Always late to the party.
Friday, February 01, 2008 · 12:50 · 0 comments
I want to take the time to welcome David Troupes' Buttercup Festival back to the online world. It was greatly missed.The series was first brought to my attention back in 2003 when I was conversing with Bob Krzykowski (of Elsie Hooper fame). I was instantly drawn (hehe pun) to Buttercup Festival's art style. Simple looking characters on a detailed backdrop. The style takes me back to when I was a child. In those days, I was probably the only kid who was a Calvin and Hobbes fan, and Bill Watterson fan. Drawing his characters were easy. They looked a bit different because of one's artistic style, but have fun trying to draw Watterson's trees.
In 2005 Troupes (then going by the pseudonym Elliott G. Garbauskas) put the strip to bed, and three years later, it makes its surprise return.
The sad thing? Series like Buttercup Festival and Elsie Hooper reminds me of the sorry state the Sunday's comics section is in. It was recently cut down to four pages (from eight), and it's pretty sad that the best strip in the section is a rerun of a classic (read: Peanuts). Garfield isn't funny unless you remove his thought bubbles (You see how sorry Jon Arbuckle is, not the strip itself). Family Circus is just sitting there waiting to suck. Non Sequitur and Zits are the only things it has going for it.
Luckily, God made the internet on the eighth day, which enables me to roll my own section. Here is a list of the others I read. Some are no longer updated.
Ballad
Creased Comics
dinosaur comics
Penny Arcade
The Perry Bible Fellowship
Sh*thouse
Skinny Panda
xkcd