Monday, August 10, 2009

Shoe Art









(Click this image to enlargerate.)

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I'd love to start a blog that just comments on the art of other cartoons every day. I don't have time to do it regularly, but here is a perfect example of what I mean.

Shoe's left arm does not match the rest of his body. The line weight is heavier and it is wearing a suit jacket sleeve, while the rest of him is all Casual Friday with a golf shirt, or whatever you call those things. Jim MacNelly, who created this strip and was a very talented artist, writer and editorial cartoonist, is rolling over in his grave. (I don't know why they "roll," I don't invent the activities of the dead, I just report them.) Somebody hires TWO people to take over his strip and neither of them can be bothered to draw an arm to match the body, or at least steal one that is wearing the correct clothing.

I don't know either of the people who work on this strip now, but it sort of makes me wonder if all of the pictures are stolen from old art and pieced back together.

Oops. I just noticed that his hand is coming out from behind a menu. Never mind.

12 comments:

monsterzero said...

hahahaha!
i was just gonna tell ya that his arm is behind a menu.
then i read your last paragraph.
never mind.

Duane said...

It took me a while to get what you were talking about - I saw nothing but a menu-weilding Shoe in casual garb.

Nice strip though (like the "let them free!" undertone).

Unknown said...

Ha! I laughed quite hard at this post (not because of what you wrote but because of what you didn't)

I don't eat lobster though.

PMMDJ said...

You should check out Josh Reads. I mean, in case you haven't already. Art's not his main focus, but it comes up fairly often.

Karl said...

Yes the left arm does look like it's on steroids. A menu with lines across it(for words) would have helped the viewer.

Spontaneous Order said...

It's not a sleeve jacket, it is his menu.

Unknown said...

I fully expected you to laud the sort-of anti-meat sentiment; lobsters hoping for a reprieve....

b0b said...

It is funny, though.

Unknown said...

Not to be a stickler or anything Dan, but that is Cosmo,AKA "the perfessor". Shoe is the Cigar Chomper, I would think you would know this, what with your own oral fixation and all!! ;-)

Piraro said...

@shipping troll...
Okay, you caught me. I haven't read Shoe in decades and I don't know the name of the characters. I thought that fat white bird was Shoe. Next you're going to tell me that the guy who always runs into the mailman isn't Blondie.

Robert Gidley said...

Actually, Dan, it's JeffMacNelly who created Shoe and populated it with interesting and clever characters. The current crew just goes for the cheapest laugh that lets them make their tee time.

What bugs me about this drawing is the relationship between the phone and the tank and the wall. WTF? Is there a corner there? Or is the phone just at completely the wrong angle?

And in the picture of the fish on the wall, why are the air bubbles in front of the fish? Why aren't they rising?

Zoe Doe said...

Gah. At first I saw the menu, then I read this post and I can only see a mutant arm. It's like a poorly conceived optical illusion.