Strawman Has a Point/Newspaper Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Examples of Strawman Has a Point in Newspaper Comics include:

  • A September 2009 Funky Winkerbean storyline has Susan defending Wit — the story of a middle-aged woman dying of cancer — as the choice for the [High] School Play against parents who want their kids to perform something light and fun instead of a drama with challenging and potentially depressing ideas. The point being made was that True Art Is Angsty (or at least can be) and can and needs to be explored even at the high school level, but at the snarking blogs The Comics Curmudgeon and Stuck Funky, comments sided with the parents in this situation, pointing out that it would probably be tough to stage with high school students and lack appeal to teens and their families and thus not sell tickets, losing money and possibly forcing cutbacks in the art department. Why not do something light and fun that many people will be able to enjoy and want to see instead? It didn't help the argument that the story was interpreted as a giant Take That, Critics! at readers unsatisfied with Funky's Cerebus Syndrome, which most famously manifested itself in the death-of-Lisa-Moore-from-cancer storyline. Not just the cancer arc, but also that the strip itself has become very somber in tone, with most jokes and puns becoming more and more related to fatalism, death, and accepting the finality that life is not, and will not end, happy.
  • Right-wing cartoonist Chuck Asay:
    • Every now and then he'll do a comic showcasing "Which situation would you rather have happen?". The one that he tries to show as evil and wrong will unintentionally come off as acceptable to most readers. Or take this one, intended to tar Hollywood Global Warming as junk science as bogus as… evolution.
    • And then there's this one [dead link], where you have to wonder if it's not intentional. It shows Bush, McCain, and Lieberman coming up with a strategy that is literally just cheerleading the Iraq war, after which a generic Democrat comments to an agreeable house, senate, and media that it's going to be a tough sell. This would seem to be a clear-cut anti-Bush comic... except that his other comics indicate that he wholeheartedly endorses the war and the new strategy, and the audience is supposed to come across as cynical and manipulative.
    • A similar case is this cartoon. Supposedly drawn with Tea Party sympathies, it depicts the Tea Party as a man pissing in a kid's Trick-or-Treat bucket (and exposing himself to a minor in the process).
  • In an extended arc of 9 Chickweed Lane a British commander was held to be wrong be all the characters for believing that Edna was a collaborator - but because they hadn't told him the facts (like her being an American spy), that really was what it looked like with what he knew, so he ended up far more sympathetic than intended.
  • The last few years of For Better or For Worse suffered from this.
  • The spoof editorial cartoons by Kelly featured in The Onion purposefully invoke this trope all the time. The Chuck Asay cartoon linked above would be right at home.
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