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Today’s Dennis
October 5, 2009 3:15 pm
Today’s Dennis The Menace panel. Is this a swipe at prime time and cable cartoon shows? My caption would’ve been: “I remember when Cartoon Network ran Cartoons!“ |
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EVENTS
RECENT BREW TV EPISODES By Sitji Chou. A man tries to understand the futility of creating human connections when they’ve been impeded by the microcosmic void between material particles.  By Nikolas Ilic. A story of a Scottish sheep farmer who shears his sheep and tosses them cliff side…  By Dylan Hayes. Lesson 1: Everyone gambles, not everyone loses. Lesson 2: The world is full of traps. Lesson 3: You cannot win if you don’t take risks.  By Jean Yi. A personal and humorous exploration of being the ‘Nice Girl’ and coming to terms with the label and all its different meanings.  By Ferg Brennan. A lonely fisherman catches an unusual fish, which he decides to keep as a pet. |
Yes, your caption is better!
Interesting. In a recent conversation with a producer at Warner Bros. Animation, an individual recently communicated the same to me, but in reference to comic books.
Actually for today’s day and age, I’d switch their roles, having his dad walk of saying, “I remember when cartoons were for adults!”
Is that supposed to be a cartoon Papa Menace is watching? Perhaps he’s watching the hot new Fox animated series “Bringing Up Father”? What exactly is “adult” about two dapper parents toasting over a baby’s head? Is this Hank Ketcham’s assistants’ take on “Family Guy”? Do they even own a TV?
The Comics Curmudgeon is going to have a field day with this one.
Yes, I, too, remember a time before Betty Boop.
Wait what?
I hope this isn’t a knee jerk response to the many inroads that animation has made in expanding beyond the kid audience. I think the ‘I remember when Cartoon Network ran cartoons’ caption, and would be far more fitting for how things are. Having said that, i also find that comics have been largely aimed at adults since Frank Miller, and Alan Moore shook things up back in the mid 80’s, and while there are still comics aimed at kids, they usually get ignored by the masses.
how about
‘He has narcolepsy accompanied by galloping incontenance let’s get out of here’
I remember when Hank Ketcham’s ghosts drew better.
Dennis has fetal alcohol syndrome! Joey has scurvy! Dennis’ dad has become Asian! There’s even a bonsai tree on the old school CRT TV.
I remember a time when comics were funny…
Huh? How can you tell they’re cartoon characters on the tube — they look like goofy actors contiguous with the ‘real’ characters in the living room.
Some pretty funny comments, folks.
What bugs me is that Dennis is trapped in some weird time-warp where he’s wearing the same outfit he’s had on since Ike was President while Joey sports a crude approximation of current garb. Then again, Joey is doing some screwy thing with his hands that’s probably a gang signal …
Why does the guy on TV look like a fatter version of Dennis’s dad?
And I remember when Dennis the Menace was funny. Oh…wait…no, it never WAS funny, was it?
“I remember when this comic strip didn’t suck!”
+1 to Thad
Dennis is the perpetual 6 year old. So when exactly does he remember cartoons being for kids? 6 months ago?
They could have made the cartoon on the TV better; more stylized/minimalistic. Henry could be watching live action for all we know. We only know dad is watching cartoons becasue the caption says he’s supposed to be. I haven’t read Dennis in ages but if the other modern gags are like this, I’d say the panel’s on cruise.
Yes, Nick, The Comics Curmudgeon saw it and sayeth:
http://joshreads.com/?p=4621
Fittingly served between slices of those other golden moldies “Mark Trail” and “Apartment 3-G.”
No “ghosts,” as such, on DENNIS THE MENACE, at least not in the sense that others are drawing the cartoon while Hank Ketchum continues to sign his name to it. Ketchum died in 2001 and since then the daily strip has been openly credited to Marcus Hamilton. (The Sunday DENNIS strip has been drawn for many years by Ron Ferdinand.)
Some of Ketchum’s 1950s DENNIS panels are funny stuff, produced back in a day when the kid was allowed to live up to his nickname.
I’m just going to come right out and say what needs to be said, bluntly and evidently.
This comic is ignorant and off base. If I hear from one more misled idiot who thinks that animation is inherently for children, i’m going to lose my mind.
This comic’s current writers Ron Ferdinand and Marcus Hamilton have proven themselves out of touch with the topic addressed here and are guilty of baseless ignorance on a subject they know nothing about.
This particular date’s strip is moronic, insulting and would have been much better off never having been produced. Shame on them attempting to pass this off as funny, or even based in amy kind of reality.
In response to Nick Nadel’s comment:
I don’t think the caption is referring to the age difference between “for kids” and “for adults.” I think Dennis is referring to animation between “for kids” and “for the family.” He’s trying to say that cartoons meant for kids should be catered and exclusive to those of his age group.
Dennis needs an Uncle Grandpa.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LvIG7MDSys
This was produced at Cartoon Network and it’s a CARTOON!
Joey kinda looks like a Nazi skinhead, with the shaved scalp and what looks like a Hitler moustache. Or maybe he just likes the keyboardist from Sparks.
Washington Post columnist Tom Shales goes off on The Cleveland Show as “the mass-media equivalent of peddling smut to kids”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092804049.html
Shales’ cluelss, stuffy review of CLEVELAND makes it sound hilarious, which I don’t think was his point. Wait – maybe he’s being clever and he actually loves the show and wants us to watch it.
“Man, this is worse than that time Mom wouldn’t let me run through the sprinkler naked.”
“I remember when cartoons were for kids.”
Yes, I remember Eveready Harton.
This comic was so un-funny I thought it was Family Circus at first.
Another example of why comic strips should be killed off after 40 years.
I consider the daily DENNIS THE MENACE panel to be a genuine piece of art, and I believe Marcus Hamilton is every bit the equal of Hank Ketcham. DENNIS–whose target audience is and has always been pre-teen kids–is set in a netherworld–it always has been, by the way–set somewhere in the ’50s-’60s (Dennis still idolizes Cowboy Bob!) in which all of the design elements must fit together. I believe the caption refers to the non-kid-friendly primetime cartoons (mostly Fox, but including all recent animated series from other networks) which are animated only in the sense that they are not live action, designed only in the sense that the characters have black holding lines around them so the colors don’t all run together, and written only in the hope of causing the 17-29 year olds watching to snort beer through their noses. Had Hamilon actually chosen to draw, say, Simpsons or Family Guy characters on the screen, it would have been jarring for both reasons: it would place DENNIS in the real world, and it would violate the homogenous design of the panel. For me, Hamilton’s DENNIS as well as BLONDIE (moreso under Stan Drake, but to some extent to Drake’s successors Jim Raymond, Denis LeBrun and John Marshall as well) can justifiably bear comparison to the artistic beauty of those strips’ originators (Ketcham and Chic Young, respectively–and respectfully as well). Precious little on today’s comics pages–where the likes of DILBERT and its ilk pollute the waters–deserves close examination as drawing, and I for one am glad that “comic strips should be killed off after 40 years” remains only the smartass reaction of somebody who’d enjoy seeing his readers snort beer through their noses.