For the first installment of Spotlight, Fruitbat looks at the abominably good Charles Christopher
Sometimes I think that Abominable could be the next great newspaper cartoon, if the internet hadn't rendered them completely obsolete, and if webcomic readers and tabloid readers intersected on the great Venn diagram of life in any way shape or form.
And don't think for a minute that I'm placing it side by side with the likes of Marmaduke and Fred Basset (the British equivalent, in so far that they both contain dogs and make you burst into peals of inconsolable despair). No, this would stand tall with the likes of The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes, a comic that delivers humour and poignancy in three-to-six panels, wrapped up in a quality of artwork that is pretty much lost in the current sea of mediocrity.
I know that most funnies need to update five times a week instead of once, but jesus, how much rancid humour do tabloid readers need? I'd take one quality cartoon a day over some gormless political point or tenuous visual gag because the writer is too worn and jaded to do anything except trawl the news and draw whichever neurons happen to fire up.
True, there are quite a lot of long-running storylines in Abominable that don't fit that particular mould too well, like the sad tale of Vivol and Moon Bear, or the racketeering of criminal mastermind Sissi Skunk, but there are numerous one-shot comics that somehow combine whimsy with marital issues, and cartoonish anthropomorphism with ultra-realistic design. Chopping it down to these bare bones would knock out roughly 85% of the comic, though, as the real meat lies in a series of ambiguously mystical storylines, where seemingly inconsequential events tie together into a deep and bitter-sweet tapestry. That's definitely something you won't find in the papers.
Maybe it goes to show why webcomics are the natural evolution of the newspaper cartoon; you can tell the stories you like with flair and feeling and an emotional punch, and that's something which Abominable pulls off with aplomb. Week after week it builds upon the Cedar Forest, where realism goes hand in hand with symbolism and every blow against its protagonists is felt as though we were there. It's a very different journey to the one that most webcomics try to take you on, and one that's well worth bookmarking.
Read more at http://www.abominable.cc/
Sometimes I think that Abominable could be the next great newspaper cartoon, if the internet hadn't rendered them completely obsolete, and if webcomic readers and tabloid readers intersected on the great Venn diagram of life in any way shape or form.
And don't think for a minute that I'm placing it side by side with the likes of Marmaduke and Fred Basset (the British equivalent, in so far that they both contain dogs and make you burst into peals of inconsolable despair). No, this would stand tall with the likes of The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes, a comic that delivers humour and poignancy in three-to-six panels, wrapped up in a quality of artwork that is pretty much lost in the current sea of mediocrity.
I know that most funnies need to update five times a week instead of once, but jesus, how much rancid humour do tabloid readers need? I'd take one quality cartoon a day over some gormless political point or tenuous visual gag because the writer is too worn and jaded to do anything except trawl the news and draw whichever neurons happen to fire up.
True, there are quite a lot of long-running storylines in Abominable that don't fit that particular mould too well, like the sad tale of Vivol and Moon Bear, or the racketeering of criminal mastermind Sissi Skunk, but there are numerous one-shot comics that somehow combine whimsy with marital issues, and cartoonish anthropomorphism with ultra-realistic design. Chopping it down to these bare bones would knock out roughly 85% of the comic, though, as the real meat lies in a series of ambiguously mystical storylines, where seemingly inconsequential events tie together into a deep and bitter-sweet tapestry. That's definitely something you won't find in the papers.
Maybe it goes to show why webcomics are the natural evolution of the newspaper cartoon; you can tell the stories you like with flair and feeling and an emotional punch, and that's something which Abominable pulls off with aplomb. Week after week it builds upon the Cedar Forest, where realism goes hand in hand with symbolism and every blow against its protagonists is felt as though we were there. It's a very different journey to the one that most webcomics try to take you on, and one that's well worth bookmarking.
Read more at http://www.abominable.cc/
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