Mercy Killing

Please kill Prince Valiant.  Fiorella avoids even glancing at the Sunday strip anymore.The art is not only painful, but terribly dark, probably to to hide the fact that the current artist can't draw.

Fio has a history with Prince Valiant.   Even before she could read, she was mesmerized by the art--it's one of the few strips that use an illustrative style rather than the standard caricaturing. But, like the aging prince himself, the strip is way past its prime.

Time to put it down.

Funnies

Been wondering if comic strip cartoonists have a Yahoo loop going to coordinate their themes because last Sunday, characters in Doonesbury, Luann, and Sally Forth all indicated an awareness of their existences being fictional and on public  view.  Doonesbury was the most direct, talking to readers about the strip centering more on Alex and her agemates in the future.  To tell the truth, Fio will be sad if that's the case.  She wants to keep up with the, uhm, oldsters too. 

Fiorella couldn't start her day without reading the funnies, as she's done all her life, but, sadly, her children couldn't care less, which means her comic strip friends may soon be going the way of the dodo bird.  What a loss when all the world will be playing video games in which they kill each other  rather than enjoying a clever ten minutes with the comics page .

Free-range Snippets

Not only is TJ getting a makeover in Louann, but her father is too.  Both of them are beginning to look less like cartoons and more like people.
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We are all the descendants of survivors.  We've been genetically culled.
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When I am old and my brain has shrunk so much that you must institutionalize me, please provide me with a nice baby doll to cuddle when you're not there.

TJ Make-over

Remember a while back when Fiorella suggested that since Brad in the Luann comic strip had been hunk-ized, his friend TJ deserved a make-over? Well, apparently he's getting it. Fio's sharp eye noticed TJ's face has filed out a little and his curly hair is less of a tangle. His body is more proportioned too, not just a quick stick figure.

Fio has a theory. She thinks TJ's gonna end up with Ann Eiffel the Awful, the mean manager of Wienie World--a Taming of the Shrew sort of thing.

Wait and watch, Grasshopper.

Character Development

Fiorella has been following the metamorphosis of Brad with interest. You know--Brad, Louann's brother in the comic strip.

He's shaped up physically, started smiling a lot, lost that strange indentation in the back of his head, and developed a better profile. Just yesterday she notice his jaw's become more angular and masculine from the front. Yeah, our Brad is a chick magnet in the making.

Good thing too, with the lovely Toni as his girlfriend--but Fio has a feeling that his pretty new boss at Wienie World might try to stir up that pot.

Brad's Chin

Fio is a fan of Luann, the comic strip. The art fascinates her. The characters are well-drawn, their bodies at least. The heads tend to be comic-strippy stereotyped, although they do change. The evolution of Brad, Luann's older brother, has been especially interesting. From a pudgy, snub-nosed kid, he has matured into a well-built, nice-looking young man. His head first lost the odd dent in the back. Then his hair settled down a little, and his jowls receded. He developed a neck and his eyebrows thinned. Last week he had a definite ninety-degree angle to his chin. And I think his nose was a little less tilted.

Yes, our Brad is becoming a stud, a fitting mate for the lovely Toni Daytona.