The Cartoon & Poem Supplement
The Cartoon & Poem Supplement
"It’s still too heavy."
This week’s supplement is paywalled. Thanks for paying!
Poems:
“Mother” by Dorothea Lasky: Aims for eerie and ends up in a Spirit Halloween. Roses and thorns, “a kind of toying aspect” (huh?), “So many noxious animals” (huh??), all circling nothing much. “I waited two hundred years / Mother I waited there forever” shows the level of exactitude you’ll find here.
“Blue Muse of the Unborn Mind” by T.R. Hummer: A raspy country-fried look at a dead fawn. The beginning is nothing much, but the last stanza and line are a faceplant, confirming the the “sanctity of the unborn” message, which is really questionable, then taking off into some truly purple restatements of everything we’ve just read (“algae and acetones”, spare me.)
My least favorite pair of poems since I’ve been doing this. Sorry for being a grump.
Cartoons:
Here's where to find the cartoons, with credits, in order.
Cover: A fine portrait, but what is this, Time magazine circa 1940? To me, this magazine’s covers ought to 1. have little-to-nothing to do with the contents of the issue and 2. not be portraits. Certainly this isn’t enough of a standout to get away with breaking both those rules.
Pg. 9: Excellent work making the exterminator read as an exterminator without blatant signposting.
Pg. 14: Not sure if that’s supposed to look like a sabre-tooth tiger or if the whole joke is that it’s not supposed to look like one. But it’s giving “giant mole”.
Pg. 21: I swear I didn’t even realize this was Steed until after I started laughing. Best of the Week.
Pg. 26: Princesses aren’t the seven dwarves, they aren’t each defined by a single characteristic…
Pg. 29: Quite good. In the beginning, there was compulsory heterosexuality, and the Lord said, let there be low expectations, and there were low expectations.
Pg. 30: So stupid… but it’s a great drawing.
Pg. 33: A thin excuse to draw a bunch of tiny glass animals.
Pg. 35: MPJ today stands for “Meow, perpetually jetlagged.”
Pg. 38: Progress Rock.
Pg. 43: Sorry, is this Pluggers?
Pg. 44: First and last panel are kinda the same, middle panel is Jerry Seinfeld material.
Pg. 48: Very Baudrillardian… but not very funny.
Pg. 51: The Island of Doctor More Rosé.
Pg. 55: This is just the Binkley from Bloom County schtick. Kid even looks kinda like him.
Pg. 59: Not at all funny, but I like this being the last panel in the issue. It closes things out.
36 Years Ago Today
U.G.L.Y…