Ginger Meggs by Jason Chatfield for July 10, 2010

Yeah, I think so Joe! Morning Joe, Jason, usfellers, ottod, and all Meggsie fans far and wide!

Looks like a cell phone in his hand, Joe.

Howdy & G’Day, Joe, Jason, Usfellers, Dry and ALL the Meggsie fans!

My goodness, you guys either get up early or stay up late. I don’t care about cell phones, but good wi-fi would be heavenly.

I’ve been scared half to death a bunch of times, so it must not be cumulative.

Driving down the road one day (during the CB craze) there was a circus employee (polite for clown) in an airplane talking on his. Talk about coverage………….Messed up everyone in 200 miles.

Hello, Dukedoug. The more the merrier!

usfellers and other Aussie guys……..I’ve always wondered if there are other good Aussie comic”strips like Jasons “Ginger” There must be, and why aren’t they shown? And some from England, too.

Can someone tell us?

“Andy Capp” and “Fred Basset” are British, “Betty”, “Grand Avenue” and “Ben” at comics.com are from Canada, and that’s about all I know. Probably forgot a couple, anybody else want to chime in?

G’day (it’s really 2.35 am here in Oz) Jason, Dry, Joe, Barb, Ottod, Bjorn and all Meggsie’s mates.

I tell everyone I haven’t got a mobile phone. Can’t be bothered to sit for the diploma to operate all the unnecessary features on it so can’t retrieve from voice mail. The only person who has the number will have no problem contacting me up ‘There’.

I think I’m missing part of modern culture though. Nobody calls me from the supermarket to ask my opinion about the pricing of different brands of cornflakes

A theory goes that in being half scared to death means you have half a life left. Being half scared the next time leaves you with a quarter, then an eighth and so - sort of like binary maths in reverse. I guess you would get to point where your toenails would grow so slow they would never need trimming yet never wear holes in your socks.

@dukedoug

My bad!

If Sarah Palin can’t see you from her house, that limits the possibilities. You must be one of Ginger’s neighbors (so to speak).

Hey,thanks, Dry. I never knew that. Interesting!

Frank Corona: Perhaps Jason could come in on this one. There are very few Australian comic strips now, many of our newspapers are owned by international companies and unfortunately choose strips from internatiuonal syndcates in the main. I could name one or two current Australian strips (outside of Ginger Meggs of course) but I am sure Jason has much more information.

In the past there were many Australian comic strips, you may find reference to the following in a Google search: Wally And The Major, Bluey And Curley, Boofhead, Fatty Finn, Mr. Melbourne Day By Day, the Emile Mercier and Joliffe series, the list goes on and on. Some, such as Ginger Meggs, were in newspapers and came out in Annuals as well, others were on sale as separate items at the newsagents.

Fortunately, I come from a time when these were either still running and had the good fortune of being interested in them. The result was I bought many at their sales point or collected them before they became rare. Today I have cabinets full of them while collectors scour ebay in the hope of finding even one ragged copy.

Amongst all of them Ginger Meggs stands alone, not only for quality of artwork but in presenting scenes, customs and mannerisms of Australian life over the last 89 years.

I knew I forgot one, and I just read that about the Barn not too long ago! Thanks Joe!

I know it has been many years, but I am sorry for your loss, Joe.

Off the top of my head, “The Other Coast,” “Chuckle Brothers,” & “For Better or For Worse” (naturally) are drawn by Canadians. “Yenny,” of course, is Puerto Rican. “Frog Applause” may be from a different planet. I’ll think about it some more.

www.cagle.com Has political cartoons from all over the world, identified by location. The Australian political cartoonists seem to be, by and large, a little more in-your-face than those elsewhere. A good trait in a political cartoonist.

The Frog lady has only said nice things to me, Joe. You must be thinking about someone else.

Until you mentioned it, Joe, I thought I was wrong about “The Barn”. Thanks!

get thee to a refinery

Get who to a refinery, Billdi?

ottod, How could I have forgotten “FBOFW!??!!! My, I am slipping! I still read it, but I liked it much better before, maybe that is why.

Did “Chuckle Bros”. and “The Other Coast” orignate in Canada, or just drawn by Canadians?

Your welcome, Joe. The age differences are interesting! Had a friend whose father married his house keeper after his wife passed away, he was several years older than she was, but they had a great marriage, and raised a lovely daughter, who was a good friend! And she of course, had half brothers and sisters from the first marriage who were quite a bit older, but they were/are very close.

Dry, I think both started there. It’s hard to tell from context.

Usfellers,

I missed that paragraph in your post. So it’s a simple half-life calculation. That clears things up. Let’s see.. Whoa! I hope we’re talking about really high precision here!

You must see a different version of Frog Blog than I do, Joe. I follow it every day, and the only thing I’ve ever seen her post is actual comments that people have posted, both positive and negative, about the strip. I have seen a couple of instances where she has re-posted your comments, but, as I recall, she has posted them without editing them or without additional comment. In fact, they have been posted as exact copies of the original GoComics posts. Most of these posts are done in a self-deprecating way, acknowledging that some posters don’t like her strip. If those comments make the person who wrote them look foolish, that can hardly be considered Ms. Burritt’s fault.

Ottod:

Yes, looks like half-lives would go on forever but the cumulative half-lives would never equal a full life. On the other hand because the accumulation would always be a tad short of the full potential then it seems that by living them we would never die. Eventually we could witness the passing of a bullet as a major event. Maybe the writers of Dr. Who saw this dilemma when they dreamt up the Tardus.

Well, usfellers, as I think about it, maybe that explains why there’s less day at the end of the work (to unabashedly steal a line from Jason), and winter comes more quickly every year. It does not explain, however, why spring appears at the same agonizingly slow rate.

As to old comics: It’s sad that so many comics have disappeared; they are an underappreciated art form. It seems to me that carrying on an old strip, like GM, must be more difficult even than creating a new one. On the one hand, you have to have good writing and art and keep up changes in reader interests and attitudes, and at the same time remain true to the heritage of such an iconic entity. I suspect Jason must get a little schizophrenic from time to time. Judging from the few examples of the old GM strips I’ve had the privilege to see, he seems to be doing an excellent job of pulling it all together. (Don’t tell him I said that; I don’t want it to go to his head.) There are still a few strips around in the U.S. that were in the papers when I first learned to read, and I just can’t stand to read most of them, because it seems to me that the only connection between the original and the current version is the name.

[Steps down from soap box to the sound of no applause at all.]

Ottod CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!!!! (that was applause, in case you’re wondering!!)) :-D