My childhood comic strip love was when I discovered a giant stack of like ten years of National Lampoon magazines (early 70s through early 80s, when they were good). Son o’ God, Foto Funnies, Trots and Bonnie, Dirty Duck, Cheech Wizard… Twas verily the schiznickety.
3 Likes
I think of Garfield as a “starter comic” to get kids into reading comic strips. Looking back at old collections I can’t say that many of the jokes feel particularly inspired to my adult self, but 30-something years ago I couldn’t read enough of them.
It’s going to be Max Landis.
This is according to Max Landis.
I’ve got an 8yo too, and I teach him that appropriate language standards vary with the company he’s keeping. So if he swears with his friends when they are on their own out of earshot of adults, I think that’s fairplay. If he’s heard swearing by an adult and gets in trouble, he’s in trouble with me too.
If he called up the editor of a newspaper and left a message calling the guy a “shithole”, there’d be a personal apology and no minecraft for a month.
Edit:
Well OK if my wife put him up to the whole thing then I’d let it slide with an apology.
2 Likes
Agreed. The 8 year old me (comic reading, rebel) applauded the kid’s panache.
Yeah - that’s the time and place thing I was referring.
I guess I am mixed on this. I love the kid reading him the riot act, and am glad it’s not my kid in the spotlight.
2 Likes
My stern judgements on the kid’s actions were greatly modulated by the discovery that his Mum was supervising the whole thing. Probably a few red faces in that household…
And yeah I am kind of surprised by how differently I rank the behaviour when imagining my son doing it, rather than some random cheeky bugger on the interwebs!
2 Likes
Oh, if we go back far enough, there was a time when even Family freakin’ Circus had undeniable appeal for my developing mind.
I have long suspected that overexposure to Peanuts at that formative age was probably detrimental. Youth should be shielded from gazing upon the gaping void at the heart of existence, even obliquely.
By the way, has anyone blamed the boy’s language on violent video games yet? Someone’s gonna do that.
1 Like
POGO forever…
OMG, it’s the first time ever that I’ve been able to play a SoundCloud link!
Maybe the swearing is what did it.
1 Like
I guess the next cost-cutting move will be to replace all the current “name brand” comics with generic titles produced in third-world comic sweatshops.
Here is my feeling about Family Circus, perfectly expressed…
Agreed: finding out this wasn’t really the child’s doing puts a very different spin on things.
If I found out my partner had goaded my 8-year-old into talking to the editor on the phone, I would have been significantly angry at them. A child makes 20 mistakes before breakfast – it’s part of the job description – but an adult should know better than to put a young child in that position. It’s exactly the right time for a homemade card or letter, not a phone call with the idiot parent pushing them to talk to some stranger until they lose control.
If an adult got to the point of calling someone a shithole after they were the ones to initiate the call, we’d think they were the jerks. This child has parents who model such language, push them into inappropriate situations, and then publicize the results on the internet.
The child is not the problem here.
3 Likes
A lesson in manners and an internet connection? Which is it?
1 Like
Made me think of this:
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
