Cartoon world
The joys of Doonesbury, Family Guy and Jules Feiffer
Eamonn McCann, 17 May 2012
Typically brilliant storyline this month in Doonesbury. The best comic strip since Feiffer has Leo’s mum telling of her “best guess” that his dad was one of um-lout metal thrashers Mötley Crüe. (Did you know Mötley Crüe has sold 45 million albums? Me neither. I so didn’t know it I can’t be certain I know it now.) One positive aspect of the Doonesbury yarn is that it allows a retelling of the tale of Lois and KISS, as set out in the irreverent animated show Family Guy.
Lois and Peter had been brought together long ago by a shared devotion to the hard-rocking pantomime artistes. So when KISS-stock comes to Quahog, they have the face-paint and flamboyant leathers fetched from the attic in an instant. On the way home, they encounter the band in a diner, where it emerges that Lois had had it away at high school with at least one of the blood-boltered NY quartet. Peter susses immediately that this makes Lois the coolest woman in Quahog. He rushes to the Clam to announce to his mates that “My wife did KISS!”
Word spreads. Peter can’t walk 20 yards on Quahog Boulevard without being congratulated on his good fortune. The final scene has sudden celebrity Lois on big-time TV. “What advice do you have for young girls here tonight?” asks the presenter.
“All I can say,” replies Lois, “is that you never know who’s going to grow up famous, so just make yourself available.”
Now that’s what I call subversive.
Jules Feiffer you’ve probably never heard tell of. A typical Feiffer strip in The New Yorker from way back had two guys sipping cocktails at a Manhattan party and one asks the other, “Whaddya up to these days”. The answer comes: “I’m writing a novel.” To which the first guy responds, “Now there’s a coincidence, neither am I.”
George Galloway’s sensational result in Bradford West has prompted repeated suggestions that he recorded the biggest swing ever in a British election. Not so. The swing from Labour to Respect in Bradford was 36.59 percent.
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