The Cartoon & Poem Supplement
The Cartoon & Poem Supplement
"I hate brushing my teeth…"
Free for all! Enjoy!
Poems:
“On Keats’s Seeking a Rhyme for ‘Breast’ in Each of His Three Last Sonnets” by Michael Chabon: Light verse is pretty much the assignment for the holiday issue poem that isn’t “Greetings, Friends”, the trouble is finding something that isn’t lighter than air but also can’t quite be taken seriously. This fits the bill perfectly; I didn’t know Chabon wrote poetry but this is a wonderfully Chabonic poem: the line between ribald and scholarly is somehow erased. This isn’t merely a tits poem, it’s distinctly a sucking-on-nipples poem; it’s also entirely structured around a close reading of Keats. If you don’t like that, you don’t like this magazine.
“Greetings, Friends!” by Ian Frazier: Meanwhile, if you’ve ever read “Greetings, Friends”, you already know whether or not you like “Greetings, Friends”. I can’t help it: I do, and no cringe-inducing praise of Angela Merkel (“still our hero” – come on!) or cheesy extended section sanctifying Navalny can keep me from ultimately being put in the holiday spirit by a list of random people whose names kinda-sorta rhyme. No description or justification will change how you feel about egg nog, and the same applies to this yearly tradition.
[Panel] Cartoons:
Note that page-filling comics will be covered in the main edition, coming soon.
Here's where to find the cartoons, with credits, in order.
Cover: Kate Beaton rocks (Ducks was very good)… but I must say that while her linework is always strong, the design and especially coloring here feel pretty half-hearted; this doesn’t pop. Why the opaque grey streetlamp? Why no shadows? It’s an oddly noir-less noir, all flat color and no mystery. That the word-search is solvable is fine, but not exciting.
Pg. 11: Stiff.
Pg. 16: I guess that’s Pandora, waiting for the package to be picked back up? (I know we aren’t supposed to question such things, but why does she live in an aluminum-sided suburban house?) Wouldn’t it make more sense to illustrate the gods receiving the returned package?
Pg. 42: The usual Baxter thing; I appreciate running anything full-page these days but does this really benefit?
Pg. 43 (top): Just kinda grim.
Pg. 43 (bottom): Doesn’t do enough to justify yet another Nighthawks riff. Surely there is other funny modern art.
Pg. 44 (top): I like Finck’s maybe deliberately lazy attempt at drawing two tough fellas. Caption is okay.
Pg. 44 (bottom): Better-not squash.
Pg. 45: This, on the other hand, is incredibly stupid, but nearly works just because it fills a whole page.
Pg. 46 (top): This is badly stretching the definition of “food jokes”, and is so lackluster it makes me wonder if the editors came up with the idea of a few pages devoted to food jokes and had to strain to find enough panels to fill it.
Pg. 46 (bottom): It’s fine to tell a joke that’s really just for people living on four or five blocks of the UWS… if it’s funny, that is.
Pg. 47: McPhail is so much better captionless. A Looney Tunes gag, basically, but well-executed.
Pg. 50: Pretty clever, and putting this one right after a bunch of eating jokes is cute. Best of the Week.
Pg. 55: Nagging wife jokes have to clear a very high bar; this is okay but not nearly good enough.
Pg. 61: I always assumed the mythos was that Santa stopped monitoring you once you grew up, but a horror-haunted Santa is a solid take on the canon.
Pg. 62: Cut joke from Maybe Happy Ending.
Pg. 65: MPJ today stands for Makes Periodic Jeremiads.
Pg. 68: A-steroid?
Pg. 73: MPJ today also stands for Mush, Polar Journeyer!
Pg. 82: Caption is maybe taking too many swings, but that pigeon is wonderful.
31 Years Ago Today
wherever you go