Gross! “Baby Blues” Scrapbook 33.
By Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott. Andrews McMeel. $18.99.
Many Faces of Snoopy. By
Charles M. Schulz. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.
Virtuosos make things seem
so simple. There are only four strings on a violin, after all, and what could
be so hard about moving a bow back and forth on them? Good luck with that if
you actually try it. Well, okay, but that is “high” art. Comics are “low” art,
and what’s the big deal? Draw a circle and you have Charlie Brown’s head. Use a
couple of ovals and squares and a blimplike shape here and there, and you have
the MacPhersons; and as for what happens in Baby
Blues, just use what happens in all families. No big deal, right? Oh yes,
right – just try it. You’d be better off with the violin. The great thing about
comics such as Baby Blues and Peanuts is that they encapsulate so much
with such apparent simplicity. But
the difficulty of doing what they do is quite obvious from the vast number of unsuccessful
and less-successful strips out there, of interest to students and historians of
popular culture but not to the mass audience that the best strips reach so
effectively day after day, year after year.
Baby Blues has gotten to an almost embarrassing level of consistency
and reliability. There just aren’t any “bad” strips in the world of Rick
Kirkman (artist) and Jerry Scott (writer). The 33rd and latest
collection continues a long history (perhaps longer than Kirkman and Scott
would care to acknowledge, given what it implies about their own ages) of
chronicling events that are realer than reality. They seem as if they could
happen in any family – and indeed, some of them have happened in Kirkman’s
family or Scott’s – but within the strictures of comic-strip panels, they
happen with pointedness and sometimes poignancy beyond what Baby Blues readers encounter in their
duller everyday lives. And that is one of the great strengths of the strip:
readers recognize what is going on as akin to reality, laugh at things that
would not necessarily be funny if or when they happened in their own families,
and finish the few panels refreshed and hopefully ready for the next thing that
raising kids will throw at them – secure in the knowledge that whatever it is
will probably show up in Baby Blues
eventually. Which brings us to Gross!
There is nothing specifically gross here, or nothing any grosser than usual for
the MacPherson clan, but there is plenty to laugh at, if not to gag at
(although there are lots of, umm, gags). As in previous oversize-page
collections, Kirkman and Scott provide snippets of commentary throughout the
book – so readers learn, for example, that the great Sunday strip at the book’s
start, in which Wanda rehearses lectures to her three kids, is based on Scott’s
wife’s real-life behavior. On the other hand, a strip in which Zoe and Hammie
send Darryl a card saying they love him, then imploring him to stop whatever
fight they were in when they drew the card, may never have happened in real
life, but it reads as if it should have. Or could have, anyway. In one comment,
Scott reveals that he is a middle child, which may explain some of what Hammie
does in his between-Zoe-and-Wren existence. In this book, the dynamic among the
three kids gets even more interesting than it has previously been, since this
is where baby Wren learns to talk – for example, Zoe teaches her to say, “Mom!
Make Hammie stop!” Of course, some things in Baby Blues never change: Darryl goes shopping for Wanda and, when
he tells the salesperson that he is looking for a gift for a woman with three
kids, the woman suggests six weeks in Tahiti. Darryl is not very good at buying the right thing, but he has a
knack for occasionally saying the
right thing, as when he calls from work to tell Wanda, “Hi, beautiful,” and
catches her kneeling atop a plugged toilet with the three kids playing in or
trying to avoid the bathroom flood. An exhausted Wanda’s response, “Good
timing,” is perfect. Then there are strips in which Zoe refines her ability to
tell on Hammie: in one, she is “pinch-scolding” while Wanda is in the tub with
Wren, and in another, she is “text-tattling” while Darryl and Wanda are trying
to have a quiet restaurant meal. In addition to the humor, there are insights
into the strip’s creation sprinkled throughout the book. For instance, Baby Blues is known for multi-day strips
that are variations on the same topic, such as “5 Ways Parenthood Is Like
College.” Each of the five strips is introduced by the same title panel, and
Kirkman says those panels take longer to do than the strips’ content – and
explains why. Kirkman also explains a couple of strips in which he cleverly
muted the background colors to put the characters in the foreground into
stronger focus. Also here is an amazing sequence in which a Kirkman family
emergency led Scott to do some remarkable things to get newly written strips put
together – with reused art. And the hybrid strips really work – talk about
teamwork! On the much lighter side, Kirkman at one point notes that he
sometimes uses his own kids’ art and lettering “for reference,” as in a series
in which Hammie creates a “grafik novel” about “Robot Sister,” which goes
pretty much as readers of Baby Blues
would expect. And it is nice that the commentary is occasionally reserved for a
touch of self-praise, as when Kirkman says, “One of the best opening lines,
ever” in reference to Scott’s writing, for Hammie to say, “Mom, do we have any
hand grenades?” After all, even virtuoso performers need to appreciate
themselves and each other once in a while.
The appreciation of Charles
Schulz has not diminished in the years since his death in 2000, and his Peanuts strips continue to appear in
multiple forms: new collections, desk and day-to-day calendars, even gift books
that would make great stocking stuffers – such as Many Faces of Snoopy. This little five-inch-square hardcover
includes a small smattering of the iconic beagle’s appearances in eight roles –
none of which is as spokesbeagle for MetLife, by the way. Several of these
Snoopy alter egos were integral to Peanuts
and responsible for a great deal of its weirdness – the strip was odder and
more surrealistic than many people realized when Schulz was still drawing it.
The World War I flying ace, eternally at war with the Red Baron, is perhaps the
most famous “alt-Snoopy” of all, but the Beagle Scout leader (of bird scouts
Woodstock, Conrad, Olivier and Bill) also appeared frequently; and collegiate
big-man-on-campus Joe Cool showed up from time to time – much more often than
his opposite number, Joe Preppy. In addition to those four roles, Snoopy is
seen here as a secret agent in search of Linus’s missing blanket, the Masked
Marvel arm wrestler, “Flashbeagle” (trading in his famed “happy dance” for a
flashdance), and a fierce pirate sporting an eye patch originally given to
Sally to help with her amblyopia. Many
Faces of Snoopy will bring smiles of enjoyment to Peanuts fans and likely send them – and anyone out there who is not
yet a Peanuts fan – in search of
more-extensive stories about Snoopy’s multiple-yet-singular roles. And for
anyone who might still think this sort of thing is easy – just check out the
ways in which Schulz keeps Snoopy’s underlying personality the same even as he
changes his outward appearance just enough to match whatever persona he may be
donning. What’s the big deal? Many Faces
of Snoopy is. And so is Gross!.
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