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Sunday, December 28, 2008

That damned Business Plan

What's Mallard raving about today?

Business, Government bailouts.

Mallard is criticizing business for stupid business plans which lead to failure.

Just days earlier it was heresy to oppose "commerce"?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mallard Fillmore is shit no one wants. I will give Tinsley credit, though: This is sort of amusing. I think, though that he is implying Obama is something no one wants and the government will waste money trying to help him.

NotannonNotcow said...

#25.

And he's making a comment on the auto bailout. And not making any comments that weren't said by someone else three weeks ago.

wv: hasterin--the medication one must take to get over reading a Sunday Mallard

rewinn said...

The first thing I noticed was not the lameness and lateness of this attack on domestic auto industry, but that this is supposed to be a SUNDAY comic?

I mean, c'mon. Sunday comics are bigger than the dailies, giving room for development of the idea: character, plot, et cetera. Tinkley has a stable of characters that, in a Sunday comic, have time and space to interact, generating interest.

But no, DT takes a weak, one-panel idea that might work in a daily, and simply biggers it. The surplus verbiage only confuses the point. The reader wonders, "Is the joke ?Rancid Cheesecake? stale muffins? what?" instead of appreciating that this is an attack on the auto-industry bailout.

Rewrite time:
* ONE sign: "Stuff no-one wants"
* WORD balloon: "My business plan is to get a bailout"

NOW you've got something almost funny.

Party loyalists tend to forget that comics have to be funny FIRST, polemical SECOND ... or they fail at both.

BTW: I don't blame Tinkley for knowing nothing about cars, but Detroit is very able to make stuff people want; look at the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid. It's the collapse in the Bush Financial market that has demand depressed.

rewinn said...

And after writing the above comments on what comics should do, I turn to "Secret Asian Man" and what do I see? Much the same points about how comics are supposed to work, only made more betterly:

http://assets.comics.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/200000/60000/7000/700/267733/267733.full.gif (Dec 28, 2008)

Anonymous said...

And of course Tinsely conveniently forgets that if the American Auto industry is shut down in the US we might lose the industry altogether which will put a greater burden on the blue collar workers, to say nothing of the damage it will do to trade unions.

I could also point out that at least the Auto-Bailout had some oversights built in, executive income caps, requirements for emission standards, etc. I would have LOVED to see that sort of work but into the banking bailouts which frankly frustrate me far more.

Anonymous said...

How fucking lazy is it to have a title panel on a standard-format daily strip?!