Word: comical
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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FROM its title, Berke Breathed's new comic strip, "Outland," promises to take readers someplace unusual and distant every Sunday. But you've seen this before. In this case, familiarity breeds contempt...
Admittedly, there is a risk in reviewing a comic strip that has run fewer than a dozen times. Usually you wait for a cartoonist to find his rhythm and his own particular voice. But Breathed has been cartooning a widely popular strip for most of this decade, so I'm not inclined to give him the benefit of time. He has shown arrogance in flushing his successful "Bloom County" to begin this "Outland" strip. One naturally expects a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist to show us his best stuff early to quiet his critics...
...retold that event in a new way. Last Sunday the mouse and the rat kidnapped Ronald Ann in between a gang war and a rabid alleycat. Breathed's attempt to show us the variation possible in any given even is certainly an attempt to deliver modern art to the comic pages...
...integrate humor and surrealism as well as G.B. Trudeau's "Doonesbury." Breathed's "Bloom County," though funny in its commentary on 1980s culture, was basically "Doonesbury" with funny animals. By the looks of "Outland," Breathed is still playing in Trudeau's shadow. If you want artistic adventurism in the comic pages, look to Trudeau's talking cigarette or his personification of Old Man History. Or look to Zippy the Pinhead. Or look to Life In Hell. Or even to Calvin and Hobbes...
Montgomery aims to revive the laggard Harvey, which in the 1940s ranked as the top seller of comic books but last year was in the No. 4 position. Montgomery, who bought the firm from the Harvey family with money he raised from outside investors, aims to boost circulation 50% in the next two years, to 3 million. He is also eager to market the company's library of 248 motion- picture cartoons from the 1950s and '60s, which would be included in a line of videocassettes. Montgomery, who graduated last year from USC's School of Film and Television, plans...