Closer Look Into the Comic Strip

A Closer Look into the Comic Strip

In this week’s reading we took a closer look into some well-renowned comic strip illustrators. The illustrators we looked at where Windsor McCay; best known for his “Little Nemo” comics, George Herriman; for his “Krazy Kat” comics, and who could forget “Peanuts”; created by Charles Shultz.

What separates these comic strips apart are their defining characteristics. Starting off with Windsor McCay’s “Little Nemo” it is a weird, mystical comic series in which a little boy by the name of “Nemo” is woken up and taken on an adventure. Of course, none of this is actually happening to Nemo and is most likely a dream, or is it? Some context clues that give this away that these adventures Nemo is having are nothing more than dreams is by looking at the name of the place he ventures off to; Slumberland. Not only does this place literally have the word “slumber” in it but the types of adventures he goes on, racing through space without a space suit and being able to ride a horse against a giant kangaroo. Sounds pretty farfetched to be real, right? The “Little Nemo” comics are super entertaining to read and has a cool concept for storytelling.

Secondly there is George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat”. Krazy Kat isn’t as whimsical and adventurous as “Little Nemo”. Some of the first “Krazy Kat” comics to come out where extremely short and simple; using nothing but a clear white background and simple drawings. This was probably due to the production of the comic strips as it would take a long time to make a very detailed and well-illustrated comic. Being very short, it’s hard to really tell a full story in about 4 panels of art. For that reason, it can be hard for the reader to comprehend what is going on as in “Krazy Kat” the reader is thrown in the middle of a situation with very little context clues. For example, the very first “Krazy Kat” comic strip we see a cat running away from a mouse. In the next panel, we see the mouse follow the cat and then in the panel after that they walk off screen. In the last panel, we see both the cat and mouse walking off with papers in their hands. We’re not quite sure what is happening here. Why is the cat scared of the mouse? Aren’t cats supposed to chase mice? Also, what is the paper they both get at the end and why are they happy about it? This was very confusing to comprehend and really ruined the story of the comics.

Last but certainly not least we have “Peanuts” by Charles Shultz. Shultz’ illustrations are both appealing and the stories are short but you can understand them and they are hilariously entertaining to read. That’s something that Windsor McCay and George Herriman were missing from their comic strips. Sure, Windsor McCay had sophisticated artwork and everything was in color however the artwork wasn’t as appealing as Shultz’s work. “Krazy Kat” failed at creating a storyline with a minimal number of panels whereas Shultz used up about the same number of panels for his comics but the story was more understandable. The stories that Shultz creates are so mundane but he somehow makes them very entertaining. For example, in one of the comic strips, Violet Gray called up a boy and told him to stop calling him. In the next panel, we see the boy on the phone who tells Violet that she called him. She ferociously hangs up the phone, looks at the audience as she exclaims “How come you never get a wrong number when you need one?” None of this makes sense, nobody wants a wrong number calling them?