COLLUSION IN THE COMICS

I suspect Darrin Bell in Candorville lately of colluding with Stephen Pastis in Pearls Before Swine as they both tried by satiric means to make a case for the value of comics in newspapers, attacking the bailout industry at the same time. If they’re not colluding (in a nice way, of course), how else can we explain the appearance of Dennis the Menace in both strips on the same date, each strip offering an aspect of the same gag?

 

By the end of the sequence in Candorville, the attack has shifted from the abuse of bailouts to the alleged cause of comics’ losing readers — the tepid nature of comic strip comedy — with testimony from website comics characters, who tend to be less timid in their hilarities.

Bell’s criticism of newspapers’ treatment of comics was more direct earlier in the series when Doctor Manhattan from The Watchmen murmurs observations about newspapers and comics as he moves through time. In “February 1895,” he is watching Joseph Pulitzer adding to his paper “the very first comic strip [in order] to tempt young readers to buy his newspaper.” In April 2009, he watches himself “explain to a congressional committee why the newspaper industry is dying.” In March 2009, he watches “an editor who just dropped a full page of comics wonder why young people won’t buy his paper.”