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I mean, seriously.

This comic is getting more emotionally and pscychically twisty than MINE.

And as for the strip which intimates Captain Locke's recollections of sex..

-shudder-

You remember how I was worried that the Jake/Rick fanservice strips were clipping the edges of the Good Taste Barrier?

I think we may have just found the outer rim of the Ozy and Millie Good Taste Barrier.

I HAVE wondered about the direction O&M is taking recently. I used to enjoy it a lot more, to tell the truth.

Ozzy & Millie is a furry political cartoon with a heavy democrat bent. I stuck with it for a couple months before deciding there were better strips out there, hence why I'm here and not there. I know not of what you speak but am not surprised either.

It wasn't always so. O&M used to be quite charming, and when it won the Charles M. Schultz award I was in complete agreement. Since then, however, it has become the 10 year old Doonsbury (another strip which I felt was much better in its first years.)

For me the big change came during the post election fiasco. When I wrote to say that I thought the use of a swastika to represent Pat Buchanon was especially heavy handed for the comic, David wrote back with a very... um... IMPASSIONED description of Buchanon's Nazi leanings. Mind you, I thing Buchanon is a narrow-minded, hateful "doodiehead" myself but I believe that to accuse ANYONE of Naziism is stepping over the line of a "family" comic.

I'm finding it difficult to phrase my other great concern with O&M these days, precisely because it is something which I feel has been talked (or screamed about) too much. I just have this to say: Whether I agree with your politics or not, I don't mind reading about your views as long as you don't insult other people just because they disagree with you. And that's all I have to say about that.

Which of course brings us naturally to why David Simpson is my arch enemy.

I mean this, of course, in a very affectionate way, but if you ever write him a letter that is opinionated, he writes you back and zings you six ways south of sunday. In my business, that's called rude, even if he thinks he's shooting his bullets over your head.

There's a section in his "words" article where he makes fun of a letter I wrote him, missing, of course, most of the point of it. He's clever, and charming, but he's forgetting far too many of the RULES of cartooning.

1) Avoid politics. If you run out of jokes, stop doing the comic. Don't resort to topical humor unless the topic of your comic is topical humor.

2) If your characters are kids, they STAY KIDS. You can have them grow up, but have them GROW UP, not occasionally BECOME adults for the sake of one storyline.

3) ALWAYS give a character at least one positive trait. No matter what. NO MATTER WHAT.

4) Find out where the "Good Taste" line is for your comic as early as possible and STAY ON YOUR SIDE.

These are some of my rules. David has broken all four of them on at least one occasion. I am NOT saying he's a bad artist. Far from it. He's a very GOOD artist. He's just messing up. It's kind of like George Lucas with the Phantom Menace. The reason we hated it was not that the movie was BAD, but that we knew George could have done so much BETTER. I like to think that I do very well with very little talent, simply by following a set of carefully layed out rules and not breaking the integrity of the strip for cheap laughs. One day with a weak joke is better than ruining the whole flow of the comic.

Oh, and about his political leanings. Yes, I will say that, when they do his TV interview, they won't have to put a little (D) in parenthesis at the bottom of the screen because it will be emblazoned accross his chest a la Superman's S.

I have to admit, I didn't notice it as "bigger change" in O&M that there's suddenly talked about Millies father... it's all done in a innocent and children-friendly way. Explaining more of the background of a character, like Ozzys adiption, that was the theme a whil ago.
Or maybe I simply didn't notice it?
Could also be possible, with my amount of comics I read through on my daily net-run.



Soooo....guess who'll fly towards the American continent tomorrow?

Weeeeeeeeeeeelll...

Remember, I never said I didn't like Ozy and Millie. I just think it could be better.

TwoDifferentSox wrote:Soooo....guess who'll fly towards the American continent tomorrow?

Just fly TOWARDS it? Could be awfully wet when you stop... <g>

Okay, panel three of thursday's episode scares me.

I was actually expecting Millie to break the news to the pirate captain with the following line which sadly didn't happen:

"Locke...you are my father." <--in Darth Millie voice

Well, if not before, then certainly today.

Y'know....

Replace "piracy" with "mad science"...

and "aging backwards" with "being a severed head"...

Hmmm...

You don't suppose he's reading this comic, do you?