Sunday Mornings with the Phantom

          Comic strips are magical.

          In fact, they are probably the most genius of all literary genres. Think about it—a story gets told in three or four panels. Panels, not paragraphs, not pages, and certainly not chapters. Even more amazing, cartoonists are able to evoke emotions with very few words or images. We laugh, we smile, we go “aww!.” We cheer, we boo, we feel emboldened or endeared. Sometimes we even roll our eyes and shake our heads because, seriously, Charlie Brown should know by now that he simply cannot trust Lucy to hold that football for him.

And yet, his perseverance, Calvin’s imagination, and Earl and Mooch’s friendship all give us ordinary humans something to look forward to—a feeling that we, too, can survive asking out the little red-headed girl in a land full of dinosaurs while begging for sausages at the local deli.

          One of my favorite memories involves the Sunday morning comics. The newspaper on Sundays was always thick, nearly three times the size of Wednesday’s paper or Saturday’s. As a child, I, of course, cared nothing for the front page or the classified ads and certainly not the sports page. What I liked to dig out was the colorful, multi-paged comics—all those glorious cartoons just waiting to be read and laughed at or pondered over. So many titles come to mind as I write this: “Shoe” (my daddy’s favorite), “The Far Side” (my brother’s favorite), “The Archies” (my sister’s favorite), “The Family Circus” and “Garfield” (my mama’s favorites), “Hagar the Horrible,” “Dagwood,” “The Lockhorns,” “Beetle Bailey,” and my three favorites, “Peanuts,” “Mutts,” and, of course, “Calvin and Hobbes.”

          I poured over each strip, and even if I didn’t understand all of them (because sometimes cartoons are political), I still got a childish joy out of the illustrations. I found in my three favorites something absolutely relatable: Linus carried a blanket, I carried a baby pillow (Pit-Pit); Mooch was a cat, and I am very much a cat person; and Calvin had a stuffed tiger, and so did I (and yes, they absolutely came to life!). **You can read “Wardrobes, Alleys, and Attics” for more on my tiger pal.

          Still, my very favorite part of Sunday morning comic strips came with the reading of “The Phantom.” Daddy and I would each read the comics separately. I read them first while he perused global and local happenings, the world of sports, and reviews of books and films and plays. Then he would read the comics while I waited impatiently, for the best part was yet to come. “The Phantom” was, in the paper we got, usually the last comic strip on the last page. Neither Daddy nor I would read that strip individually. Once he had finished reading everything else, then I would curl up next to him, and he would read out loud the thrilling adventures of Phantom, his wolf Devil, and his horse Hero. Daddy was great at reading this particular strip because he did voices and knew exactly what to emphasize. Even though the cartoon was only a handful of panels long and the adventure was always continued until next week, this was the pinnacle of my Sunday mornings.

          The writer in me learned quite a bit from reading those comics. One of the things taught to me by “The Phantom” and, yes, even “Calvin and Hobbes” and “Peanuts” was the idea of tension building. Knowing how to string the reader along with just enough details to keep them wanting more is a valuable tool for a writer. Plus, in a comic such as “The Phantom,” knowing just when to end that week’s adventure equates to a novelist knowing how to end a chapter. The idea is to keep the readers coming back for more, and cartoonists are masters at this technique.

          I also have to tip my hat to cartoonists for being able to succinctly tell a story or convey a message in just four panels. I am an everything-in-the-pot kind of writer, but cartoonists are finicky. They only have so much room to tell their story or message and so must be selective about the words and images they use. It’s masterful as far as I’m concerned. Everyone is a bit wiser for listening to Linus’s philosophical ponderings, but no one ever felt beat over the head with a “This is what everyone should do” attitude. The power of imagination cannot be ignored, thanks to Calvin, and be honest–how many of us have wanted to fly to outer space rather than sit in our boring old classrooms? Pet adoptions became cool because of Earl and Mooch’s pals, and it’s okay to admit that you want to run right out and adopt every single animal in the ASPCA’s commercial. (You know the one I’m talking about.) Plus, comics have given me yet another sweet memory of my daddy (see blogs “Bedtime Stories” and “Growing up D&D”).

          So to all the cartoonists out there—thank you for your talents and your gifts. The world is a little bit better because of your magic and your genius.

          “It’s funny how day by day, nothing changes. But when you look back everything is different.” – Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”)