« A late night, wistfully. | Main | Sammy was eating a sandwich? Not a biscuit? Come *on...* »
Eric: Holy crap -- it's a webcomic being snarked! Naturally, that webcomic is Narbonic....
(From Narbonic. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Crockett Johnson refs!)
A lot of you have been writing in to talk about how you've been devouring the temporarily free Narbonic archives. This is a healthy trend -- Narbonic is, simply put, the best four panel humor strip being produced today. Not that I'm certain of this, or anything. I just gave it all the props I had to give, many many times, consistently, culminating in the best Humor Shortbread of the year. It's seriously funny, it's amazingly nuanced in its story, and the latter never gets in the way of the former. Me like Narbonic, yes'm.
Given all that, it still surprised me that Shaenon Garrity made the prediction that I would snark Narbonic this week. Given the dearth of snarking in general over the past several days -- chalked up to distraction ratings that were off the scale, Captain! -- it seemed a bold statement even for the Sarge herself. Particularly when I had no idea what it was that she was certain would draw my attention -- she just knew it would, and she just knew I'd recognize it when I saw it.
It is Wednesday, June 29. And I am snarking Narbonic.
Cushlamocree.
The very first time I significantly snarked Shaenon Garrity's work (I mentioned in brief she was brilliant a couple of days before, but that's not the same thing as doing the whole snark), it wasn't for Narbonic but for a precursor comic strip she drew called North of Space. And the thing that caught my attention was the use of the word "cushlamocree." As I explained in that previous snark, cushlamocree was an all purpose exclamation and expletive used by a character named Mr. O'Malley in the seminal, brilliant, whimsical, satirical and all around good newspaper strip Barnaby. As I said back in the mists of time (on September the fourth of last year):
Back in the forties, a man named Crockett Johnson wrote and drew a comic strip called Barnaby. This was a strip about a young boy named, appropriately enough, Barnaby -- who wished one day to have a Fairy Godmother. Well, the fates gave him a Fairy Godfather instead -- Mr. O'Malley, a small, portly pixie with a pork-pie hat and a "fine Havana wand" that looked a whole lot like a cigar. And so began a series of absolutely whimsical, absolutely magical, savagely sophisticated and satirical comic strips.
They were absolutely wonderful. When satirizing the campaign of Thomas Dewey for President, they revealed three ghosts coordinating his campaign strategy -- all of whom were working to turn back time, because they didn't like the modern world. One of them -- Colonel Wurst (a conflation of the names of the owner of the Chicago Tribune and William Randolph Hearst -- two rabid anti-Roosevelt voices) -- published news in the papers that was old, each day pushing the news back another day in time. In the end, they gave up the campaign after Wurst published news from the day before Black Monday. Since they had decided they had moved back before the Great Depression, they were all rich again, so they didn't care about politics any more. The relationship of the Pixies, the kids who saw and believed in them and the parents who didn't (and who called them Pixeys -- a slight difference that made all the difference) is echoed in everything from Calvin and Hobbes to Mr. Snuffleupagus.
Cushlamocree was enough to invoke all my memories of lying on the floor in the living room, pouring over the musty old copy of the Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics my parents owned -- a tome which marked me for life, as you can well imagine. It was enough to trigger my discovery of Crockett Johnson's work, to remind me of the joy of discovering not only Barnaby but Thimble Theater, Alley Oop, Krazy Kat and Li'l Abner. And it put me on notice that Shaenon Garrity knew comic strips. She understood where they came from. And that knowledge informed her masterful interweaving of humor and story, whimsy and satire into her own strip.
It is the dawn of the Twenty-First century. And one of the amazing facts of the rise and evolution of webcomics -- a medium of illustration and sequential art as new and untapped now as the world of Newspaper comics was at the dawn of the Twentieth century -- is that the webcartoonists are breaking new ground and defining the direction of sequential art for years to come. Writers and artists who are learning and exploiting the web -- giving this a whack, giving this a try, experimenting and producing -- are in a position now to shape and inform the evolution of the art form for the next five generations. Strips as diverse as PvP and Achewood, experimental webcomics and straight hand-drawn traditional comics alike are creating a continuum of art. Over the course of our lifetimes and beyond, the stuff webcartoonists do today will be reflected in the generations they influence.
This is where we are today. And you guys get to be a part of it. I don't care if you're using the Tarquin Engine to redefine your own sense of what a comic strip can do or if you're doing all hand-crosshatching on your fully drawn strip, which you then scan and throw on the web. If you're participating, you're part of the process. If others are reading your work, you're part of the process. If you can't stand pretentious art-crap talk and are annoyed by the tone of this snark in toto, you're part of the process. Congratulations. You get to be a part of comic strip history.
