Take That/Newspaper Comics: Difference between revisions

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* ''[[The Boondocks]]''. [[Zero Context Example|Just The Boondocks]]. It would probably be easier to list the strips that weren't Take Thats against something or someone than the ones that were.
* Bill Watterson has used ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' to mock modern art, art criticism, and superhero comic books. Either Calvin uses phrases copied verbatim from art journals to describe his snow men, or his breathless praises of comic books as an art form are interrupted by comments like, "Oh no, Captain Steroid's getting his kidneys punched out with an I-beam!" Take note that Watterson's career peaked during the [[Dark Age]] of western comics, which likely influenced his opinions quite a bit, but as to why he didn't seek out fellow "comics can be art" proponents such as Dave Sim and Scott McCloud and join up with the Graphic Novel movement is a complete mystery.
** Watterson directed a few Take Thats at ''[[Garfield]]'' creator Jim Davis over the years. In a rare 1987 interview, he harshly condemned Davis' comic strip ''[[USU.S. Acres]]'', calling it stupid and badly done. In ''The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book'', Watterson extensively discusses why he hates merchandising, and how it robs a comic strip of its heart and soul. He even writes about how a cartoonist risks becoming a "factory foreman", remarking on how he went into cartooning "to draw cartoons, not to run a corporate empire." He disgustedly remarks on how he would have sold out his own creation if he'd done this. Given the context, it was pretty clear who he was talking about. Granted, since Jim Davis stated that he created Garfield for the purpose of making money, and probably didn't intend there to be much of that deeper significance in which Watterson puts so much stock, it's unlikely that Watterson would have liked it anyway.
** Bill Watterson's foreword to Bill Amend's first ''[[FoxTrot]]'' book is basically an extended take that against Jim Davis. For example, Watterson champions Quincy the Iguana for not thinking "the cute thoughts that quickly get most comic strip animals in the greeting card business."
*** Of course, one could also make the case that there are no Quincy the Iguana cards because the average person thinks [[Reptiles Are Abhorrent]].
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** Of course, he takes jabs at ''Sally Forth'' [http://mediumlarge.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/thursday-april-8-2010/ too].
* Mark Tatulli's ''Lio'' is known as much for its morbid sense of humor as it is for its parodies of other comics. He got a lot of interweb hits when he took a few shots at ''[[For Better or For Worse]]'', but it may seem strange that he frequently shows his main character tormenting the kids from ''[[Peanuts]]''. Not so much when you discover that he received a torrent of hatemail when a newspaper used ''Lio'' as a replacement for ''Peanuts'' reruns.
* Al Capp frequently used ''[[LilLi'l Abner]]'' to deliver Take Thats to pretty much anything that bothered him. Within his own medium, his "Fearless Fosdick" character, a [[Show Within a Show|strip within a strip]] parodying ''Dick Tracy'', stands out. Fosdick is portrayed as an idiot with a penchant for violence that [[Normally I Would Be Dead Now|just can't die]]. Eventually the in-universe creator of the strip is revealed to be completely insane and the strip a result of his violent fantasies.
** Capp famously depicted a parody ''Mary Worth'', who took a vacation from her strip (to her author's relief) to meddle in Abner and Daisy Mae's affairs. That strip then reciprocated, depicting Capp as a drunken lout.
* After ''[[PvP (Webcomicwebcomic)|Pv P]]'' creator Scott Kurtz announced he was going to offer his comics to newspapers, ''Non Sequitur'' had [http://www.websnark.com/archives/2004/12/wiley_blinks.html a strip] involving a fat nerd named "Scotty" trying to get into a club.
* Berkely Breathed's ''[[Bloom County]]'', and its offshoots ''Outland'' and ''Opus'', pretty much live for this trope, taking shots at both politics (''Bloom County'' had Oliver's attempt to protest apartheid by turning the South African ambassador to the U.S. black) and pop culture (one story arc in ''Outland'' involved Mickey Mouse's sleazy cousin Mortimer getting fed up with the changes Michael Eisner was making at Disney, and beating the crap out of him).
* It was inevitable that someone would do this regarding the [[Wii]]. According to [[FoxTrot]], "Soon kids across the world will be rushing home from school so they can Wii." Then again, this is arguably funny enough to merit a pass.
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** Another [[Take That]] showed up in one of a series of strips from the 1950s in which Snoopy was going about doing impressions (or "imitations," as Charlie Brown referred to them) of kids, animals, and celebrities. One of these acts had him [[Rule of Funny|(inexplicably)]] blacking out his eyes and curling his ears into round disks to impersonate Mickey Mouse. (When Charlie Brown quietly informs Schroeder of this, all we see him say is "Msssp Msss.") Initially it appears to be merely a [[Shout-Out]], but Charlie's comment of "Frightening, isn't it?" turned it into a [[Take That]].
** A 1973 sequence has Charlie Brown horrified to learn that the neighborhood adults had created "snow leagues" for kids, where teams competed with each other to build snowmen, including playoffs and the chance to play teams from other countries. Y'know like how sandlot baseball and other activities kids used to do for fun ended up becoming the basis for organized, hyper-competitive Little Leagues.
* [[Small Name, Big Ego|Brooke McEldowney]], author of ''[[Nine9 Chickweed Lane]]'', recently had his author avatar Thorax breezily condemn anyone who didn't like the [[Pow Zap Wham Cam|warped perspective]], [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|ornate dialogue]] and [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|Ayn-Randesque morals]] of his characters as imbeciles; he had earlier blamed his being forced to move his more openly sexualized fantasy strip Pibgorn on beefwits who were stuck in the past.
* One edition of ''[[Rocky (Comic Bookcomics)|Rocky]]'' is a [[Take That]] towards another Swedish cartoonist who created a similarly-themed comic two years after ''Rocky'' premiered.
* ''[[Stone Soup (Comiccomic Stripstrip)|Stone Soup]]'' is not a political comic, but when the sound effect for barfing is '''''[[Barack Obama|BARRACK]]''''' two days in a row...
** Their current story arc is full of reactions to the Trayvon Martin murder and [[Straw Misogynist|misogynistic]] [[Strawman Political|politicians]]. Who knows what other Take Thats it will have as it goes on.
* [http://joshreads.com/?p=13534 This] ''Crock'' strip has a particularly vicious one against ''[[The Comics Curmudgeon]]''. Naturally, this is mocked by Josh