Talk:78: Garfield

I disagree with the original author of the article, I don't think Garfield is poorly written. However, to avoid any greater conflict, I decided to keep it as it is. Does everyone else think it is "poorly written"? --Pnariyoshi (talk) 21:56, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

There was certainly controversy sparked within the comic writing community when Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, quit early because he felt that cartoonists targeted their comics at too wide a market to be meaningful and funny. This was at the gestation of the internet, when the only funding that a cartoonist could find was from newspapers looking for something to fill the back page, and had to follow the newspaper's guidelines for neutrality to avoid offending anyone. Watterson called other cartoonists "sell-outs" for dumbing down their work for the mass-market, and he quit in disgust at his own newspaper's attempts to cull the philosophical speeches that were ever-so-common in Calvin and Hobbes. Since then, widespread corporate culture has made Dilbert a hit, and we ourselves are discussing XKCD here. Watterson would be smiling right now. Davidy²²[talk] 00:44, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Wow, that was incredibly instructive. I'm actually very excited about this discussion. While I do agree "dumbing down" something that was originally intended for a specific niche is what ruins a lot of media (besides comic strips, I feel it commonly ruins TV shows, Movie adaptations etc), I think it would be unfair to call it "poorly written". I think a better word would be "unexciting", "lacking passion" or "having lost it's first love". Making a strip appeal to a wide range of people is not always as easy as it seems, especially without making it come down to bathroom/sexual jokes. While I do feel that Randall sometimes gets very close to the border of "distasteful", I think xkcd still maintains its roots and it is pretty funny and smart. --Pnariyoshi (talk) 02:25, 29 January 2013 (UTC)