Nature Will Castigate Those Who Don't Masticate

I almost never look at the comics section of the newspaper, large portions of which just leave me very confused.

You would need to do advanced research in narratology even to begin to explain strips like Mary Worth or Apartment 3-G in which -- and I do not think this is much of an exaggeration at all -- nothing ever happens. If a character decides to make a sandwich, it takes three months to complete the task.

And I do mean make it. Eating the sandwich would take longer. Mary Worth is very thorough about chewing. She may well be a follower of the late, great Horace Fletcher.

That said, I have of late become become a great enthusiast for The Comics Curmodgeon. While I'm probably the last to know about this, that's okay. It just means there is a large archive to roam around in.

In case I am only the next-to-last, you might want to start with this entry.

Or this one.

April 26, 2007 7:18 PM | | Comments (3)

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3 Comments

By Adam Robinson on April 27, 2007 10:52 AM

You ought to YouTube for the live action version of Mary Worth that Stephanie worked on; it underscores the bizarreness that you're talking about. I think The Comics Curmudgeon wrote it up a few months back.

By Tony Nassar on April 29, 2007 10:59 AM

For some weird reason, I'm unable *not* to read Mary Worth. I've read it since I was a kid. And I can't remember a darn thing that happened there. I did notice that she acquired a boyfriend a year ago, sort of.

I thought a long time ago that Rex Morgan M.D. and Mary Worth served some geriatric constituency, but why are they still published? Do former fans of Calvin and Hobbes or Dykes to Watch Out For gravitate toward Mary Worth when they get older?

By Nathan Smith on May 1, 2007 12:27 PM

As a general comic comment: you may enjoy the enigmatic and wonderful "Zippy the Pinhead" comic strip. It's what I would call a meta-cartoon or a celebration of kitsch and absurdity.

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This page contains a single entry by Quick Study published on April 26, 2007 7:18 PM.

You Kids Get Off My Berlin Wall was the previous entry in this blog.

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