The Christmas Special Day 18: A Garfield Christmas Special (1987)

Directors: Phil Roman & George Singer

Writer: Jim Davis

Cast: Lorenzo Music, Thom Huge, Gregg Berger, Pat Carroll, Pat Harrington Jr., David Lander, Julie Payne

Plot: Garfield the Cat (Lorenzo Music) wakes up on Christmas morning to find his owner Jon (Thom Huge) has arranged an incredible gift – a chair that will read his mind and produce any gift he can imagine. Garfield produces dozens of presents before he realizes it’s all a dream. Jon wakes him up in the real world, on Christmas Eve, planning to pack up and go to his parents’ farm for Christmas.  On the farm Jon, Garfield and Odie (Gregg Berger) get caught up in the preparations, while his mom (Julie Payne) and Grandma (Pat Carroll) clash in the kitchen.  After dinner, Jon’s father (Pat Harrington Jr.) can’t get the star on top of the tree, and Garfield is sent in to do the job. After a few heart-rending moments, he pops out of the branches, places the star, and falls back down, taking the half of the decorations with him. Despite the chaos, when Dad plugs the tree in, it’s perfect. Jon’s parents have his brother Doc Boy (David Lander) sit down at the piano to lead a singalong, but Grandma quickly takes over. After, as she relaxes with Garfield in her lap, she relates how her late husband always made Christmas magical for her and the kids.

After Dad’s rousing recitation of Binky: The Clown Who Saved Christmas, the family goes to bed. Garfield watches Odie sneak off to the barn, where the dog struggles to put together some bizarre contraption. Garfield helps without Odie’s knowledge, then stumbles onto a bundle of old letters. Inside, Jon and Doc Boy try to rouse their parents to open presents – at 1:30 a.m. Dad forces them to go back to bed until morning – real morning – when Garfield presents Grandma with the letters he found. She’s stunned to realize Garfield found the love letters her husband sent her years ago, letters she thought were lost forever. Odie then pops in with his own gift – the contraption from the barn, a backscratcher for Garfield. Touched, Garfield comments on the true meaning of Christmas… love… before he tells us all to get out.

Thoughts: It’s easy to forget, considering how bland it’s grown in recent years, but Garfield actually used to be pretty funny. Both the comic strip and the 80s/90s cartoon had some really good years, and this 1987 special is one of the earlier efforts with the newspaper star.

Garfield’s cynicism is a trademark of the character, of course, but for a children’s Christmas special in 1987 to open up with a main character proclaiming the virtues of greed and avarice was a rather surprising way to kick things off. His complete lack of excitement and enthusiasm is what makes the character so funny, in fact. While Jon bubbles over with excitement about Christmas, Garfield bemoans days of work, chores, “electrical contracting,” and other such activities that draw him away from his cozy bed. Looking back as an adult, it’s a lot easier to sympathize with Garfield than Jon’s family. Even if you forget everything else that goes along with Christmas, life on a farm… it’s not easy.

Grandma Arbuckle (who made a return appearance, triumphantly, in Garfield’s Thanksgiving special a few years later) is another comedic gem, throwing out such bizarre observations as “in my day all we had were wood-burning cats.” That sort of weird, surreal comment is just the thing to elevate this beyond being just a wacky kids’ show and into something with a little bit of an absurdist quality that adults can enjoy too. As the show progresses, though, we start to get the sense that her lunacy is a bit of a front, a shield she puts up to hide a bit of loneliness that’s come upon her in her age.

Lorenzo Music was truly fantastic in the Garfield role, bringing in a amusing, dry quality that sells every line. Even Frank Welker, who does the character in the modern version of the cartoon, doesn’t really hold a candle to Music, who passed away in 2001. Pat Carroll’s Grandma is another great find, straddling the line between sweet little old lady and aging hellfire. Fans who like to play “who’s that voice?” get a nice puzzle as well – Jon’s brother Doc Boy is voiced by David Lander, alias Squiggy of Laverne and Shirley fame.

The story of this special is pretty loose. Although I don’t think most of it is based on any specific comic strips, it definitely has the feel of being plucked from assorted holiday-themed strips that don’t necessarily have anything to do with one another, then stitched together into something resembling a plot. The later Peanuts specials have often been fraught with this problem, but this is one of the few times Garfield fell victim to it.

