Movement Point – Page 52 – Gaming, Science Fiction, Culture, and Such

A Profile of Richard Thompson, Creator of "Cul de Sac"

August 10, 2023May 24, 2011 by Chris Baer

Our overwhelming appreciation of “Cul de Sac” is well documented here at Movement Point, so we were pleased to find a profile of creator Richard Thompson in this past Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine.

Michael Cavna’s article, “‘Cul de Sac’ creator Richard Thompson faces life’s cruel twists with artful wit,” (May 19, 2011) traces both the development of the strip and Thompson’s experience with Parkinson’s Disease.

When you’ve got such comics page legends as Bill Watterson and Garry Trudeau writing encomiums about you, you know you’re doing something right, and though Richard Thompson might slough off such praise, he’s definitely doing something right:

Thompson “has this huge range of cartooning skills…,” Watterson says. “Richard draws all sorts of complex stuff—architecture, traffic jams, playground sets—that I would never touch. And how does he accomplish this? Well, I like to imagine him ignoring his family, living on caffeine and sugar, with his feet in a bucket of ice, working 20 hours a day.

“Otherwise, it’s not really fair.”

The complexity of Thompson’s strips can indeed stop a reader with their wonder. Take the recent run of strips featuring Alice and Sophie on a jungle gym, watching Petey’s soccer practice. That’s some serious perspective going on there:

While I respect that the printed comics page currently exists in the troubled realm of the printed newspaper, whose imminent demise has been predicted for at least a decade, I must confess that I find the Post‘s almost callous treatment of the home-grown “Cul de Sac” puzzling at best.

During the week it rides the Style section along with “Doonesbury”—certainly hallowed company, and fitting for a strip that has better writing than any other strip in the funnies. But on Sundays, comic strip Prime Time, it’s stuffed into the recently revamped (read: downsized and tabloid-ized) Sunday Style section, next to the advice columnists, sometimes in color, always smaller than “Judge Parker,” “Beetle Bailey,” and the egregiously popular and insufferably banal “Zits.” That’s no way to treat what should be the Post’s marquee comic title (not that they do much better by “Doonesbury,” breaking it to run vertically alongside “Pickles” of all strips…)

I can only hope that at some point, the Post moves “Cul de Sac” to the front of the Sunday Comics section. Above the fold. It’s far too good to be buried a page after the wedding announcements.

(“Cul de Sac” strip detail from Richard Thompson’s blog.)

A Portrait of the Blogger as a Young B-29 Flight Engineer

August 10, 2023May 10, 2011 by Chris Baer

Once upon a time, museums were much less formal affairs, such that a young lad could sit down at the flight engineer’s station in a partially restored B-29 Superfortress and play with the throttle controls:

Off we go, into the wild blue yonder . . .

The time? The mid-1970’s. The place? The National Museum of the United States Air Force, in Dayton, Ohio.

The Air Force Museum has a walk-through B-29 fuselage on display currently, painted in the likeness of the Korean War-era “Command Decision”. I would imagine this display to be the same one I sat in some thirty-five years ago, though at present the fuselage is completely restored, the various crew stations sealed off with plexiglass.

If you note the “Larry + Cathy” graffiti scratched into the paint just above our intrepid and amazed youth, I suppose you can see why they had to seal it off, but there’s something lasting about actually sitting in that seat, moving the throttle and mixture controls, that conveys a sense of history as a living entity, rather than a dusty display. I doubt my lasting fascination with all things aero would be quite so potent had I not had the moment happily captured above.

I’m sure, at that moment, I imagined myself to be not unlike this gentleman, an actual B-29 Flight Engineer.

Oh, to slip the surly bonds of earth…

(Image courtesy of Gary Minnis via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-Share Alike license.)

A Companion to the End: Elisabeth Sladen

August 10, 2023April 20, 2011 by Chris Baer

The BBC has announced that actor Elisabeth Sladen, who played companion Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who alongside the Third and Fourth Doctors (and appeared again with the Tenth Doctor), has passed away.

Just as many people claim to have their own Doctor, the one who pops into mind when the Doctor is mentioned, Elisabeth Sladen’s portrayal of journalist Sarah Jane Smith is surely the most iconic of all the companions.

