The Terrifying World

Jack Handey characterized the frankness of children thusly: "The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face." But frankness in childhood expression doesn't stop with speech.

The thing I enjoy most about finding uncommissioned artwork my children have created is how surprising it can be. Unlike the feeble gimmicks commonly called shock art, these pieces shock and arouse adults with an honest portrayal of reality from a child's perspective, even when the subject matter is derivative and the talent undeveloped.

The world contains terror alongside beauty and innocence, and Charles Schulz would agree. His comics are full of the fantastic such as Charlie Brown's clothes being removed by a line drive or Snoopy flying atop his doghouse. Being somewhat familiar with these famous images, I was nevertheless unnerved by my 11-year-old son's interpretation of a rather helpless Charlie Brown being terrorized by a Lucy who is twice his size and relentlessly pummeling him with a sound-cloud of insults.

"Stupid, dope, wishy-washy, lame, weak, dumb, lousy, wimp, idiot!" I asked my son about the picture; I said "Wow, this looks more like child abuse than a Peanuts comic. I've never felt so bad for Charlie Brown. Is she actually picking him up?" He just sort of smiled and calmly explained that Lucy is indeed picking Charlie Brown up, shaking him up and down, and yelling those names at him.

Lucy isn't just a mean, bossy girl here. She's an evil thug with ugliness to match. Charlie Brown isn't just the neighborhood loser. He's a victim of violence....

His sketch probably suffers a bit from insecurity and girl-fear in his 11-year-old mind, but probably not an abnormal amount. He recently played Charlie Brown in his school's production of A Charlie Brown Christmas, and perhaps his artwork was his way of helping himself relate to the character. I hope I'm worrying too much about his state-of-mind, fear of bossy girls, etc. and I'm fairly sure I am. My world is full of surprises, and I'm much more hopeful for my 11-year-old son than I am for Charlie Brown.

Here's to good surprises in the New Year.

Daphne now lives in Boca Raton...

"...with her third husband, a retired orthopedic surgeon." Of course she does! Hilarious. Dan Meth scores again with this "Where are they now" bit for the "cast" of Scooby Doo.

"You're all puppets tangled in strings!"

Dark.

Just my speed

Believe me, I'm into anything which can save my life and if I can pull it off for half price, that's even better. So I picked this book up at Half Price Books earlier today.

It's a graphic novel version of The Divine Comedy by the famous award-winning cartoonist/artist, Seymour Chwast. Virgil and Dante are both wearing fedoras and there's stuff like typewriters and machine guns in it. So I suppose it's a little bit updated, but not too much. Also it's competely written in English. So he either translated it from the original Italian, or he might have merely pulled some pieces out of the English cliff notes version. It's very abridged, to put it mildly, but it hits the main points, e.g., magicians have their heads on backwards, sodomites get their faces erased, Judas, Brutus and Cassius are in the middle, etc.

I've read it for about 15 minutes and I'm halfway through. I am feeling a little bit healthier, but I still need my glasses to see. My favorite thing about it so far is how natural Chwast pulls it off. Dante is dressed like a gumshoe detective, the whole bit with the overcoat and Virgil is wearing a tux. It just feels right to me.

When life imitates the funny papers

I don't know how many of you read the comic strips these days, but for some reason I still read a few of them.  Some that I read are fun (Pearls Before Swine, and Pickles to name a couple), some are old habits that die hard (Prince Valiant), but others must be some type of penance or masochism (Sally Forth).

One of my self-inflicted wounds is Funky Winkerbean.  For those unaware of it, it is a long-running strip that began when the characters were in high school.  In Doonesbury-style (no, I'm not so self-destructive that I read that one), the characters have aged over the years, so that the main characters are now adults.

One thing that distinguishes Funky Winkerbean from many is its crushingly depressing subject matter.  A summary of the fun topics can be found here.  Suicide, land mines, alcoholism, date rape, to name a few.  A real morning pick-me-up.  Worst of all, the story is set in Ohio.  ;-)

The more pertinent topic to this blog, however, is about the character Les Moore (the guy on the left in the strip below.)

Over the years, readers of this fine comic strip enjoyed following Les's (first) wife, Lisa, as she struggled with breast cancer and eventually died in the comic strip in 2007. But Les is an English teacher who was also a frustrated author. Sure enough, empowered by the death of a loved one, Les wrote a book entitled Lisa's Story, chronicling his brave wife's battle. 

Hmm, that resembles a current topic for readers of this blog.  Let's see if there are any other similarities between author Les Moore of Funky and Our Hero:

- hipster goatee (check)
- glasses (not as trendy, but OK)
- pretentious (see the above comic strip -- I'd say yes)
- bullied in high school (oh yeah, mercilessly -- see the Wikipedia entry)
- book tour!  (Bingo!  In Texas, no less)
-

But Les is a bit ahead of Dreher in the promotional department.  He's already got a movie deal!! 

Straight-to-cable movie, but one can't be too fussy.  The creator then tries to get a couple of chuckles from the situation:

As one astute reviewer of comic strips says about that installment:

Ha ha, Les got a big check because his sad book about his dead wife is going to be turned into a movie on basic cable, and then he got a boner! This plot is already so much more traumatizing than I could have possibly imagined.

Sounds like something you'd read around here!

Anyhoo, if y'all will keep me posted on Dreher's hijinks (so I don't have to), I'll warn you of any more premonitions from the frames of Funky Winkerbean.