"You know... I'd never had found you if I hadn't helped boost you up there!"

Pet Peeves: Incomplete Throwaway Panels

The typical layout of a Newspaper comic strip is tightly controlled to remain consistent.  So if another strip such decides to be more innovative in their layout, it means having to reshuffle the other strips to make room for the temporary widescreen comic that otherwise wouldn't normally fit.

For the above, readers were fortunate that Calvin was going into reruns, so anybody who were long-time fans would already know the setup to the joke on the first panel.  But new readers wouldn't be as lucky.  I've posted before how in the process of rearranging panels, some may be put out of sequence from people who aren't aware that some are being put in the wrong place.

Sometimes in the process of moving things around, there's the danger of putting panels out of order.  But another unintended consequence is the throwaway panels being affected as well.  When this happens, this can sometimes result in removing the title logo, but not the throwaway panel that accompanies it, resulting in setups with no punchlines, or punchlines with no setup.

So much of the newspaper comic page depends on the strips remaining static.  So when one strip decides to get creative or attack certain controversial issues that don't meet with the paper's fragile sensibilities, some rapid shuffling may be in order.  Such was what happened around October 1991, when Doonesbury was under danger of a hostile takeover by the more flamboyant side characters.  In the process, some panels wound up being lost.  Normally here, you'd see Michael being all jovial with April before scowling after being ordered around by his mother.

In other instances, the paper may have the option of having two throwaway panels, but only opt for one of them.  For the longest time, I only had one Doonesbury throwaway panel to deal with, and in most cases, you could pretty much figure out what was going on.  One panel or the other would just reinforce a notion that would be emphasized again.



The problem would be when both panels were needed to make the joke work, and oftentimes, I would be completely baffled as to what was happening here.  Also, sometimes the second panel would be chosen instead of the first.  it wasn't always consistent.  The red bar surrounding the panel is what I saw in the paper.  The remainder on the other side is the rest of the comic, and wouldn't find out what they were years later.


The biggest sufferer of this system is Beetle Bailey, who happens to have not one, not two, but three throwaway panels.  A small one under the title logo, and two extra ones.

While scouring newspaper archives, I came across a particularly noteworthy example.  The above strip has the typical throwaway panels for the setup that suddenly and inexplicably jumps straight to an aftermath scene with no clue to what prompted the change.  With the missing panel in place, the sequence of events begins to make much more sense.  I can only guess at the level of frustration that readers had in trying to understand what was going on here.

Strangely enough, in Sunday collections of Beetle Bailey, the title panel was removed, presumably because it was smaller than the others.  Which ties into another pet peeve of mine - collections that don't have the necessary throwaway panels.  You'd think that with the extra space, they could afford to show them, but no, they just revert back to the same old format.

Going back to Doonesbury, the latest Sunday strips have had the title panel have an additional header added to them to further emphasize the content of the comic.  For the most case, these are simply closeups of a character's face, being somewhat nothing special.  But in some instances, the extra panel adds a distinctive flavor to an otherwise regular comic.

My favorite so far is the logo for the latest Doonesbury comic which had the rare instance of making me laugh out loud from the reaction shots of even the most vocally opinionated people.

Sadly, it seems that save for a few instances, the majority of the latest Doonesbury online archives don't bother showing any Sunday logos.  Apparently, you need a newspaper subscription for that.  Which surely must be a resounding selling point among the very very specific target market.

Another minus is that despite Doonesbury being available online for new readers to play catch-up, the early Sunday comics are at a reduced size, marginalized, tiny and practically unreadable, due to the small print.

Of particular notice are the Garfield reprints.  Back when Garfield made its debut, it gained recognition by reprinting virtually every single comic and doing so in a wide strip format, rather than breaking the panels up into a typical book format.  (Which could lend itself to previously mentioned accidental panel placement or unnecessary cropping or rotation of some strips)  Since it was just starting out, the early Sunday strips had no throwaway panels, save for the ones on the sides.  If there were any, they were likely the static ones, that were a compilation of the main cast, until Lyman disappeared.

That changed around March 14th, 1982 with the introduction of a new short-term singular panel before reverting back to the widescreen panel two weeks later.  The difference was, the single panel that was just the main cast, changed to an additional throwaway panel.


So what's the problem?  Well, the online archive has every Sunday comic printed.  But the books have the exact same layout used since it was first released years ago!  They've been coloured and resized to accommodate more space, but they don't make effective use of that extra space!

One last historical oddity - daily newspaper strips don't have the benefit of having a title logo, so their names are place either from the top or to the side.  But Doonesbury apparently had a throwaway title panel logo of its own.

Was there a time when daily comic strips had their own title logos?  I haven't found anything to support this, but it'd be nice to know if that was true.