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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

That damned Style

What's Mallard raving about today?

Style, Substance.

This morality play would work better if Mallard could actually draw a wheel in a manner that did not make me think the caveman invented the letter "O".

14 comments:

Kaitlyn said...

But don't you see?

This comic is all style over substance, whatever the hell that means, as he describes it.

I get the substance part, but really am having trouble grasping the "style" part. Is that like PR?

If I'm being like really really really thick, er, er, it's 3 am, and I have a cold and should be sleeping.

Anonymous said...

Haha, Mallard has neither style nor substance!

confused said...

I'm pretty sure this is a complaint about the former administration. Bush was all about being "the guy you'd drink beer with." "Not an elitist." etc.

It wasn't supposed to be what he did, but who he acted to be.

"Don't vote for that guy, he went to an Ivy League College. GW will watch football with you."
"But didn't GW go to..."
"...and have this beer. The other guy wants you to drink wine you can't pronounce."

Anonymous said...

OK, I'm a quandary. Which point should I make:

1] Tinsley is basically recycling a 20 year old Douglas Addams joke (i.e. when the marketing execs from the B Arc, who have been marooned on the ancient Earth, waste their time arguing about what color the newly (re)invented wheel should be.)

2] The seurgym[*] of a strip in which Tinsley --who has repeatedly made it clear that Ronald Reagan is the paradigm of All That Is Good-- dares to ridicule anyone about choosing "style over substance".

[* I was going to use the word "irony" here, but that wasn't nearly strong enough. So I just went with my "Word Verification".]

Anonymous said...

[Ooh, when I came to read 'blog, my WV as "drama". I never got a real word before.]

Toots McGee said...

So the embodiment of "substance" is a roll of duct tape?

Kyle said...

Well, duct tape *does* fix everything!



(except crippling economic woes and mismanaged wars of attrition)

Anonymous said...

Hey, duct tape is pretty cool stuff.

On the plus side, I think we've established that Tinsley is not a "young earth creationist".

Michael Foley said...

This might be the worst Mallard Fillmore ever. Just an inexcusably bad comic in every way. It's the "Manos: The Hands of Fate" of Mallard Fillmore.

Duct tape is the ultimate substance over style! If we had it 30,000 years ago, we'd be flying around in spaceships by now. With the windshield wiper fluid reservoir held on by duct tape, of course.

For those curious, the wheel was invented around 5,000 BC.

rewinn said...

"....he wheel was invented around 5,000 BC...."

... so Tinkley's commenting on the events of 25,000 AD. That makes him even more advanced than Brewster Rokkit!

Take THAT you hopelessly-contemporary liberalistical bloggers!!!

Anonymous said...

Continuing my series of "ignoring political content and just improving the quality of this strip":

Given that the two cavemen are homogenous, and that the "wheel" invented by the first is functionally useless, this joke makes more sense.

If one was sweatily toiling trying to build a fire (or holding up a lit torch) showing evidence of strenuous effort, and the other was lounging with some kind of... I don't know, pelt, or hat, or hat pelt... VOILA! The joke actually works.

Just saying you have style is as about effective as inferring that you have humour in something entitled a "comic" strip.

Jazzbumpa said...

This guy makes a living with badly drawn, unfunny comics whose only point is bitterness. Somebody help me if I got that wrong. I guess it's what you'd expect from a guy who lives in the same alternate universe as Brush Limpbaugh.

Leonard Pitts nailed it. Anger is all they have. To bad it isn't actually at something. Then it could possibly be dealt with.

WV: pedboyl. Perhaps an even more vile version of the plantar wart?

Anonymous said...

I don't think Tinkley really gets wheels. From a purely utilitarian perspective, Caveman 1 has produced a perfectly useless bit of stonework. There is no substance to a circle that lacks the capacity to rotate on an axle. As a result, Tinkley has vitiated whatever "joke" he was trying to make.

Of course, there's no small resemblance between the "wheel" and an "O" such as that used in various Obama icons. I'd bet a plastic bottle of rot-gut gin, Tinkley thinks he's being all subtle and shit and cluing us in to who he thinks is all style and no substance.

Michael Foley said...

I think the "substance" is his ability to hold that huge piece of stone out at arm's length. Come on, Tinsley, herculean shoulder strength will never go out of style!

WV: dineste
Reminds me of Dinette Set. Nooooo!