With the loose feeling, the special doesn’t really latch on to the real Christmas spirit until the end. Suitably, the cartoon maintains Garfield’s rather pessimistic air until the moment Garfield realizes Odie is trying to make him a gift. After that, it quickly swings into the realm of the sweet – Garfield helps Odie and improbably finds the one thing that would mean more to Grandma than anything else. It’s quite a coincidence, but it’s not hard to accept in a cartoon of this sort.

This is one of my favorite of the various Garfield specials, and it set things up very nicely for his weekly cartoon series the next year. That one became a staple for me for many years, and even now, I’d rather watch some of those old episodes than most other cartoons on the air today. The modern Garfield Show doesn’t really hold a candle to the old one (despite having much of the same cast and writing staff), but I still like to go to this one every Christmas season.

Don’t forget, The Christmas Special is the third Reel to Reel movie study. The first, Mutants, Monsters and Madmen, is now available as a $2.99 eBook in the Amazon Kindle store and Smashwords.com bookstore. And you can find links to all of my novels, collections, and short stories, in their assorted print, eBook and audio forms, at the Now Available page!

In Defense of the Laugh Track

A day or two ago, during a Twitter conversation, a buddy of mine expressed surprise that the TV show How I Met Your Mother is already in its seventh season. Specifically, he said when he watched the first episode, his reaction was along the lines of, “A laugh track? Right, this is going to last.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard him express a sentiment like this, and he’s be no means the only person I know who has felt this way. And I have an odd sort of reaction to it every time. While I’m not necessarily a fan of laugh tracks, I’m not instinctively opposed to them either, and in no way do I think the presence or absence of a laugh track is indicative of the quality of a show. Some of the greatest comedies of all time have featured either a laugh track or, even better, the laughter of a live audience — Cheers, The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, All in the Family, Sanford and Son… due to the sheer number of shows that have included the sound of laughter, it’s easy to argue that it has been present in most of the great English-language comedy shows of all time.

Let’s examine the perceived problem with the laugh track. The opposition, I believe, stems from the feeling that the producers of the show are being insulting or patronizing by cuing the audience to laugh, or that it speaks to an inherent lack of confidence in the material that requires the canned laughter so the viewer knows it’s supposed to be funny. In some cases, this is probably true — it’s a little less painful to watch a terrible attempt at comedy if we hear somebody laughing. But for most of us, that’s not nearly enough to disguise bad material. In fact, when used on a bad show, it can even serve to accentuate what’s wrong with it. For example, think of the critics’ current go-to example of terrible programming, the NBC sitcom Whitney. Among the show’s many crimes against the viewers, Whitney Cummings starts every episode by announcing, “Whitney is taped before a live studio audience. You heard me.”

Huh?

The “live studio audience” bit is standard, of course, it’s been used by sitcoms for decades to let the viewer know that, yes, real people were there when they taped the show and, yes, they really laughed. But Cummings takes it a step too far: “You heard me.” Suddenly she’s become abrasive and confrontational, as if she’s anticipating some critic using the laugh track to condemn the show and wants to cut him off by saying, “See? THESE people like it!” It’s supposed to set the tone with a joke, but it doesn’t work. Then again, “abrasive,” “confrontational,” and “it doesn’t work” are all terms I would use to define the show in general, so perhaps it’s more successful at setting the tone than is readily apparent.

Regardless, Whitney doesn’t suck because it has a laugh track, it sucks because it’s poorly written and performed by soulless automatons that couldn’t hold on to their jobs frightening children in theme park dark rides. The laugh track itself is just a convention of muti-camera sitcoms, and we’re so used to it that such a show would feel strange without one.

There are, basically, two kinds of comedies on television, single-camera and multi-camera, and each has different demands based on the way the television show is filmed. “Single-camera” shows are filmed like movies, with one camera in use at any given time, and no audience. Shows like this — such as Scrubs, The Office, or Community to name a few — allow for location shooting, outdoor filming, and give the director the opportunity to record a take as many times as he wants until he gets it right. The “multi-camera” technique was popularized by Desi Arnaz when he was making I Love Lucy. Like their predecessors in radio, early TV sitcoms were often performed in front of a live audience. The problem here is that you can’t do as many takes are you want with an audience.

