9 Chickweed Lane (7/5/09)

I spent the better part of this morning watching one of the most exciting tennis matches I’ve ever seen: Roger Federer versus Andy Roddick in the men’s final at Wimbledon. The match ended with Federer breaking Roddick’s serve for the first time to claim the fifth set 16-14. Prior to that point, Federer had won two sets on tiebreakers (one of them in unlikely, come-from-behind fashion). Adding to the drama was the fact that the Swiss master was playing for his record-breaking 15th Grand Slam title in front of a gallery of legends that included previous record holder Pete Sampras. Five-set matches usually feature significant shifts in momentum, but this one was unbelievably even throughout. I never once thought that either man was out of it until the very last point. In a word: classic.

9 Chickweed Lane (5/30/09)

Every now and then, a comedic film will make a sudden shift in tone with the intent of jarring the audience. This technique can be powerful (see Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels) or manipulative (see Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums). Cartoonists have also been known to veer into serious territory, but it’s rare to see an installment that suggests a new direction for the strip as a whole. Today’s 9 Chickweed Lane seems to do just that. It’s hard to see how the characters can continue on their merry way after one of them is forced by an omnipotent being into giving birth to a cockroach. It’s as if the strip’s central frame of reference shifted from musical theater to Kafka’s Metamorphosis in the space of a single punchline.

9 Chickweed Lane (11/7/08)

This is an elegant and subtle rendition of lovemaking, although it also seems to be too absract for its own good. It’s an intersting strip to look at, given that the hands resemble a collection of shadow puppets without the shadows, but it’s also too high-concept to be genuinely expressive. As a minor point, I’m not sure what the reasoning was for dividing this strip in two when it would have been much more seamless as a single panel.

9 Chickweed Lane (9/14/08)

The action sequence in this strip offers an elegant and exciting tribute to the Spaceman Spiff sequences from Calvin and Hobbes, but what I like most is the expression on the young woman’s face in the final panel. It’s the type of expression one would expect from a creative person who has been cornored by logic and reason. The other person may be right, after all, but their cold and calculated rhetorical methods are demonstrably no fun.

9 Chickweed Lane (6/1/08)

When I was a child, I had one of those books that offered step-by-step instructions on how to draw cartoon characters. Unfortunately, there were only five or six steps for each figure and the logic connecting one step to the next was difficult for me to grasp. The cat figure in today’s 9 Chickweed Lane is much easier, thank goodness. It’s also an elegant theme for a Sunday strip.