Today's invocation of that magic word "cushlamocree" is different, though. Yes, it still reflects the staggering knowledge of the form that Garrity has at her command. (And it is staggering -- I've walked the halls of the Cartoon Art Museum with her. She has forgotten more than I have ever known about the history and heritage of cartooning.) This one was a nod to me. She has implied as much.
And that means that I'm part of this process too. I also get to be a part of comic strip history. I get to have influence too.
And that is perhaps the nicest thing someone's "said" to me all year.
Seventy-five years from now, there will be heavy books (or e-books, or whatever) written on the history of comics that will go into the heady years of the evolution of webcomics. There will be samples of User Friendly and Kevin and Kell, a reproduced (short) plot arc of Sluggy Freelance and a PvP saga. Josh Lesnick's work will be compared and contrasted with Michael Poe's work. Penny Arcade will lead off a whole chapter on editorial webcomics. And so on, and so forth.
And some kid lying on the floor of his living room will devour several weeks worth of Narbonic in one of those books. And that kid will be drawn to cartooning and comic strip art as he gets older. And years later, he'll be reading a comic strip that makes reference to Narbonic -- maybe a reference to the Conspiracy of Daves, or some evil genius using "Heh heh heh" as a weapon of psychological torment -- and he'll feel what I felt when I saw "cushlamocree" back in September.
And maybe he'll write about it, and maybe -- just maybe -- someone will call it snarking.
And then I will RULE THE WORLD!!!! of criticism. Briefly.
Thanks, Shaenon.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at June 29, 2005 8:42 AM
Comments
Comment from: J.(Channing)Wells posted at June 29, 2005 10:24 AM
Occasionally, I am struck with the thought that my most enduring contribution to the artistic world at large just might end up being my small body of Narbonic fan work.
I could live with that, I think.
Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at June 29, 2005 10:29 AM
Okay, I think it's time to stage an intervention for Eric, here. This is way too pretentious.
Okay, I'm mostly kidding here.
I understand it perfectly - I go on much like this about video games, my own focus of geeky passion. And yeah, to some extent, I see what Eric means, although I'm apparently not quite the Narbonic fan everyone else seems to be (it's certainly one of my favorites, but there are strips I enjoy more on the 'net).
Still, passion is like a flame - it can attract people with its warmth, but others will be scared of being burned by it. Just the way things are.
As for Shaenon baiting Eric... I wouldn't exactly call her statement bold, in predicting a snark from you. Face it, Eric, you're easy to tempt, if you know what buttons to push. No shame in admitting it, really. I imagine that someone with vast knowledge of comics history, like Ms. Garrity, said temptations are second-nature references.
I'm never one for instant history, so let's not write history books from 75 years in the future just yet. But do applaud Narbonic for honoring the past while building towards the future.
Comment from: Will "Scifantasy" Frank posted at June 29, 2005 10:40 AM
Footsteps--Well, T Campbell's hard at work at "The History Of Webcomics." It's far from instant history, and I don't know how much of it is going to be individual comics as opposed to people, but there it is...I fully expect that any number of years from now somebody is going to publish a "Samples Of The Golden Age Of Webcomics" (for that is what we are in--and it's great, because I've never been in a Golden Age before--though, unlike many media, it may last a long time) collection that will include Narbonic along with Penny Arcade, PvP, Sluggy, probably Megatokyo, and--if I can swing it--Schlock Mercenary. And, of course, the twenty or thirty strips that I didn't name that deserve to be in there.
Eric--Track down, if you've never read them, the "Callahan" and "Lady Sally" series(es) by Spider Robinson.
Comment from: quiller posted at June 29, 2005 4:08 PM
"Lady Slings the Booze" was a great book title.
Comment from: Sundre posted at June 29, 2005 5:40 PM
Cushlamocree aside, the Little Dave in Slumberland strips hare excellent foreshadowing and excellent all around.
Comment from: Shaenon posted at June 29, 2005 7:42 PM
I do it all for you, Eric.
And, yeah, it's pretentious, but we're talking about a man who writes twenty-paragraph analyses of the character interactions in the "Justice League" cartoon. Whaddya expect?
Comment from: elvedril posted at June 29, 2005 7:46 PM
Just want you to know that it's getting close to 2am, I have to pack up all my belongings since I'm moving out of the apartment in the morning. And I haven't even started yet because I read the whole Narbonic archives in two days. So I guess what I'm saying is thanks Eric and thanks Shaenon.
Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at June 29, 2005 10:11 PM
I know just what you mean, Eric, because that's exactly the thrill I got from the Narbonic I described in my last comment here. That was regarding s.f. instead of regarding comic strips, but there you are.
