Another Cheshire Cat

I watched a History Channel special tonight tracing the era of comic books, all the way through the Golden Age, Silver, Bronze and Modern ages of comics.

In it, there was some commentary about how comics both reflected to some extent the mainstream thought of that era, and possibly subverted it as part of a younger counter-culture. For example, Silver Age comics largely followed the mandate of the Comics Code Authority, but the younger writer-artists started to veer away and test the boundaries by including topics like drugs (even though they only wanted to include goodie goodie preaching type messages about how only villains did them, the CCA was freaked out about even mentioning the word.) Successfully breaking this barrier brought on the Bronze Age, of more mature themes being included in comics. Until crazies like Frank Miller and Alan Moore took it one step further and wrote Dark Knight Returns and The Watchmen, which subverted it even further to the superhero as anti-hero, and heralded the Modern or Dark grim and gritty age of comics.

Being somewhat curious as to what the post-modern era holds in terms of comics and a reflection on our population's consciousness (if we skip past the anime craze period just a little), I fancied this would be the rise of webcomics and started flipping through those randomly considered to be the top web comics as crowdsourced by votes.

Besides a lot of gaming (both tabletop and computer) and programming related strips, I found the others consisted mostly of original worldbuilding-type fantasy/sci-fi daydream/fanfiction concocted by various artist-authors, following fanfiction-esque themes. There were also a number that dealt with LGBT or even 'adult' themes, veering further into the once previously off-limits gender and sexual boundaries.

And then I found Garfield minus Garfield.

Which I think heralds another interesting footnote in the post-modern era where interests are branching out in all sorts of different directions... the advent of black humor and neurosis as something that produces a chuckle.

Obviously, it's not a new genre. The wikipedia article for black comedy stretches way back to 1935. It just strikes me as being a lot more part of mainstream culture (see shows like Dead like Me) now as compared to the old days where the films were a lot more cult in nature.

Maybe it's just me imagining it. Maybe folks like Weird Al Yankovich have always been there from the beginning. Still, I have to say I get a really black, bleak and yet enjoyable laugh out of Garfield without Garfield.

(And yes, the whole lengthy post boils down to wanting to essentially twitter / share the link. But how can I do that without commentary? Just wouldn't be me.)