Blog

(Click any of the images to zoom in on them.)

Dr. Hibbert: Welcome to Mensa! You join such luminaries as cartoonist Mell Lazarus, Geena Davis, and Parade Magazine’s Marilyn vos Savant.

Prof. Frink: Each the tops in his or her field.  Err, except for Mell Lazarus.

— “The Simpsons”

Following in the quirky Dik Browne-Bil Keane-Jimmm Davis tradition of alternative name spelling, Reuben Award winner Mell Lazarus is one of comicstripdom’s more prolific creators.  From 1957 to 2002, he wrote and drew the daily strip Miss Peach, and Momma has been around since 1970.

Longtime readers of Momma, which relates the dysfunctional relationship between shrewish septogenarian Sonja Hobbs and her three good-for-nothing children, may be surprised to learn that Momma is the villain of her strip.  She’s always been the nagging harpy, of course, but since her name is in the title I always figured that she was supposed to be the hero and her worthless spawn were the villains.  Not so, says Lazarus; Momma is purposefully overbearing; she’s supposed to be the personification of everyone’s nagging mother.  Lazarus adds that he initially launched the strip “out of boredom… and [in homage to] my mother, who was driving me happily crazy, bless her soul.”

In an article about his comic strip Edge City, which features a Jewish family, artist Terry LaBan says of Momma that “[Momma is] an example of a character that everyone knew was Jewish, although it has never been mentioned.”  Lazarus’ view on the subject is evident in the following exchange:

Q: Since Momma appears to be the quintessential Jewish mother, do you ever get criticized for propagating the stereotype?

Lazarus: Oddly enough, no. I’ve heard that she suggests the stereotype, but I’ve never been criticized for it. A lot of readers have suggested she represent the universal mother figure. [italics added]

Accused of being “ageist, sexist and anti-Semitic”, Lazarus laughs: “That’s a remarkable thing to accuse me of since I am an aging Jew who loves women.”

One perhaps wouldn’t mind if Lazarus were a bit ageist, sexist, or anti-Semitic, since a little edge might make his strips funny, or at least pitiable.  As it stands, Momma is bland — that’s not a crime, of course, but it’s also occasionally incomprehensible, which is when it leaps off the comics page and into the realm of my jurisdiction.  Let’s take a closer look at the above comic.

In Momma‘s defense, the selected strip is a departure from the norm.  Typically, Momma is berating her worthless offspring, dreaming of their ruin or spurning their ridiculous attempts at filial affection.  Today, she’s got a gentleman caller, and her children are nowhere to be seen.  Is Sonja preparing to move on with her life and rediscover the romantic spark of her youth?

Panel 1: A well-dressed man (or perhaps a potato salesman) stands at Momma’s front door, two strands of hair peeking from beneath the hat he has discourteously allowed to remain on his head.  He has the portly small stature common to adults in Momma’s world, but otherwise there is nothing in the way of physical attributes to distinguish him from an infant.  “Hello, Mrs. Hobbs,” he says.  “Are you ready to go on our dinner date?”

Even before Momma replies, we can infer something about their relationship.  This man is taking her on a date, but sees fit to remind her of that fact, as if he didn’t dare count on her remembering who he is and why he’s there.  Perhaps he’s reminding her about their date as a way of confirming that the date exists, that they’d made plans, that it was something she had agreed to.  “Our” dinner date probably refers to a mutually agreed-upon appointment; either that or he’s using the plural possessive pronoun on purpose to endow the date with a sense of mutuality it may not actually have.

Say, for instance, that it’s taken a fair amount of wheedling for this man (we’ll call him “Nermy” for lack of a name) to get Momma to agree to the date.  By calling it “our dinner date” it implies that it’s an event that will be shared between them; compare this to saying “Are you ready for me to take you out tonight?”

Notice, however, the lack of genialities.  “Hello, Mrs. Hobbs,” Nermy says.  No “how are you,” no “you look lovely,” and certainly no flowers or other token gifts.  This doesn’t mesh with the profile of a man who’s been trying for a while to get Momma out of the house — so perhaps that’s not the case at all.

