Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Duck And Cover and Webpowered Interactivity

Mallard Fillmore basically calling himself stupid...
Comics are no longer a one-way medium; reader reaction can be just as much fun as a comic itself. A good example of this is the blog Duck And Cover, which comments on one of the worst "comic" strips of all time, Mallard Fillmore. The problem I have with MF is not its conservative orientation; Prickley City, for example, is just as consistently wrongheaded politically, but at least it tries to maintain an internal logic and occasional criticizes its political heroes when they do something especially doltish. Above all, PC seems to think that being funny is more important than being political, at least part of the time; that's the difference between a comic with which I generally disagree but enjoy anyway, and Soviet-style Party Line art which noone can really like. (And when you think about it,  much of comics are about things that we don't wouldn't approve of in real life: space mercenaries, parties of adventurers tramping the countryside slaying weaker monsters, talking animals laying traps for one another. Let's not think too deeply about this!)
In contrast, MF is just a lazy strip, written to provide a conservative/corporatist point of view, consisting usually of drawings of a duck watching a TV that is saying something absurd, or of the duck pretending to read the paper about something else absurd. Sometimes the comic branches out into pictures of dinosaurs or cavemen or a person who looks stupid saying something that is stupid. Whatever the punchline may be, it is almost always "Liberlz sukk har har!" There is no attempt at plot, character or graphical creativity; it's as if a Soviet Commissar ordered Ziggy to say something every day hatin' on the capitalist running dogs (disturbingly, neither Ziggy nor MF wear pants, but at least Ziggy keeps his legs together when flashing the 4th wall.)

Today, Duck and Cover's host made an observation that led me to create the image above: yesterday's "Mallard Fillmore" directly contradicted today's. Yesterday, MF was reading something from a paper that said watching TV made kids stupid; today's had MF's protagonist watching TV (...and not just any TV, but something involving nosehair.) Inspired by this observation, I combined the text of one and the graphic of the other into the scene of duckish self-loathing above, which basically epitomizes the MF philosophy.
I support the right of MF's owner to be stupid and contradictory. It's a free country and everyone should have their chance to show what they're made of. And I support "Duck and Cover" in its quest to point out stupidity and contradictions. What a great country! What a great internet!

2 comments:

DeKay said...

That is great Rewinn, but Tinsley is so far ahead of you. All that his toon does is rehash the same images and concepts. Juxtaposition is his mainstay, yet, I do applaud you for hanging in there. Hang around a nattering drunk long enough and most of the same points will be covered from various perspectives. Regardless of exposing their own hypocrisy, denial is a very powerful mindset.

DeKay said...

That is great Rewinn, but Tinsley is so far ahead of you. All that his toon does is rehash the same images and concepts. Juxtaposition is his mainstay, yet I do applaud you for hanging in there. Hang around a nattering drunk long enough and most of the same points will be covered from various perspectives. Regardless of exposing their own hypocrisy, denial is a very powerful mindset.