I was going to record this as a video podcast but I’ve come down with a wicked cold. So here’s a blog post instead. I’m going to blab a bit about cartoons, so this is a good time to bail if that sounds uninteresting.

I want to talk about my new comic strip Strewth!, which has the same name as my old comic strip Strewth!, but is basically a new comic strip (called Strewth!). These ramblings are meant to explain to you why I stopped drawing the old one and started drawing the new one.

The idea behind the new strip is a simple one: I want to draw the comic strip that would have been my favorite when I was a kid. I grew up enchanted by Disney animation and funny comics like Krazy Kat, Peanuts, Pogo, Bloom County, Bone, and many others. I still read those classics all the time, and in doing so I’ve become keenly aware of the giant gap between those cartoons and what passes for funny comics today. This is not a rant against the state of comics today or any such thing, it’s just an explanation of where I am and how I got here.

All of my childhood sketchbooks and grade school notebooks are filled with drawings of funny animals. Some are from popular cartoons, some are my own creations. And yet, all of the comics I’ve drawn since “growing up” have featured snarky humans. I don’t know where I got the idea that this is what contemporary readers want, but I do admit I’ve let it stifle my work a bit. I’ve been drawing what I imagined other people wanted to read, and not always what I would have enjoyed drawing. I’m very proud of Chronicle and the first year of Strewth! was a blast, but something about it always felt a little… insincere, like I wasn’t always being creatively honest with my readers, whatever that means.

When it comes to comics, there are many ways to skin the proverbial cat. I’m not here to make broad proclamations about what they should or shouldn’t be. But as for ME, these are the new rules by which I’m attempting to play:

1. ”Webcomic” is as useless a term as “webinar” or “webisode”. I want to draw a comic.
2. Random humor is fun, but there is no shortage of it on the Internet and there are many others doing a better job creating it than I have.
3. Sincere characters, situational humor, adventure and storytelling are the best ingredients for fun entertainment, particularly cartoons.
4. Comics should take full advantage of their own medium and feature real cartoon action instead of talking heads reciting sitcom dialog.
5. There’s no reason one comic strip can’t appeal to both young people and adults, but it should never actively try to do either.

If any of these sound good to you, you might just enjoy Strewth!.

So here I am, drawing a “funny animal cartoon” of the variety which so delighted me as a kid. Instead of snarky humans, I find myself working with an arrogant frog, a cowardly fox, and a big stupid bird. But more about them soon…

I know it seems like I’m taking my sweet time getting this thing started, but trust me – it will be better for the delay. I can’t wait for the adventure to begin!

-Josh

PS – The “sample” comics on the site are fun and a pretty good indication of the feel of the strip to come, but they are not final and are not “canon.”

PPS – The website will soon have an actual design, instead of no design.

1. The Smurfs by Peyo

OK, let’s get this one out of the way. Yes, I really do like Smurf comics. They’re colorful and fun. Many American viewers were probably not aware that the Saturday morning animated Smurfs were based on a series of Belgian comics from the 60′s, but as a kid I managed to find a volume of the original stories and immediately began to regard my TV-watching American friends as boorish Philistines (nah). In what will surely be the only redeeming consequence of the upcoming release of the marketing gut-punch “The Smurfs Movie,”  Papercutz is releasing small, cheap volumes containing the best of those original stories. The first volume includes the “Purple Smurf” story which became a popular episode of the show (and which had been edited from its original version, “The Black Smurf”). Kudos to the publisher for reprinting the originals and not churning out some hipstified new aberration.

2. Blacksad by Canales and Guarnido

You can’t get much further from The Smurfs in tone and content than Blacksad. I first discovered Blacksad as a damaged French language single issue under a pile of junk at the local comic shop, and I loved it instantly. This is possibly the most beautifully drawn comic I’ve ever read. Created by Spanish artists and released by a French publisher, it deftly combines very adult stories of noir and crime with animal characters that are somewhere between Disney and Will Eisner. There is at least one English language hardcover collection available in the States. Not for kids.

3. Asterix by Goscinny and Uderzo

The French comic Asterix is fairly ubiquitous in American stores, so I’m going to assume awareness is high on this one. These books are just plain fun, though I often wonder if the English translations aren’t doing a major disservice to the writing. The artwork is completely charming, and there’s a quality to the lines in Aseterix and The Smurfs (and Lucky Luke, for that matter) that seems somewhat definitive of European children’s comics. There’s something about it that sets it apart, though I can’t quite put my finger on it. These are cheap, fun books that I would recommend for kids with an interest in comics who are not impressed with the typical American youth titles.  Also, I remember that we watched a dubbed Asterix cartoon in elementary school, and I recall being enchanted by the animation style.  However, I’ve been disappointed on revisiting other childhood favorites, so I wonder how it holds up.

4. Lucky Luke by Morris

I only recently became aware of this, apparently a beloved series in Belgium where it debuted in 1946. Like Asterix and The Smurfs, Lucky Luke is a colorful adventure comic for young people. It does, however, share something in common with Blacksad in that it mines tropes of a uniquely American genre for its subject matter. In this case, it’s the American West, and particularly the idealized version of said from classic movies and television shows.  That makes reading Lucky Luke a fascinating exercise in cultural decryption, as you parse a European cartoonist’s simplified representations of his perceptions of themes and clichés from Hollywood productions which are themselves already riffs on jokes on exaggerations on lies.  Also the pictures are funny.

Those are the European comics on my nightstand  right now. I can say honestly that they’ve all had some contribution, however minor, to the ever-brewing stew of Strewth!. Maybe you have a favorite European comic to tell us about?

But I need your help! Underneath every page in the archive you’ll find the new “TRANSCRIBE THIS COMIC” button. It will take you to our Oh No Robot page for that comic where we can record the characters, actions, and dialog which appear in it. You can search existing transcripts on Oh No Robot or right here on strewthcomic.com using the search box on the left. I’ve added a couple of pages to get us started, but I really could use your help, faithful readers.

So if you enjoy Strewth!, typing, and wasting time, this might be just the thing for you!

The original Strewth! gag comics are now back online in their entirety at gags.strewthcomic.com!

Friends, because of the birth of my daughter Gloria, I’ll be taking a brief break from Strewth!. Not for too long, I promise. We have an exciting conclusion to get to!

Hello, friends. I had really hoped to be back with new pages by this week. I have not lost interest or momentum in this project, I just have a temporarily crazy schedule and lifestyle. I’ve taken the month of August off from work so I can be at home with my wife and my baby daughter, so we can have a good foundation as a family before the fall comes and we all get busy. I’ll be watching her for half of the day during the school year, and now is my chance to learn the ropes. It’s stressful, rewarding, tiring and fun all at the same time. I just need a little more time to get comfortable to begin drawing again on a daily basis. The next pages of Strewth! are scripted and ready to be drawn, I just need to get there.

Above is a wedding invitation I recently drew for a good friend. I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to share it with my readers. Also, for those of you who have been missing Fun With Shorts, it’s my pleasure to tell you I’ve been contributing material to Rifftrax again, which is why I haven’t made a new video in a while. They’ll be announcing some of the titles soon, but for now you can check out The Galaxy Invader, a downloadable video-on-demand or DVD, to which I made a small contribution.

Back with more good stuff soon, I promise!

1. Print edition at Amazon.com
2. Digital edition at my new online store Shop.JoshWay.com

At Shop.JoshWay.com you’ll also find digital versions of my comics and downloadable videos and DVD images of all my “Fun With Shorts” and “Fun With Flicks” riffs. New video material will be available exclusively at the digital shop early in the new year.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, etc., and I’ll see you all for the next Tale of Strewth!