(Robot) Comics from the Cul de Sac
The Onion AV Club has just reviewed one of my favorite new comic strips, Cul de Sac, by Richard Thompson. I’ve been watching the strip for a couple months now, and crossing my fingers and holding my breath, dreading the moment it jumps the track and turns into another boring gag machine. But so far, it has stayed on its strange and funny track, deftly illustrating the absurdity of the childhood imagination. Thompson’s drawings are scratchy and energetic, and the subtlety of his characters’ expressions give a truth and realism to the strip.
While I have been wary of trusting a new strip like this, Richard Thompson has a history of strong cartooning. His bi-weekly columnar strip, Richard’s Poor Almanack (viewable in the Washington Post, where registration is free but required), has been going for years, and draws on a sense of humor similar to Cul De Sac, except in the Almanack, Thompson is free to comment on more political or “grown-up” themes. His wit is consistent throughout. See more silliness on his great blog as well.
Another great new strip I’ve been reading comes from another version of suburbia, this time populated by robots. Perhaps not as strange or subtle as Cul de Sac, We the Robots is a beautifully-designed strip made by a veteran illustrator and animator, Chris Harding. Like the Onion AV Club reviewer above, I always like to read comics that are drawn well, and this one has the added benefit of (IMHO– you can judge for yourself) a good sense of humor.
It’s great to finally see some new strips that are going against the flow. I have a set of over 30 strips that I read online everyday, and I have my favorites. I’ll save that list for another post…
