Thursday, April 22, 2010

Lazy cartooning

When I mentioned in the last post that the Benders would probably be well served to extend the fight sequence over several weeks, I neglected to mention that this would require drawing more than one fight scene that they use over and over and over again.
Because, as you can see below, that is precisely what the Benders have done.







In the April 15 strip, we get the first scene of the melee with Oop grimacing as he clups a Lemmian with a red bandana upside the head. Behind him to his left is Foozie with an uncertain look on his face as he is set upon by a clone of the guy that Oop just bashed. And to the right of Oop is Wooly locked in a struggle with three Lemmians - one has grabbed his club, another has his left arm and a third looks like he’s going to hit him while he is being restrained. And immediately behind Oop is a menacing-looking bald-headed Lemmian with both arms up in the air looking like he is going to try and tackle Oop from behind.
So far so good. Then on Sunday we get a repeat of the same picture since the Benders have given up on producing new materials for Sunday and just rehash scenes from the previous week.
Finally, on Monday, April 20, we resume with the fight.... except that it is simply the exact same fight scene as before only flipped so that whereas earlier Oop was swinging his club with his right hand, now he is singing with his left hand and so forth. So the Benders did as little work as possible. Alley Oop is still in the process of hitting the same guy, Wooly is now off screen, but everything else is just the same as it was the week prior.
Then on Tuesday, April 21, we get a change. Oop is STILL hitting the same guy (flipped back again and using his right arm once more) and we can now see Wooly once more still in t he exact same position. The only difference now is that the bald-headed guy behind Oop suddenly has a club in his left hand that he is swinging awkwardly at Oop’s hat. Why the sudden importance being placed on the hat is beyond me. The fact that Oop stops in the middle of a fight to liberate Moo so that he can retrieve his top hat is stupid beyond compare.
And it’s not even worth noting that in the split second it takes for the swinging club to strike Oop’s hat, he has already switched his club from his right hand to his left hand.

Monday, April 19, 2010

More Wham! Bam! Pow! please


Finally, after weeks of Alley Oop and the Moovians behaving like sniveling cowards, they finally show some life in this April 15 comic. Maybe the Benders decided to take a clue from the new movie “Kick-Ass.” Here, for an all-too-brief moment, we have Alley Oop acting like the hero he is supposed to be and whaling away at the Lemmians. The Benders could run several weeks worth of this fight scene and improve the strip greatly. Oop should be able to take on five or six of these guys at a time. Instead, all we’ve seen him and the rest of the Moovians do is immediately surrender everytime they see more than two Lemmians together at one time. It’s pathetic!
But no. One brief glimpse is all we get and then we have to turn the focus back to Oola and some Lemmian deserter having a long, drawn-out, pointless conversation. Yawn.
If we are lucky, we may get one more brief glimpse of the fight before Oop blows his horn and Dinny/Oola ride to the rescue scaring away all the Lemmians who will act like they’ve never seen a dinosaur before. Sheesh!