People will only sit so long to be entertained, and even worse, the jokes lose their impact upon repeat viewings. Even the funniest scene ever written (and here I am specifically thinking of the bit in The Dick Van Dyke Show when Rob and Mary are afraid their child was switched at birth, only to find out the other family is black) will fail to elicit a laugh if you’ve seen it ten times in the past hour while the director tries to get different angles. Using several cameras to shoot different angles at the same time drastically reduces the number of takes necessary. The vast majority of TV comedies over the past several decades have been multi-camera, and it wasn’t until the early 2000s, when shows like Scrubs became successful, that single-camera began to regain popularity. (Virtually all TV dramas, by the way, are filmed single-camera, and thus aren’t particularly germane to this discussion.)

The result is two very different experiences for the viewer. Single-camera shows are packaged like movies, with more incidental music and greater opportunities for action or special effects. They come to the viewer in a very complete fashion. But multi-camera shows aren’t made like movies. They are performed and packaged like a stage play, and it is for this reason that laughter isn’t only expected, but almost required.

A stage play is far more immediate than a movie. There’s a greater energy and urgency, not only for the actor, but for the audience as well. Live actors can feel when an audience is enjoying a show and feed off that energy, and conversely, when an audience isn’t into it, the show suffers. There is nothing you, as an audience member, can do that will change your experience watching a movie, but simple audience consensus in a live play actually does make it better or worse.

Obviously, this isn’t true of a TV show, once you’re watching it at home. But the point I’m making here is that these shows — probably unintentionally — are designed in such a way as to imitate the shared community experience of watching a live play, which is different even from the shared community experience of watching a movie in a packed theater. And it is because of this that hearing laughter during a multi-camera show “feels” right, and why a laugh track added to a single-camera show “feels” wrong. In 2010 NBC rolled out yet another of their many doomed sitcoms, this one called 100 Questions. This single-camera show was weak to being with, but the producers did it no favors by adding in a laugh track. This sitcom convention, which is almost unnoticable when used well on a multi-camera show, is unbearably conspicuous in a single-camera setting.

By contrast, look at a multi-camera show with no laugh track. There are plenty of efforts on YouTube to strip the track from assorted shows, and most of them suffer from rather poor and obvious editing, but it’s enough for you to get the idea:

Even the funniest show, when stripped of its laugh track, feels like sitting in a play where nobody is laughing, and that’s a miserable feeling for actor and audience alike. The tone is similar to the  webcomic Arbuckle, which repackages Garfield comic strips without Garfield’s thought balloons, thus giving Jon Arbuckle the appearance of being a sad (well… sadder), lonely man who talks to his perfectly conventional pets as if they could respond. (This is not to be confused with the more popular Garfield Minus Garfield, which strips all characters and dialogue save for Jon Arbuckle himself, giving him the appearance of being a lunatic suffering from advanced schizophrenia. Although one wonders if The Big Bang Theory would feel this way if you edited out Johnny Galecki’s Leonard and left Jim Parson’s Sheldon by himself.)

To give one more example, this of a fantastic show where virtually everything was done wrong, look at Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night. It was a multi-camera sitcom that, strangely, felt very wrong with a laugh track added in. When the producers dropped the laugh track, it made for a better show, but it also made it clear what the problem was: the show wasn’t really written as a comedy, but a drama. At most, it was a “dramedy,” and should have been shot single-camera, where it may have at least stood a chance. But Sorkin learned his lesson on his next show, a little thing called The West Wing.

While I can accept that a person can prefer the single-camera format to the multi-camera or vice versa, I soundly reject the notion that either format is inherently superior to the other. And I think the sound of laughter (I do prefer live audience to canned laughter, but that’s another discussion) is hardwired into the genre the way comic books use panels. Is it possible to do without? Sure — but it feels… off.

If, perhaps, we were to eradicate the laugh track entirely, we could learn to live without it. Twenty or thirty years from now, it could be considered quaint, and the next generation would find it unusual if someone tried to bring it back. But it’s part of an experience that has been conditioned into our brains, and that’s really hard to change.