What if Momma and Nermy were set up?  It’s certainly reasonable that Momma’s good-fer-nuthin kids would try and hook their midget mother up with a homeboy in order to lighten her spirits and deflect her attention from their own shortcomings.  But who would do such a thing?  Certainly not lazy Francis, and probably not the gawky Marylou, whose only interaction with the male of the species is inebriated and with her holes all filled.  No, the likely culprit is Thomas, the happily-married-closeted-gay whose wife has never met Momma’s muster.  “You see,” Thomas is saying, “it’s not that easy to find a soul mate.  I’ve done just fine.  Now if only she had a penis.”

Hands drooping at his side, harelip curling in disgust, straw-hair posing a poking hazard, Nermy slouches at the front door and dutifully engages the enemy.  In this light, “our dinner date” is a deflection of responsibility: we’re in this mess together.  Similarly dispossessed, Momma slouches right back.  “One moment,” she says, with the squinty glare she uses to advertise Francis’ shortcomings to the world.

Panel 2: Nermy, either mentally retarded or stoned out of his gourd, slowly sways on Momma’s front porch, not noticing that she’s walking away from him.  His hair starts to wilt, and what may be clouds of marijuana smoke drift above his head.  Momma, her jaw set, is determined to see the night through, and Thomas will have a tongue-lashing later.  Probably not the kind he’d like, either.

Panel 3: Momma’s back, wearing her trademark two-by-four hat, clutching a handbag and stumbling in a set of clogs six sizes too big.  She looks for all the world like a girl playing dress-up, if the girl were an angry wrinkled dwarf with no torso.   Nermy’s expression seems to have changed, though from what to what I couldn’t tell you.  “Let’s go,” Momma says, and looks as if she’s going to linebacker right through Nermy if he doesn’t move his doughy ass out of the way.

And that’s the end of the strip, Lazarus’ signature adorning the east wall with a flourish, his pride seeping through the lazily-applied halftone.  Where’s the joke?  What’s the punch line?  What the hell is this?

There may be some humor in the determination with which Momma takes to the date, her eyes glazed with smoldering fury, as if angry that her sad life has turned to this low pursuit — dinner with a fattie!  But the more likely explanation is that the strip is a wry comment on females and their preoccupation with preparation.

See, Momma’s wearing her typical watermelon dress when she opens the door.  She’s not ready to go out just yet.  But when Nermy arrives, all that it takes for her to get ready is her hat, handbag and shoes.  There’s no hour-long makeup session; there’s no perm or curlers; there’s no bikini wax.  Old people are sensible, says Lazarus; they’re simple, down-to-earth and serious.

But how do we know that Nermy hasn’t been standing there for an hour while Momma whittled those clogs from scrap lumber?  He doesn’t seem like the assertive type that’ll call her on it; he barely seems like he’s seen the evening past the carefully rehearsed speech in Panel 1.  Panel 3 could be Six Hours Later for all we know.  Look at the shading on the wall: it could be daytime in Panel 2, and night in Panel 3.  (And, logically, before sunrise in Panel 1.)  The strip might be a commentary on how slowly old people do everything.

Again, if this is the intended joke, it hinges dangerously on the public’s understanding of the preconception about women and the time they take getting ready for a date.  Wasn’t that prime Donna Reed Show material?  Nowadays, getting ready for a date means putting in your diaphragm.

Here’s the original again:

So, if I’m going to fix this to retain what I presume is the original punch line, I’ll do it thusly:

Panel 1:
Nermy: “Hello, Mrs. Hobbs.  Are you ready to go on our dinner date?”
Momma: “Just about.  One second.”

Panel 2: Momma walks away.
Nermy: “Take your…”

Panel 3: Momma’s back already!
Nermy: “…time.”
Momma: “Outta my way.  We’re late for the buffet.”

As I look over the strip again, another possibility creeps into my head: is it possible that Nermy’s shocked expression in Panel 3 is a reaction to the silly shoes that staid, homely Sonja Hobbs is wearing?  I’d attributed the clunky clogs to Lazarus’ inability to draw dress shoes on a dwarf, but it’s possible that she’s wearing something so outlandish that it’s meant to be the punch line.  Look at her!  She actually wants to go outside in those things!  On a date, no less!

