Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 16, 1993 TAG: 9305160245
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By FRED BRUNING NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Dagwood quit Dithers to join Blondie's catering business only to be fired pronto - by Blondie. Sally Forth's hubby said he wants a little more loving. A colleague of Rex Morgan, M.D., tested HIV-positive. Popeye nearly took a stand on abortion, but the episode was yanked before publication.
When New York radio personality "Uncle" Don Carney read the Sunday comics on WOR during the 1940s, cartoon characters were blissfully busting crime, preserving democracy, extolling domestic bliss, and perfecting their one-liners. The Katzenjammer Kids did not discuss child abuse. Readers never learned if Prince Valiant expected sex on the first date. The onset of menstruation? Little Lulu kept her concerns private, if you don't mind. The world has lurched since Carney, who died in 1954, was on the air, and the comics budged a little, too. Still dominated by strips that excel mostly at silliness, newspaper cartoon sections nevertheless show increasing signs of straying beyond the bounds of dopey humor and down-home wisdom. Suddenly, cartoonists are addressing some of modern society's most talked-about topics and, they ask, why not?
"We want to grow up," said Tom Batiuk, 46, whose "Funky Winkerbean" strip celebrates its 21st birthday this year, and who also produces the "Crankshaft" cartoon with illustrator Chuck Ayers. "We've been a little stunted in our views. Only now are we coming around to dealing with subjects dealt with by movies, books and television for years - decades, really."
This is no last gasp effort.
Some readers may find the prospect alarming, but modern comic strip artists - by their own admission, hardly the most adventurous bunch in the entertainment industry - want the option of stretching the status quo. Cartoonists who explore contemporary themes - from condoms to personal hygiene - insist they are not declaring war on their audiences. But, say the artists, they have to be at peace with themselves.
For the cartoonist who goes "relevant," there are perils.
Canadian artist Lynn Johnston recently frosted some of her fans by introducing the subject of teen-age homosexuality in her strip, "For Better or For Worse," which is published by approximately 1,400 newspapers around the world. Johnston's story focused on a boy struggling to acknowledge he is gay - an issue that some newspaper readers thought too sensitive for the comics.
"This is something I should deal with on a personal basis with my children," said Barbara Konczynin, who lives in Setauket, N.Y., with her husband and son, 7, and daughter, 6. "I don't need the comic strips helping me with that."
But Johnston says the human family is fascinating - and suitable for the comics in all its diversity. "The world has been pushing people away too long - people in wheelchairs, people who are blind, people who are `different' in many ways," said Johnston, 46, who also has grappled with child abuse and shoplifting in her series.
Johnston says she received many letters of support, but was unprepared for the rage of her detractors - or for the decision of several clients to drop her strip. "I lost almost 10 pounds and 19 newspapers," said Johnston.
Critics of less conventional comics say funny pages ought to be a refuge - the one place in the newspaper that spares readers the jackhammer blows of everyday life. Enough with Joey and Amy. Enough with deficit reduction. Enough with gay rights, tax rates, drug abuse and Dr. Jack Kevorkian. No more Woody Allen, please! Is it asking too much?
Artists say they sympathize with those who want the status quo to stay put. And they have some advice: "Turn the page, read something else," says Matt Groening, 39, creator of "The Simpsons" animated television show and the upstart comic strip "Life in Hell."
Groening says he doesn't mean to be offensive - just engaging. "The daily comic pages are so snoozy that anything that shakes things up, I'm in favor of," he said. "There's a cultural process taking place here. Comics don't have to be the bland kiddie medium they've been historically."
Some old-line cartoonists dabbled in topical material - Al Capp, for instance, a liberal who turned conservative, made no secret of his right-wing sentiments in the "L'il Abner" strip, and Walt Kelly, whose "Pogo" sizzled with satiric comment - but the public rarely screams when comic strip characters echo majority opinion.
Doug Marlette, Newsday's editorial cartoonist and creator of the comic strip "Kudzu," pointed to the "capitalist slant" of "Little Orphan Annie" and "Cold War approach" of "Steve Canyon." "I adore these," said Marlette, 43, "but no one ever talked about `politics' because they [the strips] reflected a view that was prevalent." Homosexuality? Nothing new there, either, said Marlette. "I always thought Batman and Robin were gay, just that they were in the closet."
Twenty-five years ago, Charles Schulz introduced a black character in his "Peanuts" feature over the objections of an editor. "Let's put it this way," Schulz recalls telling the reluctant party. "Either you use the strips exactly as I drew them or I quit." Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" came along in 1970, and the upstart Yale alum preached the liberal gospel as brashly as Capp had pounded the pulpit for the right - and, in the process, did much to yank the comics into a new era.
Trudeau, 44, even tormented the Bush administration with claims that then-Vice President Dan Quayle bought illegal drugs at various times in his life - a charge federal investigators said was untrue. The cartoonist, who made his disdain for Quayle apparent by portraying the vice president as a feather, pressed ahead with the story despite official grousing and the objections of some newspaper chiefs. Editors said they weren't questioning Trudeau's artistic prerogatives - just his sources for the Quayle accusations.
Sometimes Trudeau ventured so far into political comment that nervous newspaper officials temporarily would snuff the strip, or place it on the editorial page. But Trudeau kept whaling away, and, in less brazen fashion, others followed.
Now politics pop up on the funny pages - and so does just about everything else.
The cartoon character Luann, who is supposed to be 13, got her first period in a funny pages story. Luann's brother, Brad, 17, took a prophylactic on a first date, only to have the !(AT)$%?(CT)! thing fall out of his wallet while he was buying movie tickets.
Popeye earned a headline or two last year when King Features refused to circulate a strip drawn by artist Bobby London. The episode involved two priests who thought Olive Oyl was planning an abortion. Surfacing a month later in a magazine, the contraband strip concluded with the very un-pregnant Olive screaming at a priest - literally blasting him out of the cartoon panel. By then, London was gone. King Features fired him, politically correct or not.
Cartoonists and editors say the trend toward relevant subject matter will continue, but no one expects the funnies to become a forum for piercing social commentary any time soon. "Ninety-eight percent is still pabulum," said Kim Thompson, co-publisher of the Comics Journal, a monthly based in Seattle. "The advances are very mild."
by CNB