My Saturday Morning Shuffle

A little while ago, chatting with Erin and Mark on Facebook, we call came to the conclusion that there just aren’t any good shows on Saturday mornings anymore. Certainly no decent cartoons. And I decided that the only way to remedy this, at least until I take over television programming, is to get an enormous DVD player capable of holding dozens of discs and placing the episodes on random shuffle. So I looked at my DVD collection to decide what I would put on that shuffle if I could do so right now…

• Animaniacs Volume 1 (I so gotta find the rest of these)
• Challenge of the Super-Friends Vol. 1, 2
• Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers Vol. 1
• Count Duckula Season 1
• DC Super-Heroes: The Filmation Adventures
• Danger Mouse Seasons 1 and 2
• Darkwing Duck Vol. 1
• Ducktales Vol. 1-3
• Dungeons and Dragons: The Beginning
• Exosquad Season 1
• Flintstones: The Complete Series
• Galaxy High Vol. 1
• Garfield and Friends Vol. 1-5
• Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 1-3
• Looney Tunes: The Golden Collection Vol. 1-2 (I desperately need the rest of these)
• Max Fleischer’s Superman
• The Muppet Show Seasons 1-3 (Not a cartoon, but I dare you to tell me these don’t deserve to be here)
• Peanuts 1960s Collection, 1970s Collection Vol. 1-2
• Pinky and the Brain Vol. 2 (Still need more!)
• The Pixar Short Films Collection (Because they’re cool)
• The Real Ghostbusters Vol. 1
• Rocky and Bullwinkle Season 1
• Star Trek: The Animated Series
• Star Wars Animated: Droids & Ewoks
• Superman: The Animated Series Vol. 2
• Tiny Toon Adventures Season 1 Vol. 2
• TransFormers: The Complete First Season Vol. 1
• Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Black and White; Silly Symphonies Vol. 1; Oswald the Lucky Rabbit; The Chronological Donald Vol. 2; The Complete Goofy

Looking at this list, my collection seems woefully inadequate. Why have I never finished the Looney Tunes collections? Or Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, or Pinky and the Brain? Why don’t I have the Batman cartoons, Batman Beyond, or the Justice League? (Why has Warner Brothers not yet released a complete set of Static Shock?)

:sigh:

Someday, my friends. Some. Day.

A Thanksgiving Observation

After spending much of the day traveling to various shopping institutions with my friends, it occurs to me that there clearly is an insidious plot to eradicate the holiday of Thanksgiving. Halloween is a remarkably profitable holiday for the retail industry. The only holiday more profitable is Christmas. Thanksgiving, in-between, is rather mild by comparison. There’s a big food expenditure, but it’s typically just for the one day instead of the whole season. Very few people go all-out with the decorations. And while Halloween and Christmas both deluge us with media properties, for Thanksgiving there is exactly one classic movie (Planes, Trains and Automobiles), one classic TV special (A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving) and one classic song (The Thanksgiving Song by Adam Sandler).*

I have come to the inarguable conclusion that cartoonist Dan Long, in his comic strip Edmund Finney’s Quest to Find the Meaning of Life, is absolutely right. The turkeys are trying to eliminate Thanksgiving.

Don’t let this happen, friends. Don’t give in to the turkeys.

*Please note, before you start listing other Thanksgiving movies, TV specials, and songs, that I said classics. I too enjoy Garfield’s Thanksgiving and I eagerly await the insidious Dr. Steve’s annual Thanksgiving song every November at www.DoctorFloyd.com. But these aren’t classics. And I’m sure someone, at some point, has made another Thanksgiving movie, but damned if I know what it is.

2 in 1 Showcase Episode 194: The Halloween Special Special

Happy Halloween, Showcase listeners! This week, the boys sit down to talk about some of their favorite Halloween specials, movies, comics, and TV shows, including a horrific revelation about Mike! (You may want to cover the kids’ ears for this one.) In the picks, Mike recommends volume one of The Boys, Kenny goes Halloween with Superman/Batman #77, and Blake goes with Ragman: Suit of Souls #1. Contact us with comments, suggestions, or anything else at Showcase@CXPulp.com!