Historically it’s been unwise to attribute a joke to what is more likely poor draftsmanship, but I’ll make it work:

Panel 1:
Nermy: “Hello, Mrs. Hobbs.  Are you ready to go on our dinner date?”
Momma: “One moment…”

Panel 2: Momma walks away.

Panel 3: Momma’s back, wearing clogs.
Nermy: “Are we going clogging?”
Momma: “Any cracks about my hat and they’re going right up your ass.”

I think it’s best, in this case, to make a clean break from whatever the addled Lazarus may have initially conceived and make this funny at all costs.

Panel 1:
Nermy: “Hello, Mrs. Hobbs.  I’m here from the colon therapy clinic.”
Momma: “Let me just get my things.”

Panel 2: Momma stalks off.

Panel 3: Momma’s back.
Nermy: “We can do the flush here if you prefer –”
Momma: “This is the closest I get to a date anymore, so don’t get fresh.”

Until next time… I’ll see you in the funny papers.

— August, 2004

(Back to Comic Strip Doctor index.)

Our examinations of The Wizard of Id and Crock lead naturally to Johnny Hart’s prehistoric masterwork, B.C. Amazingly, 2004 marks the forty-sixth year of the caveman-themed strip. Johnny Hart, co-creator of Id, has for the last twenty years been devoted to the zealous ideal of bringing the occasional vague Christian symbol to the comics page. In the following strip, originally published on 11/10/03, he has created the medium’s most ridiculous excuse for social commentary:

(Click the image to zoom in.)

In the first panel, a character (presumably the titular caveman B.C.) climbs a hill towards an outhouse precariously perched at the summit. It is night, and a crescent moon in the sky matches the moon cut-out on the outhouse door.

B.C. enters the outhouse, and decides to violently slam the door behind him: the word SLAM appears vertically between the first and second panel. In the second panel, the outhouse sits still beneath the moon as B.C. presumably struggles with his digestive efforts. In the third panel, B.C.’s voice rises from the outhouse: “Is it just me, or does it stink in here?”

At first glance, this strip seems to make little to no sense as a work of humor. This is the first indication that it may, instead, be intended as a work of social commentary; after all, political cartoons are rarely humorous.

This strip has elicited a fair amount of controversy, which I’ll touch on later. First, let’s try and figure out the joke. Hart doesn’t give us a lot of choices. The outhouse stinks; that much is clear. Does it stink because B.C. dropped a monster load, and therefore it’s funny (ironic) that he’s complaining about it? Or does it just stink in general, like outhouses do, and B.C. should have known that — why is he surprised, in other words?

Although Hart is not as lazy an artist as Mell Lazarus or the wizards behind Id and Crock, his idea of humor typically means setup-punchline, often in two panels, with little action and usually a fourth-wall expression at the end that implies a rimshot somewhere offstage.  There’s certainly precedent to argue that this strip is simply stupid. But the strip-as-bad-joke explanation leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Why is it night? Why does B.C. slam the door? Why do cavemen need outhouses?

The third of these concerns is the most easily addressed. B.C. is an anachronous strip. (For the last several weeks, the characters have been playing golf.) Although I have personally never seen an outhouse in a strip before, the characters do share a universe with archaic versions of telephones, dictionaries, unicycles and crucifixes, as well as references to power tools, white-out and X-rated movies (not all in the same strip). The presence of the outhouse is no more bizarre than a joke-dispensing rock with a foot-pedal.

The crescent moon, of course, is a common outhouse symbol — originally, apparently, a star was used for the male privy and a crescent for the ladies (back when not everyone was necessarily literate). The crescent and star are also symbols of Islam, dating to the 1453 conquering of Constantinople by the Turks, who adopted the ancient Sumerian symbols of night as their religious icons. It is this second interpretation of the crescent moon symbol that has thrust this rather stupid strip into a fierce debate.

Islamic groups accused the above strip of harboring an anti-Muslim message, claiming that the use of the crescent moon, coupled with the vertical (or “I”-shaped) arrangement of the word “SLAM”, indicated that Hart was referring to Islam as something that “stinks”. According to their interpretation, character B.C. was claiming that “something stinks” in the religion of Islam.

