Was anyone else suprised by yesterday's strip in which Homeland Security's ICE thugs busted in and dragged off Tia Carmen? I was waiting to see what happened today, but the strip's continuing its storyline of Carmen meeting a nice gentleman. Interestingly, the artist morphed from the usual cartoony style to a more realistic style for these strips.
But back to the deportation - so did the strips run out of order? Obviously this Sunday strip isn't a humorous parody.
--UPDATE Dave Astor points out that this was an April Fool's joke. Well, they got me, as Master Ibid pointed in the comments (that I'm just seeing now after completing this post. Sigh). Here's the cartoonists' explanation from their website at Baldocomics.com (on their blog, there's a lot of comments, pro and con after their post):
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
A message from Hector & Carlos
WOW!! What an incredible reaction! There are way too many letters to post, but below are some of the more interesting responses we've gotten to Sunday's strip showing Tía Carmen being deported. Here's the deal. Our April 1 strip was an April Fool's strip (duh). Considering how much people love Tía Carmen, we thought it would be interesting to have her "deported" in dramatic fashion -- something we would never do in the strip, but something that makes a powerful statement. Admittedly, we took lots of creative license for dramatic effect (it is a comic strip after all). But that's all we did. Now, obviously, the strip hit a nerve with LOTS of people, both pro and anti immigrant. The issue itself is no joke and we don't take it lightly. It's a serious matter and we hope we got people to thinking about it. Some readers even see Carmen as a symbol of the immigration issue and demanded a T-shirt. We're happy to oblige and have set up a little store here.
Free Tia Carmen!
But we're gonna move on now. We think our point has been made -- even if it was unconventially delivered. Our familia played out their skit and we now return to our regularly scheduled programming. Bueno? Bueno!
Sunday comics generally follow a different time continuity than the dailies in almost all strips.
ReplyDeleteThe timing is a bit off however. The encounter with the gentleman is about to explain how Tia Carmen ended up where she is, which the ICE raid then plays into.
It was April 1st guys.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't have much of the structure of an April Fool's gag. It read deadly serious to me.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I have to agree with Andrew Oh about the seriousness of it, which I saw as well. I don't usually post on the comics unless something strikes me as unusual (unless it's Richard Thompson of course). I think Andrew's right and it will tie into the daily strip, but you'd think they'd have gotten the timing right.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.baldocomics.com/
ReplyDeleteA message from Hector & Carlos
WOW!! What an incredible reaction! There are way too many letters to post, but below are some of the more interesting responses we've gotten to Sunday's strip showing Tía Carmen being deported. Here's the deal. Our April 1 strip was an April Fool's strip (duh). Considering how much people love Tía Carmen, we thought it would be interesting to have her "deported" in dramatic fashion -- something we would never do in the strip, but something that makes a powerful statement. Admittedly, we took lots of creative license for dramatic effect (it is a comic strip after all). But that's all we did. Now, obviously, the strip hit a nerve with LOTS of people, both pro and anti immigrant. The issue itself is no joke and we don't take it lightly. It's a serious matter and we hope we got people to thinking about it. Some readers even see Carmen as a symbol of the immigration issue and demanded a T-shirt. We're happy to oblige and have set up a little store here.
Free Tia Carmen!
But we're gonna move on now. We think our point has been made -- even if it was unconventially delivered. Our familia played out their skit and we now return to our regularly scheduled programming. Bueno? Bueno!