Music provided by the Music Alley from Mevio.

Episode 194: The Halloween Special Special

 

What I’m Watching: 2009 Edition

As I sit here in the New Orleans Airport, waiting to head off to Nashville for a conference on “redesigning ninth grade,” I thought I’d take advantage of the time to post the movie list for the year thus far. Like the reading list I posted yesterday, I’m adding this to the links on the right-hand side of the page for the sake of anyone who’s actually interested in that sort of thing. Now when you feel like asking, “Hey Blake! Have you seen Wanted yet?” you can just click on the sidebar. Ain’t that cool?

Also, like for the books, I’ll include a link for those movies I’ve reviewed.

1. DuckTales the Movie: Legend of the Lost Lamp; 1990-B
2. Futurama: Bender’s Game; 2008-B
3. 24: Redemption; 2008-B+
4. Death to the Tinman; 2007-B+
5. Rated R: Republican in Hollywood; 2004-C+
6. Batman Vs. Dracula; 2005-C
7. Hamlet; 1960-D (Movie); B+ (MST3K Riff)
8. Confessions of a Superhero; 2007-B
9. Storytelling; 2001-C+
10. You’re a Good Sport, Charlie Brown; 1975-B+
11. You’re the Greatest, Charlie Brown; 1979-B-
12. The Black Cauldron; 1985-B+
13. Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown; 1975-A
14. A Charlie Brown Valentine; 2002-B
15. You’re In Love, Charlie Brown; 1967-B+
16. It’s Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown; 1977-C-
17. Howard the Duck; 1986-D+
18. Quarantine; 2008-B
19. Coraline; 2009-A
20. Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder; 2009-B
21. Friday the 13th; 2009-C+
22. The Karate Kid; 1984-B+
23. Wonder Woman; 2009-A-
24. Watchmen; 2009-B-
25. Wanted; 2008-D
26. This is Spinal Tap; 1984-B+
27. Judge Dredd; 1995-D
28. The Gamers: Dorkness Rising; 2008-B+
29. Primer; 2004-B+
30. Sheena; 1984-C
31. Persepolis; 2007-B
32. Surf’s Up; 2007-B-
33. It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown; 1974, B-
34. It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown; 1976, B+
35. Vampirella; 1996-D
36. Tales of the Black Freighter; 2009-A
37. Under the Hood; 2009-B
38. The Norman Rockwell Code; 2006-B
39. Monsters Vs. Aliens; 2009-A
40. Once Upon a Girl; 1976-C
41. Sesame Street Presents Follow That Bird; 1985-A
42. Snoopy’s Reunion; 1991-B-
43. It’s Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown; 1984-B-
44. William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet; 1997, C
45. X-Men Origins: Wolverine; 2009, C+
46. Star Trek; 2009, A
47. The Phantom; 1996, C
48. Vantage Point; 2008, B+
49. National Lampoon’s European Vacaction; 1985, B
50. Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest; 2007, B-
51. The Odyssey; 1997 (miniseries), B
52. O Brother, Where Art Thou?; 2000, A
53. The Terminator; 1984, B
54. Terminator 2: Judgment Day; 1991, A+
55. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines; 2003, C+
56. Terminator: Salvation; 2009, A-
57. Nightmare Circus; 1974, F
58. Day of the Dead; 1985, B+
59. The Call of Cthulhu; 2005, B
60. The Running Man; 1987, C
61. Grindhouse Presents Death Proof; 2007, C-
62. Partly Cloudy; 2009, B+
63. Up; 2009, A
64. Across the Universe; 2007, C
65. Tropic Thunder; 2008, B
66. Good Luck Chuck; 2007, C+
67. The Hangover; 2009, B+
68. TransFormers; 2007, B
69. TransFormers: Revenge of the Fallen; 2009, B-
70. My Cousin Vinnie; 1992, A
71. 1776; 1972, A+
72. The Rocketeer; 1993, A-
73. Independence Day; 1996, B+
74. Short Cuts; 1993, D
75. Comic Book Villains; 2002, B
76. Riding the Bullet; 2004, B
77. Fanboys; 2008, B+
78. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; 2005, B+
79. Chalk; 2006, A-
80. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; 2009, B+
81. Push; 2009, C+
82. Donald in Mathmagic Land; 1959, A
83. He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown; 1968, B+
