A TALE OF TWO COMIC STRIPS

 In the 1980s, there were two comic strips about the White House.  One was well written, the other was well drawn. 

Doonesbury was brilliant, witty satire.  Its caustic humor revolutionized the comics page (and in fact, some newspapers moved it from the comics page to the editorial page).  It developed a huge following.  However, the drawing in Doonesbury was always mediocre at best.  Artist Garry Trudeau could not draw a decent caricature to save his life, so he would always draw the President off screen, either with a word balloon above the White House...  

... or a word balloon from outside the panel at a press conference.

As the decades went by and Trudeau's drawing didn't improve, he compensated by drawing George H.W. Bush as a disembodied voice (to connote his lack of substance), or Dan Quayle as a talking feather or Bill Clinton as a talking waffle.  As with many artists, necessity became the mother of invention. 

Rather than draw George W. Bush's face, Trudeau drew an empty warrior's helmet.

The comic strip Benchley by Mort Drucker and Jerry Dumas had the opposite problem.  The drawings by Drucker were impeccable-- every day there were fresh caricatures of Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Tip O'Neil and many others.  

But the humor tended to be corny, old fashioned pablum.   Drucker described the strip as "somewhat like a mild roast....Newspapers don't want to alienate their readership, whether it's Democrat or Republican.  Therefore you have to be a bit milder....For now our intent is to do a humorous strip and possibly at some later date do more political social satire."  But the strip ended after 3 years, in 1987.  Doonesbury is now in its 55th years.

As it became clear that Benchley was not going to make it, Dumas and Drucker allowed themselves a biting remark or two about their competition:

The newspaper comic page has its finger on the pulse of America.  It seems America has voted.  Audiences no longer care about (or even recognize) bad drawing.  

The excellent comic strip artists who continue to uphold the dignity of good drawing seem to do it for the sake of their own conscience; it doesn't appear that they are particularly rewarded for it.  Comic strips are smaller, of course, so the images must be simplified.  Today quick, sloppy drawing-- even stick figures-- will do. Repetition of the same drawing in multiple panels is another common time saver.  Today it's the text that matters.