Snow and fashion

Image © Michael Chevy Castranova 2015

 

I’ve never been to Finland, so I can’t explain, really, how these latest chapters of “Slipped” have come to be set there.

It’s an opportunity to introduce some new characters (such as Johan Aatu, above). Also, I did think it would be a nice change to have the Scarlet Sparrow wearing a bit more clothing than she has of late. The frumpy sweater she has on now, I imagine, won’t last as it’s not very, well, adventurous. But she probably won’t be as minimally dressed as today’s JessicaJones — it’s the 1920s, after all.

And I’ve lived in snow belts most of my life, so I understand snow as a significant factor in a community’s life.

But it just seems to be where we are — somewhere different.

That’s one of things I wanted in this strip — that sense that it goes all over, geographically, but still is one continuous story. As it was with “Terry andthe Pirates” and “Little Orphan Annie,” two of the best newspaper adventure strips. Like most of the run of “Doctor Who,” from the beginning.

Terry gets on a boat or in a plane, Annie gets kidnapped (again), the Doctor steps out of the TARDIS and next thing you know, bam, you’re somewhere new and who knows what comes next  ….

A new monster in ”Slipped”

© Michael Chevy Castranova 2015

One of the great things about those 1930s and 1940s comic strips was you often didn’t know at first if new characters were friends or foes. Think of “Terry and the Pirates.”
You see a lot of that in Doctor Who, too — at least, back before it lost its way over the last season.
So in chapter 349 of “Slipped,”  the Scarlet Sparrow and her sister, Mendacity, are brought against their will by chrono-bounty hunter Cartier Tour to a creature who calls himself/itself Delacroix.
Tyler somehow identifies him as looking like her old nemesis Dargelos, whom she defeated a few years ago. Maybe during their last battle she got a look at how Dargelos really is — rather than how he usually appeared, as a handsome man similar in appearance to Marcello Mastroianni.
So take a gander at “Slipped.” Let me know what you think.

Neil Gaiman

An amazing confluence: Neil Gaiman announced he’s completed his Doctor Who TV script — an award-winning comic-book, short-story and children’s-book writer (top prizes from both this country and Britain) penning a story for my all-time favorite TV show.

You can see Gaiman talk about The Graveyard Book, his love for the horror in the comic books he read as a child, and how he doesn’t worry about about being taken seriously as a writer here, on the BBC site.

Fred the Clown

Several of the chapters in Roger Langridge’s “10 Steps to Happiness,” in his 2004 Fred the Clown book, are hysterical — particularly “Alphabet,” going from Fred the Amorous to Fred the Zoophyte (Langridge loves his word play); “Where the Smart Things Ain’t,” his play on Where the Wild Things Are with giant Pogo characters in pursuit of the protagonist; and especially “The Shoulders of Giants,” with its nod to Buster Keaton, Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Harold Lloyd, et al.

This last story in particular has a plot and a message rather than just another custard pie and a good gag.

Also attesting to Langridge’s talent are his variations on Peanuts, Garfield, Family Circus, The Phantom, Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, the Yellow Kid, Krazy Kat, Blondie, the Hulk … and even Shakespeare. His brilliant essay on the Fred the Clown comic strip, by comics historian “Helvetica Darwin,” demonstrates his knowledge of newspaper strip legacy. (And it carries a laugh-out-loud final punchline.)

And I was delighted to see his inside reference to Doctor Who.

On the other hand, there’s a wide streak of truly unfunny incontinence jokes — no pun intended — that’s hard to ignore.

But maybe not all the stories are intended to play well with others. They bring a laugh, a pie in the face … and occasionally some really dumb, infantile jokes. Just like the socially troubled Fred himself.

Splat.