Comment from: Zaq posted at June 30, 2005 1:24 AM
Okay, fine. Go ahead. Add my name to the list. I'm sure you're quite sick of this by now.
I just spent the better part of my day (a day in which I should have been doing many other things, most notably last-minute details on the road trip I'm taking Friday) doing what many people would, when taken out of context, call "wasting six or more hours staring at a little screen, alone and isolated from the world, ignoring basic needs such as food, water, and periodic visits to the restroom." All because of you, Eric, and your incessant and relentless praise of Narbonic.
...Yeah. Totally worth it. So totally worth it. I wouldn't go so far as to call it the absolute best strip out there, but damn, that was enjoyable. I'd do it again, too. (Though hopefully I won't be tempted to actually do so again for quite a while. All those things I should have been doing today I now have to do tomorrow... still. Totally worth it.)
Comment from: Alexander Danner posted at June 30, 2005 2:36 AM
Incidentally, when I compared the comic "Tailipoe" to Barnaby in my Triangulation Challenge essay, that was your doing. It was your original "Cushlamocree" snark that introduced me to Barnaby in the first place.
Thanks for that!
Comment from: kirabug posted at June 30, 2005 10:50 AM
As for Shaenon baiting Eric... I wouldn't exactly call her statement bold, in predicting a snark from you.
Naah, baiting Eric would be today's Melonpool. :) I'm heavily amused by the varied things we webcomic artists are doing to try to catch his attention ;)
Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at June 30, 2005 11:10 AM
I thought of that Kira, and I wouldn't necessarily say that Troop is baiting Eric more than Shaenon did. Just that Shaenon was much more subtle about it. And often, the subtle bait is the one more likely to be taken.
I'm personally waiting with baited breath to see someone make Men Without Hats references in a comic to get a snark from Wednesday, myself.
Comment from: Spatchcock posted at June 30, 2005 1:52 PM
Eric old boy, we all know Narbonic is the bees knees, but what we really want to know is whether you and Weds are an item now? Spill the beans old beef!
Comment from: J.(Channing)Wells posted at June 30, 2005 3:54 PM
..."old beef"?
Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at June 30, 2005 8:14 PM
baiting Eric...I confess that when I was drawing today's Arthur it occurred to me to wonder whether Eric likes Latin jokes.
Comment from: McMartin posted at June 30, 2005 11:59 PM
I am slightly ashamed to admit that the Magic Words that struck me the most forcefully when I did the Narbonic Archive Dive was "Gabba Gabba Hey."
Comment from: siwangmu posted at July 1, 2005 4:33 AM
The more cynical among us ought to skip this post, as it largely amounts to "Pretty rainbow unicorns WHEEEEE"
I have to say, Zaq, I somehow doubt Eric will ever, EVER get tired of hearing, "Man, you were so right, Narbonic is great." I mean, first of all, who can resist "You were right?" and second, an artistic work he loves is getting discovered by new readers (makes him happy) who love it (makes them happy) and will quite possibly go on to support one of his good friends and favorite creators (makes her happy) and he enjoys their happiness and her happiness and his own happiness and on top of all of that it's pretty much something he made happen with his so-constant-everyone-makes-fun-of-it praise of the comic (technically,it's because the archives are free, but I'm making a point here).
And the subtext here is rapidly becoming text--yeah, I totally wrote this because I know how I feel when people tell me, "You were so right, Firefly is awesome." Which they almost alwyas do one I've shown them the show, but which has given me a reputation as a weeeeeee bit obsessive. But the feeling is fucking fantastic because I'm happy and they're happy and the world has one more Firefly lover.
So, Eric? I hope you're enjoying every second of the happiness web-type-thing (maybe I should call it a snarkweb) you caused, and if you consider getting sick of "Man, you were right, Narbonic is awesome," shame on you.
The world-weary may now resume normal activity.
Comment from: Aerin posted at July 3, 2005 10:13 PM
All the Narbonic love around here makes me wonder if anyone has taken advantage of the Digger archives. I haven't had time to sit down and read them, but I've gone through and saved the entire archive to my hard drive for later perusal.
Comment from: siwangmu posted at July 4, 2005 1:32 AM
Actually, yes! Not long after I wrote the above babble, I went and looked up Digger, and holy SHIT am I in love. It is AMAZING. Rarely have I been more crushed to reach the end of an archive and realize I have to wait for the rest. I figured nobody around here needs to hear much more outta me, so I wasn't gonna come crow, but since you mention it...
WOW. Digger is awesome.
Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at July 5, 2005 5:18 PM
I started on the Digger archive, but then my laptop at home suffered a hardware problem and till it's fixed I have in the evenings to beg my wife's laptop, go upstairs to the desktop, or do without. And I think today (July 5) is the last day they were available?
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)