Comic Strips

This week I read bits and pieces of Little Nemo, Boondocks, Peanuts, and Calvin and Hobbes. To state the obvious one of the common themes between all four of these is the idea of a child's point of view on the world that they live in. However, they do each have their own ways of exploring their imaginations or at least how they interpret their worlds.

Little Nemo's biggest concern was getting to Slumberland, and the things that happened while he was sleeping. I found it interesting how many pitfalls and road blocks he had put in his own path. It's as though Slumberland is this all-too-perfect world, and he can reach it while he's sleeping but he doesn't want to wear out his welcome there either. What's genius about this particular series is what also lends itself so well to the comic strip form: he uses the base idea of going to Slumberland but can create countless stories that fit in between falling asleep and waking up.

With the Boondocks Huey and Riley are trying to cope with bigger issues stemming from moving from Chicago to a white suburban neighborhood. However, they give complete polar opposite reactions. Huey is portrayed as the kid who is mature for his age and is well educated, while Riley wants to try to enforce his own stereotypes, going so far as to refer to himself as "Riley Escobar" and change all the street sign names in his neighborhood to make them seem less wimpy. The other half of Boondocks is the focus on how their neighbors react to them. Growing up in Suburbia, I have seen people who act in such a fashion to something that breaks the norm of their world. The half-hearted attempt at connecting with the Freeman family is quickly noticed.

Peanuts was something I even remembered reading in the newspapers; Schultz was a household name. Using a small set of characters and defining their personalities quickly through a series of four panel comics, the reader can figure out the characters really quickly, although I noticed that at least in the panels I was reading names were not used too often. The comic revolves around their small disputes within the group of characters, and their quirks and personality traits show through very quickly in each, never to change or develop out. There is almost some comfort in knowing that as much as the rest of the world changes there is always a constant in Peanuts.

Calvin and Hobbes deals more with Calvin's imagination, more importantly how overactive it is. The main problem that comes up is that he's the only one who sees Hobbes as a real, living tiger, and not just a stuffed animal. He daydreams in class about being a space pilot, fighting evil on other planets. This comic really focuses on how Calvin portrays the world, but at the same time it takes glimpses back into reality to let the reader know that he isn't just living in a fantasy world, he just prefers to be living with what he imagines to be real. The comic strip format works well with this idea since Calvin will always have fresh ideas and stories to live out as long as he still has his imagination intact. Even the day-to-day standard conversations he holds with Hobbes can keep the series interesting, because that's Calvin's norm and it feels perfectly fine to him to have things play out that way, even though his family doesn't ever seem to see Hobbes as anything more than a stuffed tiger he keeps with him all the time.

--David