His readers are absolutely wrong on Keith Knight and Weingarten is right.
May 20th chat
Gene Weingarten: Good afternoon.
Jef Mallett, creator of Frazz, e-mailed me yesterday after he returned from The National Cartoonists Conference in New Orleans. During the conference, he said, a whole bunch of cartoonists went off to help build a house in the city, as part of a Habitat for Humanity project. I asked him to draw a cartoon of what a house would look like if it was built by cartoonists. Here is Jeff's drawing, along with his commentary.
What I learned from this experience:
1. Cartoonists cannot hold hammers. You've never seen so many people choke up so high on a hammer.
2. What's black and white and red all over? A Scottish-Norwegian cartoonist messing with tar paper shingles all day in the sun. Heehaw. Trust me on this one.
3. When cartoonists hammer their thumbs, what they say isn't really spelled "##%!!*."
4. Whatever you think you know about the devastation down there, you don't have a clue. And it's almost three years.
What I learned from drawing the two cartoon characters in this picture:
1. Rosie the Riveter seems to be giving us all the "up yours" gesture. I never quite noticed that.
2. I am apparently one shopping trip to Williams-Sonoma away from being as gay as a Mardi Gras float. This, too, was a big surprise.
May 27th chat
CPOW: That Knight's Life is not a funny comic. You just like it because it supports what you (and all of us) have been saying. The Pearls on the other hand IS funny.
Gene Weingarten: I am allowed personal bias.
_______________________
Fairfax, Va.: Agreed on liking Knight Life. The first replacement, about the stay-at-home dad, clearly got old quickly. The second one, while promising, seems like it was trying too hard to be The Far Side. The third one, while it may fall into that category of nerdy young black man with Candorville and Watch Your Head, seems by far to be the best. Any idea what the general reaction to the three has been?
Gene Weingarten: The Post people are pretty smart. I've liked the last two, actually. I am hoping we keep both and get rid of some antedeluvian ones.
---------------------------------------
Baltimore, Md.: You have GOT to be kidding about Knight Life, right? Anyone who names a comic strip after himself immediately has one strike against him. And, Sunday's cartoon included jokes so old and lame even my 5 year old thought they were stupid. THIS is what the Post thought could replace Doonesbury, even temporarily? My God, ...the horror.
Gene Weingarten: Yeah, Sunday's was bad. I agree.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: Yes, the Knight Life comic is funny, but can you answer me this question. If the Post is going to add a new comic strip, why oh why, isn't the daily Cul de Sac, by the Post's own Richard Thompson, not up for consideration?
Gene Weingarten: It should be the first choice.
_____________________
Re: The Knight Life: The art on this strip is terrible. Doesn't that bug you?
Gene Weingarten: No. I like the art.
Showing posts with label Jeff Mallett. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeff Mallett. Show all posts
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Weingarten corrupted three comic strips for Post Hunt
Gene Weingarten's May 20th chat had some comments about a 'comics' clue to the Post Hunt.
Arlington: G-Dub. How in THE hell can anyone claim that the "Comics" clue was hard? The comedians made it obvious what the topic was, Liz and Ginger walking around with the comics pages made it obvious where to look (not to mention that everyone was reading the Comics section) and the numbers weren't terribly hard to find. What was hard about it?
(Every other clue was @#$! impossible, btw.)
washingtonpost.com: And yet there were people who -- when offered a Comics section -- declined, saying "I have one at home."
Gene Weingarten: Heh heh.
As Tom said yesterday, the monitors at the fortune cookie site watched several times as small children were tugging at parents' clothing saying, "It tastes like coconut!" and the parents said, "Ssh. We're trying to solve the puzzle."
and later...
Consiracy Theories: It's bad enough that clueless Post readers may be misled by the clues planted in the magazine and comics, but what about the rest of the country? Is there an army of folks coming up with diabolical explanations for the numbers appearing in the three comics? Or do they get an explanation somewhere somehow (without stumbling on the Post)?
Gene Weingarten: Yeah, I owe a great thank you to Stephan Pastis, Jef Mallett, and Berkeley Breathed. They were great sports about it. I'm sure they're getting dozens of letters from elsewhere in the country asking, yknow, what that "nine" was about.
and...
