I can handle comic strips about obese, talking cats. I can deal with comics involving beagles who think they’re WWI flying aces. Those aren’t tough stories to swallow. But the complete and total disregard for reality that stains Wednesday’s For Better or For Worse comic strip is sure to rile aspiring authors everywhere. This kind of thing is why creative writing courses are swamped, editors are hounded by people bearing awful manuscripts, and the less-reputable vanity presses are able to take advantage of unsuspecting dreamers.
GalleyCat agrees.
Reminds me of Chevy Chase’s movie Funny Farm. He and his wife moved out of NYC into the country so he could write his Great American Novel, for which he received a fat advance. What he wrote was so horrid that his even his wife hated it. Meanwhile, she’s been writing (longhand) a book of her own — a children’s book about talking animals. She sends it to a publisher, whose ad she saw in the back of a writing mag, and receives a check for $5,000, plus a type-written copy of her script!
How old is that Mike kid supposed to be? 17? That scenario might actually be plausible, given the big publishers’ relentless lust for a juicy marketing angle. (”Precocious Teen Pens Debut Novel!”) I’d be much more impressed if he sold his next book, long after he’s no longer a flavor-of-the-month.
Um. Disregard for reality is, I think, part of what newspaper comic strips are about. Sometimes they’re misogynistic anachronisms (Blondie), sometimes they’re religious/political soapboxes (B.C.), sometimes they’re family comedies (FBOFW). But they’re really never aiming for reality, with the sometimes exception of Doonesbury, I guess.
What has writers steamed about the Mike-the-author storyline is not really the improbability, but that the writer/artist is so earnest, right? There’s nothing that irks us like an earnest fantasy. We really have no problem when it’s just a little more tongue-in-cheek. See Exhibit A, Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys.
You are missing the biggest improbability.
This happens in Canada?
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