The comic strip

This week I read an assortment of Little Nemo, Krazy kat, Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts. Both Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts were comics I read when I was growing up. I remember we had all of Bill Watterson's books and collections and I would read and draw different panels, it was such a huge part of me growing up.

All of this week's comics had a few aspects in common, that I had totally forgotten from my experience from Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts. They are told in a short form with a more or less contained story. Some exceptions can be made for Peanuts and Little Nemo, where some strips lead into others, but all seemed to be originally told in a week's time.

While reading Little Nemo, I was reminded a little of Calvin and Hobbes. While Calvin tends to get in trouble and have his adventures in real life and end up with consequences to fit a 6 year old, all of Nemo's mischief takes place in the dream world, and usually wasn't meant to be mischief, but is seen that way. Still, at the end of every strip of Little Nemo in Slumber Land, he has to wake up and have one of his parents yelling at him to go back to sleep or to wake up, effectively giving him consequences similar to Calvin and Hobbes.

Part of the art of the three to four panel comic strip, and in general the short form comic strip extending to one page comics such as Krazy Kat or Little Nemo, is the ability to convey the entire story, or in most cases the joke, in one short set of panels. Because of the length restraint, often the humor becomes very simple, but at the same time so much more unique. Also in many cases, especially common in Calvin and Hobbes, is the introspective, philosophical strips such as when Calvin asks Hobbes if he believes in fate and that everything is pre-determined, and by the end of the four panels, they just shrug off that complex idea as scary.