Opus Hunt: Gene,
A friend was telling me about Hunt (she went, I couldn't) and when I looked at the Opus strip, the first thing I thought of when she pointed it out was Al Hirschfeld. Did Breathed do that on purpose? And were the other numbers in the strip used as decoys?
Gene Weingarten: Yep, it was an homage to Hirschfeld, I believe. "Nine" was done exactly the way Hirschfeld did "Nina."
The other numbers were coincidence! He wasn't trying to be deceptive.
...with some debate over that...
Washington, D.C.: Did you notice that both Breathed and Mallet hid other numerals in their strips? The s in the title "OPUS" was a 5. In Frazz, the word "school" had both a 5 instead of an s, and an 8 instead of the two o's. The second occurrence of that word didn't have the 5, but it did have the 8. So we weren't sure which hidden numbers to use, until we finally noticed the "nine" on the doctor's coat, and decided to use the spelled-out numbers "six," "eight," and "nine," and ignore the hidden numerals 5, 8, 8 and 5.
Gene Weingarten: I disagree about the S being a 5.
But we noticed the "oo" looking like an eight. We noticed this at the very last minute. It turns out that is simply how Patty Mallett (who inks Jef's art) makes a double o! If the hidden number had been anything but eight, we'd a been scrood!
This is all nonsensical, until you go to the Post website. This video explains that Weingarten's friends Stephan (Pearls Before Swine), Berkeley (Opus) Breathed and Jeff (Frazz) Mallett snuck in clues for the Post Hunt.
Arlington: G-Dub. How in THE hell can anyone claim that the "Comics" clue was hard? The comedians made it obvious what the topic was, Liz and Ginger walking around with the comics pages made it obvious where to look (not to mention that everyone was reading the Comics section) and the numbers weren't terribly hard to find. What was hard about it?
(Every other clue was @#$! impossible, btw.)
washingtonpost.com: And yet there were people who -- when offered a Comics section -- declined, saying "I have one at home."
Gene Weingarten: Heh heh.
As Tom said yesterday, the monitors at the fortune cookie site watched several times as small children were tugging at parents' clothing saying, "It tastes like coconut!" and the parents said, "Ssh. We're trying to solve the puzzle."
and later...
Consiracy Theories: It's bad enough that clueless Post readers may be misled by the clues planted in the magazine and comics, but what about the rest of the country? Is there an army of folks coming up with diabolical explanations for the numbers appearing in the three comics? Or do they get an explanation somewhere somehow (without stumbling on the Post)?
Gene Weingarten: Yeah, I owe a great thank you to Stephan Pastis, Jef Mallett, and Berkeley Breathed. They were great sports about it. I'm sure they're getting dozens of letters from elsewhere in the country asking, yknow, what that "nine" was about.
and...
Opus Hunt: Gene,
A friend was telling me about Hunt (she went, I couldn't) and when I looked at the Opus strip, the first thing I thought of when she pointed it out was Al Hirschfeld. Did Breathed do that on purpose? And were the other numbers in the strip used as decoys?
Gene Weingarten: Yep, it was an homage to Hirschfeld, I believe. "Nine" was done exactly the way Hirschfeld did "Nina."
The other numbers were coincidence! He wasn't trying to be deceptive.
...with some debate over that...
Washington, D.C.: Did you notice that both Breathed and Mallet hid other numerals in their strips? The s in the title "OPUS" was a 5. In Frazz, the word "school" had both a 5 instead of an s, and an 8 instead of the two o's. The second occurrence of that word didn't have the 5, but it did have the 8. So we weren't sure which hidden numbers to use, until we finally noticed the "nine" on the doctor's coat, and decided to use the spelled-out numbers "six," "eight," and "nine," and ignore the hidden numerals 5, 8, 8 and 5.
Gene Weingarten: I disagree about the S being a 5.
But we noticed the "oo" looking like an eight. We noticed this at the very last minute. It turns out that is simply how Patty Mallett (who inks Jef's art) makes a double o! If the hidden number had been anything but eight, we'd a been scrood!
This is all nonsensical, until you go to the Post website. This video explains that Weingarten's friends Stephan (Pearls Before Swine), Berkeley (Opus) Breathed and Jeff (Frazz) Mallett snuck in clues for the Post Hunt.
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