Her riveting performance in the Tenth Doctor episode “School Reunion,” early in David Tennant’s run, solidified my appreciation of the new series. Ever since Fourth Doctor Tom Baker dropped her off in what he thought, wrongly, was her native Croydon, Sarah Jane Smith had been waiting for the Doctor to return. He never did, until a chance meeting decades later brought them together again. The pain and wonder Elisabeth Sladen brought to her portayal of Sarah Jane Smith in “School Reunion” encapsulates the dilemma of all the Doctor’s companions: a few moments of wonder balanced against a lifetime that seems mundane in comparison.

Tor.com has a small appreciation of Elisabeth Sladen, as does Fourth Doctor Tom Baker on his website.

(Image detail courtesy of alun vega via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike license.)

Planning a Philadelphia Sandwich Tour

August 10, 2023April 6, 2011 by Chris Baer

This humble sandwich acolyte has decided to make a pilgrimage to Philadelphia this year, to worship at the various shrines of Philly’s four signal contributions to world sandwich cuisine: hoagie, roast pork, chicken cutlet, and cheesesteak.

My aim is to limit each sandwich type to one or two purveyors maximum, in the city proper, both for logistical and gustatory reasons. A guy can only eat so much!

So, where do I go?

Takk for Kvikk Lunsj!

August 10, 2023March 11, 2011 by Chris Baer

Aside from the whole “bringing the world together and inspiring harmony and interconnectedness” thing and shopping, the Internet is great precisely because of articles like the Robyn Lee’s recent piece on the Norwegian version of the Kit Kat bar, the Kvikk Lunsj, at Serious Eats.

I mean, aside from focusing on one of the finest confections around—I ate Kvikk Lunsj bars weekly for five years when I lived in Norway—the author even provided side-by-side illustrations of the Kvikk Lunsj with the US and UK Kit Kats and a taste test:

Across the board, tasters thought Kvikk Lunsj had the creamiest, milkiest chocolate. Some also thought it was slightly salty compared to the other bars. Its wafer was noted for being super crisp and having a nutty flavor.

I have to agree with this assessment, having sampled all three manifestations of the chocolate covered wafers (though admittedly not at the same time). It’s not just a chocolate bomb but rather a more complex interplay of salt, sweet, crunch, and smoothness. It’s a considered candy bar, not a gullet-filler.

Candy bars, with their claims on our youth, should be worth remembering, and though it’s been a decade since my last Kvikk Lunsj, I still recall them fondly. Woe betide children who grow up with junk chocolate. I wonder if this Internet thing will let me order them. Hmm…

Like Peanuts with Adults: Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac

August 13, 2023March 5, 2011 by Chris Baer

Were I to attempt to describe Richard Thompson‘s comic strip Cul de Sac, I could do little better than to describe it as Peanuts with adults. The children in the strip behave like children, yet have a delightful tendency to speak wisdom beyond their years in a way that still seems utterly age-appropriate:

Comic from Shapes & Colors by Richard Thompson

The similarly preternaturally insightful children in Peanuts lived, for the most part, in a world where adults were shadows, figures whose voices and presences only revealed themselves in the children’s reactions. Cul de Sac brings the adults into the panel with the children, to excellent effect, reminding the reader that despite the children’s knowing speech, they are still at heart children, a distinction that was occasionally lost in Peanuts. And, of course, it helps that the adults get good lines as well:

Comic from Shapes & Colors by Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson’s drawing line has an agreeable looseness that belies the depth of detail in many panels—and those panels will often be in quite non-standard configurations. Some of his finest strips feature tables that stretch over multiple panels, with each panel hosting a different person. He also knows when to omit background detail all together and focus on the character alone. And what characters they are.

Alice Otterloop is undeniably the star of the strip, ruling over her pre-school chums with a certainty born of being four, but I’m partial to her excessively introspective brother, Petey, and her unibrowed friend Beni. Throw in Dill (a combination of Linus, if Linus loved grocery carts, and Pig-Pen, if Pig-Pen ever washed, to stretch the Peanuts analogy), Nara, bucket-head Kevin, and over-mothered Marcus and you have a strip that never fails to amuse and, frankly awe.

And never forget: You can’t tie down a banjo man! Eternal words of wisdom . . .

(Images from Shapes & Colors by Richard Thompson. Buy it!)