I'm thinking of the days

[austin_dern]

Kinokuniya (bookstore) offered a 20 percent discount to celebrate the third anniversary of its franchise at Bugis Village. This slightly alarms me because I could swear they were open in that spot in 2001. porsupah, that was the mall we found the Playful Fountain and the MOS Burger and all by your hotel; do you remember a bookstore in there? Nevertheless I took the excuse to buy that first volume of the Complete Dennis the Menace, by Hank Ketcham. I remembered, as a kid, reading old-at-that-time collections, thinking the strip used to be a lot funnier than it was (those) days, and looking through 1951-52, yes; it was a scream. The collection also has a little cloth ribbon bookmark, which is a mighty classy touch.

For supper I went to a sit-down restaurant, and got my soda and a plastic number on a tray to take and wait for my meal to be prepared. After I sat at the small table, a waiter came around and asked if I wanted him to take the tray. I was inclined to keep the tray, since it gave a couple more inches to the small, octagonal table. But he said, ``If you'd like me to remove the tray, because -- '' and I listened, interested. What would be the reason for taking the tray?

Alas, he didn't have a reason, or give one; he just stood there looking awkwardly back at me for a little while, and I gave permission to take the tray away just to get out of the uncomfortable moment. I would like to know the reason, if there is one.

Trivia: John Winthrop founded the village of Boston on 17 September 1630. Source: 365: Your Date with HIstory, W B Marsh, Bruce Carrick. (At least, he renamed Shawmut -- a name not without its charms -- after his Lincolnshire hometown this date, near as I can cross-check.)

Currently Reading: Whispers, Stuart David Schiff, Editor. Late 70s anthology of horror stories almost entirely lost on me, maybe because daytime on the equator is a bad environment in which to read horror stories, most of which seem to be set in obscure New or Old England towns on rainy evenings in the 1880s. But I think some of it is I've seen enough Twilight Zone and heard enough old-time radio dramas to spot the twist ending from about the third paragraph, and Cthulhu stories all make me giggle at the funny names. The most effective one, to me, was one about a horror fantasy artist (there's a lot of self-referential stories here, including one by Robert Bloch about Robert Bloch in therapy, that's rather fun but not horrifying) who finds weird structures in an obscure Berkshire town, and is obsessively drawn to reconstruct them in artwork for decades to come ... perhaps not coincidentally, it's loosely based on real events, according to the end notes.

Comments

[bluerain.livejournal.com]

I was startled, at ComicCon a couple years ago, to come across some old Dennis the Menace and find it was actually funny. I had not seen that coming at all; in my lifetime it has always sucked.

Of course, one can't have anything. It also contained at least one representation of a black kid that, today, would cause any paper that ran it to be justifiably picketed.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It's mighty odd to discover that any comic strip, however fossilized and antifunny, that appears in pretty much every newspaper got that way by actually earning it, for the most part, and being entertaining enough to justify that sort of distribution. I can't imagine Tiger or Tumbleweeds ever having glory days, but ... if my memories of the collections I used to read at Grandmom's are correct, Dennis the Menace was a must-read well into the 60s at least.

The preface to the Complete Dennis the Menace mentions that black kid -- Jackson, apparently. And his introduction did get protests (the preface says) in Detroit, Little Rock, and Miami, and got rocks thrown at the offices of the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch. Ketcham insisted on innocent motives (the book doesn't include the strip, but presumably will get to it someday).

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I have to concur with Austin on this. Reading an old Family Circus collection from the early 80's not long ago, I was impressed; It was never a daring or incredible strip, but it was much funnier than present- and I imagine the earliest strips had some great humor.

The only strips that I imagine started bad and kept bad are, say, "Opus" which is just Bloom County in further decline and "U.S.Acres" which is Garfield, also in further decline.

As for early, embarrasing appearances of black characters in comic strips- such as Ebony in The Spirit- I try to see them as baby steps, attempts to add diversity to the strips before it was fashionable. Without those first awkward characters, there wouldn't be Lt. Flap, Franklin, or Jump Start (and on a lesser note, Curtis, Herb and Jamaal, and The Boondocks).

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I liked the start of US Acres, actually, but it fossilized pretty quickly.

From the preface's description, the introduction of Jackson was a reasonable enough joke -- Dennis complaining to his mom, ``I've got a race problem with Jackson. He can run faster than me'' -- but the description of the artwork makes it sound like a great way to get people angry fast.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

That sounds like about par for the course. Good intentions, often good characters, but bad depictions.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Still, it does leave you wondering where the editor at the syndicate was. What's the point of an editor if not to say, ``Your intentions may be good, but this presentation will get large rocks thrown at you,'' when that's the case?