Splitsider

Newspaper comics are a funny thing. Like television, the medium requires a constant output of new material. But due to any given comic strip’s short length, it’s hard to achieve the same depth of serialized storytelling as television, even if the periodical medium welcomes it. A variety of comics, from the satirical Doonesbury to the dramedy For Better or Worse, have successfully achieved not only serialization but also character development over the decades they’ve been in print; however, just as many have shown little to no growth. FromMarmaduke to Garfield, Blondie to Ziggy, an overwhelming number of newspaper comics have fiercely refused to change with the times, their references and rhetoric more at home in the 1940s [...]

The great comic Patrice O'Neal, who suffered a stroke a few weeks ago, has passed away, Opie of Opie & Anthony (where O'Neal was a frequent guest) has confirmed. This is very sad news for fans of comedy and fans of good people in general, and there's not much we can do about it but just be sad for a while. And enjoy his comedy; after the jump is his performance from the 2011 New York Comedy Festival, and here is his interview on WTF with Marc Maron.

Flemish humor. Sounds like a joke about my imminent Sinus infection from all this rain, right? Now that you’ve indulged me my one terrible pun, let’s talk about Flemish humor. Or more broadly, Belgian humor. Beloved by us Americans for exports like high-end chocolate or the Dardenne Brothers or the muscles from Brussels, Belgium also has rich cultural traditions that include humor. The whole Flemish reference comes from the division of Belgium into three regions, each with their own language community: the Flemish region, or Flanders (no relation to Ned), speaks a variation of Dutch; the Walloon Region speaks a kind of French; and then there is the [...]

Nick Gurewitch, creator of the best-thing-in-the-world Perry Bible Fellowship, started the comic in college as a side project while he studied film. So it's not a huge surprise that, since criminally retiring from the strip, he's moved on to start making shorts. Here's "Martha's Birthday Party," a short about a kid's party in 1985 that features a very PBF-like twist at the end. [via]

SNL/The Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone has been tapped to direct The Great Unknown, an adaptation of the graphic novel by Duncan Rouleau. It'll be his second time directing a movie, after the underperforming MacGruber. Here's what to expect in terms of the plot: The comic centers on a slacker with delusions of grandeur who believes his so-called great ideas are popping up elsewhere. After failing to convince his friends and family that his mind is being pilfered, he goes on a quest to solve the mystery behind the idea thefts.

The movie will be an action comedy, while the comic is billed as a "lowfi-scifi," which sounds [...]

As the first entry in a neat series in which comic book artist Harvey James draws podcast hosts before and after seeing their faces, he's done a really interesting pair of portraits of Marc Maron. After hearing Maron guest on Comedy Bang Bang, James says he had a picture of "an angry, difficult guy who talked about jerking off and eating snacks" that ended up looking quite different from the real Maron. So weird how vividly what we talk about, and the way we talk about ourselves, colors people's perceptions of us. And of our glasses.

The Perry Bible Fellowship is maybe my all-time favorite comic strip. I am very much biased, as it started as a comic in The Daily Orange when I was a student at Syracuse and I became friends with its creator, Nick Gurewitch, but I will still stand by it forever and ever. I was very sad when Nick retired from making new comics weekly. But hey, look at this! Today he released the first new strip in ages. And if you're not familiar with the PBF, I am very jealous, as now you get to go through the archives with fresh eyes.

Look, I have enjoyed The Office as much as the next guy, but I can't say I disagree with the sentiment of this comic. People always want more of something until it starts going downhill, and only in foresight do they claim that it should have been put down before it got to this point. That's the silver lining of early cancellations of shows like Arrested Development and Party Down: they never had a chance to devolve into mediocrity as ratings and show quality slowly dropped down to a point where it could finally be cancelled.

Hell, maybe whoever they get to replace Carell will completely revitalize the [...]

When I was younger, there was no greater pairing than the holiday season and Garfield. I’d watch wide-eyed as he'd float down 5th Avenue in the Thanksgiving Parade; I’d pop in our VHS recording of A Garfield Christmas, and I’d adorn our tree with Keepsake ornaments of that lovable fat cat dishing out Christmas cheer. But this love affair with Garfield was over as quickly as it began, and soon I was off to bigger things like Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and Webelos.  But I never forgot about Jim Davis’ cartoon cat, and considering the rise of strange, dark, and incredibly funny material the internet has created about Garfield, [...]

Bil Keane, the creator of the Family Circus comic strip, has died at 89. He had been drawing the comic since early 1960. Here's what he said in a 1995 interview about one of his favorite strips:

It showed Jeffy coming out of the living room late at night in pajamas and Mommy and Daddy watching television and Jeffy says, 'I don't feel so good, I think I need a hug.' And suddenly I got a lot of mail from people about this dear little fella needing a hug, and I realized that there was something more than just getting a belly laugh every day.

Oh boy. I'm [...]

My Calvin and Hobbes anthologies sat unread at home on the highest shelf of my parents’ living room bookcase for almost ten years. My father sent them to me last week, and when they arrived in a beat-up box lined with tennis ball cans (don’t ask), I couldn’t even think of the last time I flipped through Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat or Weirdos from Another Planet, or any of the 12 collections my mom bought me when I was a kid. Not everyone had an obsession with Calvin and Hobbes, but I sure thought they were a riot, and still do now.

I first opened Attack of the Deranged [...]