Sunday, March 25, 2007  
George Sprott, R.I.P.

:: Posted by Bryan @ 3/25/2007 07:29:00 AM

Today sees the publication of the last installment of Seth's New York Times Magazine serial, George Sprott (or, as I like to call it, "24 Short Comic Strips about George Sprott"). The comics serials have certainly livened up the magazine --it's best feature previously was William Safire's word column-- and added much-needed colour (with able assists from Tom Devlin, I hear) to the generally ponderous feature articles (Black Holes, Diseases, the 2008 Presidential Race) that are its stock-in-trade. In this sense the Funny Pages are just like the original Sunday Funnies of the 1800s --rainbow-coloured treats that sugar-coat the bitter pills of corporate journalism. Seth's strip is a perfect example. Recognizing that the Times audience may not be the most loyal, Seth has eschewed the "to be continued" formula, with each episode of George Sprott basically a self-contained variation on a theme that takes full advantage of the full-colour format and large size of the magazine, replicating the experience of older strips to a degree unheard of outside of a very select few contemporary newspaper strips. The story does have a plot but the effect is more cumulative. I'd characterize it as a formalist meditation on death and loss coupled with a thinly-veiled biography done in the breezily meticulous style of Seth's previous Wimbledon Green.

Previous Funny Pages cartoonist Chris Ware used a similar approach with great success while Jaime Hernandez opted for a more serial narrative that functioned as something of a primer for his Love and Rockets work. Beginning April 1st, Megan Kelso takes over Seth's slot. I haven't followed her work since her minicomics/Girlhero days but the recent Comics Journal interview with Kristi Valenti has me curious --who knows what kind of approach she will bring to her strip? After Kelso, rumour has it, comes Jason and then Dan Clowes....

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