The Art of the Comic Strip

Comic strips have been a very old tradition in newspapers that everyone seems to enjoy. My mom and dad both have stories about how they always use to love reading them every Sunday morning while they ate breakfast. My dad always says that he had to wake up very early and fight for them because his sisters would always want to read them too. Even now I love comic strips a lot. Though there are so many things about them that I like, their simplistic style and unique, but most of the time quite frankly odd, characters, I love the funny situations and humor in comic strips (as I'm sure most people do). Because I have a little project that I'm hopefully going to start (my very own comic strip), I think it would be beneficial to analyze what makes a comic strip tick and try to apply it to my own little project. (Now let me note that everything following this for the most part is going to be my interpretations of looking at comic strips and reading some of their history. This is not fact, however art is never really based on fact anyway.)

Characters. Much like graphic novels, comic strips have to have distinguishable characters to start. These characters must be recognizable in both speech and appearance. Nothing's worse then all the characters looking the same and speaking the same way. I have unfortunately tried to read comics like that, granted they were done in black and white, and I ended up twisting the story around and turning the bad guy into the good guy and the good guy into the bad guy. I became so confused that the plot didn't make any sense, and I ended up giving up on the book. I later realized my mistake when I read a summary of the book and when I looked at some colored pictures of the characters. But still that really shouldn't happen in a short comic strip especially if they are only updated once a week because it takes the reader a longer amount of time to adjust and learn the characters.

Story. Like virtually anything, there has to be a somewhat appealing story, not necessarily very active, where the characters can be put in many different situations, and yet still keep a very general plot.Garfield is a good example because the story line is basically his "journey" through life and his "obstacles" whether they are that it's too hot outside or about Odie or one of the other characters. Garfield's plot line (if you can really call it that) allows Jim Davis to create so many situations with just a few characters and a simple premise that he can virtually go on forever writing the comic. However, some comic strips don't have much of a continuous story like those often found in the Sunday paper. Instead they are a panel or two, sometimes more, about a funny or weird situation. The Far Side by Gary Larson does that where there is not a distinct story (or at least from the many, many comics that I have seen), but he illustrates lots of different situations that might come to people's heads (or even just his own head) and just comes up with a funny way of drawing it without much background to the story because of it's simplicity. Basically, there needs to be a simple story that anyone who has never seen or heard of it can pick it up and understand what is happening in that particular comic strip.

Cartoon Style. All comic strip artists must have a distinct style that will separate them from the rest of the comics out there. The style is often very exaggerated and nothing close to realism. There may be realistic elements in the comic strips, but it is made kind of like the characters where if you see it you know it. The styles have a very big range in how close to and far from realism that they want, and what I see is that the story and characters often decide whether to make it more realistic or not. For example, Hobbes, the tiger from Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, is a lot more realistic than Snoopy in the Peanuts by Charles Schultz which I believe that it might be because Watterson would want to make it stuffed animal Hobbes easily distinguishable between real life Hobbes. Whereas Snoopy is a real dog and there is not question about it. Of course the style of the comic strip does depend entirely on the artist and their abilities and style in which they draw other things. But style does matter and it is the visual attraction that comic strips have.

I know that these things are not the only things that make up a comic strip, but those are what I consider the main things just because of how general they are and every comic strip has them. They are kind of like the core of every comic strip, even most (if not all) comics. Once again this is all my opinion, and I could go on and on about this, but I am not. So for all those that would like to become a comic strip artist or anything close to it. These are the things that need to be in it, and don't stop reading comics. But who am I to tell you? I haven't even done one yet. Let your creativity run rampant and hope that something good comes out (that's what I always do)!