Since the 1980s, Hart has used his internationally syndicated comic strip as a vehicle to share his political and ideological viewpoint with the masses, as is his right, and as have many other comic artists before and since. Hart is particularly known in the fundamentalist Christian community as a standard-bearer, filling his Sunday strips in particular with Christian verse, iconography and thematic material.

Given that some fundamentalist Christian organizations have a history of thinking poorly of Islam, the “offensive” interpretation seems like it might hold water. It certainly explains the nighttime setting (which, requiring the application of halftones, takes more time to draw than daytime, so there must have been a reason) and the odd way that B.C. slammed the outhouse door.

In a Slate interview, Hart commented on one of his frequent gags, the character of Fat Broad beating a snake with a club:

I used to have her up in the air with her club always beating. And then after a while I figured probably by now everybody knew! Now I substitute a panel that says, Wham, wham, wham, wham! … A lot of times we draw more than we need to draw. It’s always really classy to let the reader in on it, let him do most of the work.

Hart explains here the concept of using sound effects instead of showing an action — this is a common device that he uses. He likes to show very little, and let the reader interpret the action (in the interview he likens it to using your imagination while listening to a radio show). While I understand and appreciate the technique, drawing the word “SLAM” or “WHAM” as a part of a joke seems lazy. As Hart says later in the interview, “I was tired of drawing her beating up on the snake!”

So it’s certainly possible that the “SLAM” in the above strip is not a slam on Islam, but rather sloppy storytelling. However. Hart has drawn a syndicated comic strip for nearly fifty years. He’s sold millions of books and presides over an empire. He’s gotten away with saying whatever he wants (and getting very, very celebrated by Christian groups who call him all sorts of nice things for being so brave) for a very long time, and even weathered the Los Angeles Times pulling him entirely after a controversial Easter strip featuring a menorah burning down into a crucifix. He still says whatever he wants in his strip, as is his right to do, even when it doesn’t jibe with what is generally acceptable in our culture. (Editors nationwide pulled a strip on January 19 that featured two cavemen discussing unseen Asian brothers who fail in their attempt to build a working airplane. The punchline: “Two Wongs don’t make a Wright.”) He is celebrated for taking a conservative, fundamentalist view of the world.  It has become his bread and butter — Christian audiences will defend him because of his message, not because of the quality of his product.

I think remembering not to fall asleep in his oatmeal is higher on Hart’s list of things to do than being subversive:

Talk about a lapse. We did the same [Wizard of Id] gag within a two-month period.  And nobody caught it! Well, see, it wasn’t like we wrote out the gag and then did it and forgot to throw it away, and then did it again—it wasn’t that at all. We rethought it up again, you know, and sent it to Brant [Parker] and Brant did it both times! … Because it was a short span of time, it was almost word for word.

But I think he drew up the above strip not thinking that there was anything wrong with it. After all, Muslim terrorists attacked our country a few years ago! Clearly, any reasonable person must agree that something stinks in Islam, right? We’re a solid, Christian nation, and my readers know that Islam is bad.

Asked about the outhouse strip this week, Hart denied that it was about Islam at all. He said that interpretation stunned him.

“My goodness. That’s incredible. That’s unbelievable!”

…According to Hart, the joke was about the ambiguous authorship of a bad smell. The SLAM, Hart said, was simply there to show that the caveman had walked into the outhouse. The crescent moons were there to indicate it was nighttime, and because outhouses have crescent moons.

“This comic was in no way intended to be a message against Islam — subliminal or otherwise,” he said. “It would be contradictory to my own faith as a Christian to insult other people’s beliefs. If you should have any further silly notions about malicious intent from this quarter, you can save yourself a phone call.”

Notice the subtle way he wove the mention of his Christianity in there? Isn’t it enough that it be against one’s ethics to insult other people’s beliefs? Mentioning Christianity certainly doesn’t clarify the issue — it muddles it, given fundamentalist Christianity’s uneven track record in respecting Islam.

But we’re here to talk about comic strips, not religion. Let’s fix this strip, shall we?

Panel 1: B.C. walks into outhouse. SLAM!
Panel 2: Silence in the outhouse.
Panel 3: B.C.: “Next time, unzip AFTER slamming the door.”

Until next time… I’ll see you in the funny papers.

— May, 2004

(Back to Comic Strip Doctor index.)