Guardian dumps Steve Bell after 40 years

[idunnosomename]

he's smuggled two tits in though, the daft pervert.

theres also a pair of male genitals in the distance under the banner which clearly didnt need to be there

[Virgo76]

Bring back Doonesbury, I say.
On second thoughts: don't.
They were usually even more incomprehensible than Bell's If cartoons sometimes were.

[idunnosomename]

I seriously have no idea what the FUCK was going on in doonesbury. Except there was a bald conspiracy theorist and no jokes

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

I seriously have no idea what the FUCK was going on in doonesbury. Except there was a bald conspiracy theorist and no jokes

Based on Hunter S. Thompson. I think his assistant was based on Marcie from the " Peanuts" cartoons.

[seepage]

Doonesbury is a like a soap opera, and an individual strip might not make sense if you aren't familiar with the characters/family tree, except for e.g. the one's featuring POTUS. Even so, I thought there was usually a pay-off or bit of irony in the last panel of each which was obvious. Not so keen on the later ones that seemed to be drawn on a computer.

[jobotic]

So apparently Bell hasn't been binned.

[NoSleep]

Too many unsubscribers?

[Endicott]

Doonesbury is a like a soap opera, and an individual strip might not make sense if you aren't familiar with the characters/family tree, except for e.g. the one's featuring POTUS. Even so, I thought there was usually a pay-off or bit of irony in the last panel of each which was obvious. Not so keen on the later ones that seemed to be drawn on a computer.

Yeah. For one thing, Doonesbury's basically stopped doing new strips now apart from the Sunday one. If you go online you'll find every week it's replaying old strips, possibly up to the 90s now.

Anyway, every week you get a run of 6 strips Monday to Saturday, which tell a coherent story. With a punchline in the final panel of each day. However it's often the case that this punchline only works if you know the backstory of the characters. Some weeks, the story goes off to to follow characters that I think are dull. The worst ones are when he shows the white house for a whole week, it's tedious and usually the joke is weak. But the character weeks are the best thing online. It's up there with peanuts for genius and empathy and pathos.

[Blumf]

According to this, Bell's thinking of winding down a bit as his contract renews, so If... may come to an end, but nothing about any complaints on his content have been mentioned to him.

[kidsick5000]

The idea of a cartoonist earning six figures for a drawing a day is the dream.
It almost feels like a hangover from a previous era, like seeing these massive houses comedy writers seemed to be able to afford based on six-sitcom episodes a year.
If anyone has seen How To Murder Your Wife, Jack Lemmon and his valet have an awesome New York pad – though to be fair he does act out his adventure strips.


Sustaining daily content – strips or single panels – is a headache. Arguably harder than having a regular written column.

The good ones don't get highlighted enough. The lazy ones get more exposure – dead celeb at the gates of heaven (again), politician with tatty umbrella under dark storm clouds of economy (again) etc

But the regular comic strips are dying out. They're expensive for papers and barely missed once they're gone

[idunnosomename]

i kinda hated how Bell was so sclerotic in every idea he had: cameron in a condom, boris face like an arse. it just got so fucking tedious. the penguins were from the fucking FALKLANDS of course

look i get you have a mythos, lore, iconography, symbology, whatever, it gets on my tits

[Uncle TechTip]

The idea of a cartoonist earning six figures for a drawing a day is the dream.
It almost feels like a hangover from a previous era, like seeing these massive houses comedy writers seemed to be able to afford based on six-sitcom episodes a year.
If anyone has seen How To Murder Your Wife, Jack Lemmon and his valet have an awesome New York pad – though to be fair he does act out his adventure strips.


Sustaining daily content – strips or single panels – is a headache. Arguably harder than having a regular written column.

The good ones don't get highlighted enough. The lazy ones get more exposure – dead celeb at the gates of heaven (again), politician with tatty umbrella under dark storm clouds of economy (again) etc

Yeah, whatever happened to Lee and Herring favourite, Tom Johnston? Can't imagine he's still earning six figures.

[kidsick5000]

i kinda hated how Bell was so sclerotic in every idea he had

I don't know what racing toy cars has to do with it

[seepage]

i kinda hated how Bell was so sclerotic in every idea he had: cameron in a condom, boris face like an arse. it just got so fucking tedious. the penguins were from the fucking FALKLANDS of course

look i get you have a mythos, lore, iconography, symbology, whatever, it gets on my tits

I don't know what racing toy cars has to do with it

on reflection, the only thing I'll really miss is the little wheels going "boggler, boggler"

[Catalogue Trousers]

Exactly. Bell started off genuinely funny and scathing - I loved the early years of If - but then he just kept replaying his tired old over-played gags again and again. Cameron Condom. Underpants Major. Bush Monkey. Arse Johnson. (The World's greatest basketball team, maybe...)

His whole If schtick (and, to a degree, his one-offs) just felt more and more like Del Boy! Falling! Through The BAR!!!

[Virgo76]

But it doesn't look like he's been sacked or is leaving anyway, as mentioned above.

[dissolute ocelot]

Sustaining daily content – strips or single panels – is a headache. Arguably harder than having a regular written column.

The good ones don't get highlighted enough. The lazy ones get more exposure – dead celeb at the gates of heaven (again), politician with tatty umbrella under dark storm clouds of economy (again) etc

But the regular comic strips are dying out. They're expensive for papers and barely missed once they're gone

Private Eye is interesting as by far the best place for cartooning. The regular strips are almost always unfunny (celeb says something longwinded that you think is about drugs but is actually about gardening, or vice versa; yobs say something unfunny and hit someone; hipsters say something unfunny) but the single-panel cartoons can be great. I suspect this is because they have actual quality control and only publish the best. Whereas if you're doing a cartoon a day (or even a weekly or fortnightly strip with the same characters) it's a situation where you can turn in any old crap and the newspaper doesn't have time to do anything else if it's shit.