Just When You Think the Funny Page Is Completely Worthless...
...Zits just shows up and destroys everything else on the page. Jim Borgman = killer cartoonist clearly having fun drawing. BTW: the color version is great, but the black and white version is even better. At first you just see a mass of linework, but it all reads beautifully. And it jumps out from the surrounding mess of poorly-drawn crap.
I don't mean to sound pessimistic about newspaper strips, but it's their own damned fault. Now that Eduardo Barreto is off of "Judge Parker," I'm down to reading Scott & Borgman's "Zits," Dan Piraro's "Bizarro," and Wiley Miller's "Non Sequitur." There's other stuff that's intermittently funny, but no one else (in "The Oregonian") can draw worth a damn (which ought to count for something in a visual medium).
c.
I totally agree - Zits is great. I admire the way it is drawn (dense with detail) but I am in awe of how Borgman nails the life of the young male and parents. He gets all of the subtleties; there are mornings when I laugh out loud.
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He's a very observant artist. The details are perfect, his poses are very lively and expressive. I get frustrated often with cartoonists who don't/can't take advantage of the fact that they're working in a visual medium. I could read any of Borgman's work (or Wiley Miller's, or Bill Watterson's) all day, every day, and not get tired of it. I'm somewhat forgiving of the daily grind of comic strips, but it's still no excuse to crap out work that would be as well served visually to just be Tweets instead of comic strips.
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