84. It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown; 1969, B
85. Charlie Brown’s All Stars; 1966, A
86. Green Lantern: First Flight; 2009, A
87. The Dark Half; 1993, B-
88. Cashback; 2006, B+
89. Flight of the Navigator; 1986, B-
90. Justice League: A New Frontier; 2008, A
91. Ghostbusters II; 1989, B
92. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra; 2009, F
93. District 9; 2004, A
94. Ghostbusters; 1984, A
95. Inglorious Basterds; 2009, A-
96. Halloween II; 2009, C-
97. Severance; 2006, B
98. Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters; 1988, C+
99. Countdown to Wednesday; 2004, B
100. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; 1988, B+
101. Murder Party; 2007, B
102. Hulk Vs.; 2009, B-
103. Graveyard Shift; 1990, C+
104. Saw V; 2008, C
105. 9; 2009, B+
106. Zombie Strippers; 2008, F
107. Return of the Living Dead 3; 1993, C
108. Superman/Batman: Public Enemies; 2009, B
109. Zombieland; 2009, B+
110. Toy Story; 1995, A
111. Toy Story 2; 1999, A+
112. Frankenstein; 1931, A
113. Bride of Frankenstein; 1935, B+
114. Son of Frankenstein; 1939, A
115. Ghost of Frankenstein; 1942, C+
116. House of Frankenstein; 1944, C
117. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein; 1948, A+
118. Trick ‘r Treat; 2007, A-
119. Hobgoblins; 1988, F (movie), A (MST3K Riff)
120. The Men Who Stare at Goats; 2009, B+
121. The Time Machine; 2002, B-
122. Animal Farm; 1999, B
123. Planet 51; 2009, B
124. Play it Again, Charlie Brown; 1971, B+*
125. You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown: 1972, B*
126. There’s No Time For Love, Charlie Brown; 1973, B-*
127. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving; 1973, A*
128. It’s a Mystery, Charlie Brown; 1974, B*
129. Garfield’s Thanksgiving; 1989, A-
130. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians; 1964, F (movie), B (MSK3K Riff)
131. A Christmas Carol; 2009, B+
132. A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa; 2008, B+*
133. A Chipmunk Christmas; 1981, B*
134. A Flintstones Christmas Carol; 1994, B+
135. A Muppets Christmas Carol; 1992, A-
136. Mickey’s Christmas Carol; 1983, A*
137. The Small One; 1978, A*
138. Pluto’s Christmas Tree; 1953, A*
139. Santa’s Workshop; 1932, A*
140. Prep and Landing; 2009, A-*
141. Frosty’s Winter Wonderland; 1976, B+*
142. Cranberry Christmas; 2009, B-*
143. Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July; 1979, B-
144. A Charlie Brown Christmas; 1965, A+*
145. It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown; 1992, B*
146. Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales; 2002, B-*
147. I Want a Dog For Christmas, Charlie Brown; 2003, B+*
148. Happy New Year, Charlie Brown; 1985, A-*
149. The Princess and the Frog; 2009, A
150. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer; 1964, A*
151. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation; 1989, A+
152. Hogfather; 2006, B+
153. Home Alone; 1990, B
154. ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas; 1974, B+*
155. Elf; 2003, B
156. A Christmas Story; 1983, A+
157. Avatar; 2009, D+
158. Night of the Creeps; 1986, C
159. Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys; 2005, B
160. Sherlock Holmes; 2009, B

Last Updated on December 31, 2009

Everything But Imaginary #293: Comic Strips Scrolling Across the Screen (GMR7)

It’s time once again for The Great Movie Ride, my Everything But Imaginary column-within-a-column in which I attempt the absurd task of watching and discussing every comic movie ever made. This week, I look into six films based not on comic book, but on newspaper comic strips. Then, you lucky people get to pick which movies I’ll be forced to watch for the next installment!

Everything But Imaginary #293: Comic Strips Scrolling Across the Screen (GMR7)
Inside This Column: