Arts Journal links today to a wonderful article on the Newsweek site on the current state of newspaper comic strips. The article is notable simply because comic strips don't get much play in media commentary these days, if they ever did. It's worth checking out, even if its big premise, that the current decade (the 00's) hasn't found it's breakout Doonesbury or Bloom County-level hit yet, seems a tad premature.

I did particularly enjoy, however, the piece's fine appreciation of my current fave, Get Fuzzy. What it doesn't mention, and what I will, is that perhaps Fuzzy's greatest atribute is the art. The strip isn't based on the quick set up and delivery of jokes, the way most strips are, and has a very different rhythm than your typical strip, especially your typical talking-animals strip. What makes it funny, for me anyway, is the art - there's an indefinable something about the way Darby Conley, who writes and draws it, has designed his characters, in particular the acerbic Bucky the cat, that's funny all on its own. It's that rare strip that would elicit a chuckle without any dialogue, and is probably my current favorite.

Until whenever.