I still, on occasion, read the newspaper funny pages, but more out of habit than a need to find great comics. Granted that there is some good stuff: Dilbert still pushes a button on a regular basis, but I haven’t been as fascinated with some popular strips as others have, Mutts, for instance.
In the last year, however, I have found a great weekly newspaper strip, Tony Millionaire’s Maakies, and Fantagraphics just released the latest collection of the strip, DER STRUWWELMAAKIES, their third hardcover collection of the popular weekly comic strip. Maakies won’t make the vast majority of newspaper funny pages. If most editors can’t handle the rather pointy commentary of such strips as Doonesbury and The Boondocks, then they won’t be able to handle Millionaire’s unrelentingly aggressive scatological humor. The display of beheadings and dismemberments, as well as that of bodily fluids and functions would keep Maakies off funny pages meant for “family viewing.”
The strip is apparently set near a seaport; in fact, most of the stories are seafaring in nature. The art is flavored or influenced by E.C. Segar’s Popeye and resembles the kind pen and ink magazine illustration that was once popular in U.S. publishing. As for the humor – imagine Gary Trudeau delivering his social satire and political comedy with a blunt and deadly instrument. Also, imagine “South Park” for people who are well read and can pick up obscure literary and old cultural references. Most of all, Maakies is the comic strip equivalent of the risqué humor found in Underground Comix; Millionaire is the mad modern weekly comix version of R. Crumb.
Lest I sound as if I’m trying to take the fun out of the strip – Maakies is just ******* funny, especially if you find something like two drunk lovers vomiting in each other’s mouths funny. Even if you might not like that bit of comedy, look at the production values. The book is printed in landscape format to maintain the Maakies’ original layout, and Chip Kidd is the book designer for the Maakies series. Funny and fine looking – what more do you want from a humor strip collection? A+
Une piquante petite brunette
Comic strips from one of Canada's greatest cartoonist finally see print after 40 years.
Tamara Drewe
Tamara Drewe is a comic strip that appeared in the Saturday edition of the Guardian newspaper as a comic strip between September 17 2005 and October 20 2007
