Print julep (funnies and ponies)
This year's Kentucky Derby parade will center around comics and animation, E&P reports. Cathy Guisewite, creator of the Cathy comic strip, will be the grand marshal.
My reaction? Ack!
Guisewite, who surprisingly doesn't resemble cartoon Cathy at all, is finally marrying off her ever-flustered heroine in 2004 after admittedly running out of ideas on how to keep the poor woman single. Compared to other Jackson Browne-tanked comic strips out there, that's not a bad twist. But is Guisewite really the most popular American cartoonist post-Schultz?
Maybe. She certainly has her fans. Googling Guisewite finds an article by my friend Kimra in Blue Jean Online, a publication that hooks an audience not even born when Cathy first ran. Google gets credit from me for surprisingly turning up a friend; Guisewite — who actually resembles a cross between Sandra Bullock and CNN's Carol Costello — gets credit for hitting that audience.
But let's examine the other candidates.
Clearly, Lynn Johnston (For Better or Worse) is out of the running with her Canadian-ness, but is Jim Davis chopped liver? Does Guisewite get the edge for the engagement gimmick? Should Garfield suffer because cats can't marry?
Then there's Bil Keane of Family Circus. Sure, Keane's getting up there in years, but I bet he can still sit in a convertible and have a dotted line follow him down the street.
The same likely holds true with Mort Walker of Beetle Bailey, except with our nation's armed forces toeing that dotted line. Just consider Walker's characters: the foul-mouthed, the sexy, the doddering, the lazy. They hit the Derby crowd's stereotype superfecta!
But having never known until this week that the Derby even had a parade, I'm not caring too much. Honestly.
You want me to pick the marshal from the comic pages? I'd get some Louisville kid telling crappy Mini Page jokes. Every good horse parade needs crap.
