Meeting comic royalty and other subjects 3/1/19

Last week the creators of the Lockhorns, with millions of readers around the world, sat down to lunch with us, the creators of The New 60, with a worldwide audience of … you guys. They said it’s a tough business to break into but they thought we’d be able to. So a warning to every one of the more than 12 newspapers that still exist in America, we’re coming for your funny pages!

Onto the comics. The first was inspired by John’s wife Linda, who actually brought home a pizza with cauliflower crust. Now I know carbs are evil, but cauliflower? And this is from a guy who has veggie burgers and veggie bratwurst (I kid you not) in his freezer. There’s also frozen pigs in blankets as well as real burgers, but that’s off topic so fuggedaboudit.

The second comic is inspired by a book of Doonesbury comics about our president, titled: SAD! In it one particular strip featured two characters walking, but they were in black and white. The inside joke (what John refers to as inside baseball) was that the colorist was on strike. Then they got a new colorist and all the colors were wrong, red snow, orange smoke coming out of a smokestack, etc. It’s actually amazingly disconcerting. Finally the old colorist comes back and all is back to normal. It also may have been inspired by Network, whcih we both saw. Network takes you behind the scenes at a newscast before it goes on air, and then you see it on air. It’s a cool technique.

In this strip, John reveals a secret the casual reader of comic books never notices. Inside baseball, if you will. All the characters have only three fingers. That’s the way it is. Think about it. You can point, gesture, think, do anything you want to do without all those other annoying fingers. Plus each frame is such a small space no one would notice anyway. Until now. Now you know. So sue us. Actually don’t. We don’t have that much money. We’re not exactly the Lockhorns now are we?

Okay let’s all wave goodbye with our five fingers and we will see you next week.

The New 60