Ah, the wisdom of Frazz: “Remember, kid, always do the bare minimum. That’s how I got where I am today, a grade-school janitor. But it’s also useful in other careers, such as art. Did you know syndicated cartoonists get paid the same amount whether they draw backgrounds or not?”
“Did you know syndicated cartoonists get paid the same amount whether they draw backgrounds or not?”
On another site, I’ve been reading some old comics, such as Rex Morgan and Gasoline Alley. It’s very notable how much more background there is in these older strips, for example, relative to the current Rex Morgan and Gasoline Alley strips drawn by different artists. Of course, with the shrinking size of strips in physical newspapers, all that detail would likely just be gray mud.
The Frazz cartoon above is the bonus panel from a Sunday strip, which Mallet posts online. I don’t quite understand why GoComics doesn’t include these lagniappe panels. They are obviously provided to the syndicate. But if they are only going to be provided to some of the online or dead tree readers, I can see why Jef Mallet might not want to put a lot of extra detail in there.
Frazz is also a songwriter with enough hits that he doesn’t need to work, but chooses to keep his janitor job for the inspiration.
I should consult with a comic strip historian before making this claim, but Charles Schulz seems to have been a pioneer in minimizing backgrounds. Very early Peanuts strips occasionally had a setting with walls, windows and furniture, but mostly if there was a tree or Schroeder’s piano or Snoopy’s dog house, it was there because it was required.
If you go backwards in time from Peanuts you reach the other extreme: the extremely elaborate architectural renderings of Winsor McCay’s “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and Lionel Feininger’s “Kin-der-Kids”, around 1906.
Don’t confuse GoComics with the syndicate, even though for most strips both are controlled by the Andrews-McMeel/Universal conglomerate. GC literally displays whatever image is uploaded to their server. A few weeks ago, there was some problem with Breaking Cat News and a Sunday rerun, where it didn’t get distributed properly. So GC had no strip that day, to the consternation of the BCN fans.
Why the syndicate doesn’t always include the throwaway panels, or in case of reruns sometimes has poorer quality images than ones that already ran, who can say.
I have two PUCK magazine compilation books from the 1940s or so, and there were some really elaborate cartooning in the middle of the 20th century.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Ah, the wisdom of Frazz: “Remember, kid, always do the bare minimum. That’s how I got where I am today, a grade-school janitor. But it’s also useful in other careers, such as art. Did you know syndicated cartoonists get paid the same amount whether they draw backgrounds or not?”
“Did you know syndicated cartoonists get paid the same amount whether they draw backgrounds or not?”
On another site, I’ve been reading some old comics, such as Rex Morgan and Gasoline Alley. It’s very notable how much more background there is in these older strips, for example, relative to the current Rex Morgan and Gasoline Alley strips drawn by different artists. Of course, with the shrinking size of strips in physical newspapers, all that detail would likely just be gray mud.
The Frazz cartoon above is the bonus panel from a Sunday strip, which Mallet posts online. I don’t quite understand why GoComics doesn’t include these lagniappe panels. They are obviously provided to the syndicate. But if they are only going to be provided to some of the online or dead tree readers, I can see why Jef Mallet might not want to put a lot of extra detail in there.
Frazz is also a songwriter with enough hits that he doesn’t need to work, but chooses to keep his janitor job for the inspiration.
I should consult with a comic strip historian before making this claim, but Charles Schulz seems to have been a pioneer in minimizing backgrounds. Very early Peanuts strips occasionally had a setting with walls, windows and furniture, but mostly if there was a tree or Schroeder’s piano or Snoopy’s dog house, it was there because it was required.
If you go backwards in time from Peanuts you reach the other extreme: the extremely elaborate architectural renderings of Winsor McCay’s “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and Lionel Feininger’s “Kin-der-Kids”, around 1906.
Don’t confuse GoComics with the syndicate, even though for most strips both are controlled by the Andrews-McMeel/Universal conglomerate. GC literally displays whatever image is uploaded to their server. A few weeks ago, there was some problem with Breaking Cat News and a Sunday rerun, where it didn’t get distributed properly. So GC had no strip that day, to the consternation of the BCN fans.
Why the syndicate doesn’t always include the throwaway panels, or in case of reruns sometimes has poorer quality images than ones that already ran, who can say.
I have two PUCK magazine compilation books from the 1940s or so, and there were some really elaborate cartooning in the middle of the 20th century.