Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for May 07, 2012

Yeah, this is a thing.

I just started reading this strip effective today replacing Back In The Day because there’s now cavemen in the strip instead of the talking dinosaurs.

This seems to be sort a female version of Calvin & Hobbes.

I think Marigold got some ‘splainin’ to do

I’m sorry she didn’t show up Phoebe.

Imaginary critters are never around when you need em!

I love today’s! Just like a little kid: Phoebe’s mood mercurially shifts from humiliated, to angry, to pouty and then to giggly!

Well, it’s kinda-sorta a female “Calvin & Hobbes”, but that’s about as useful as pointing out that “Hamlet” is kinda-sorta a male “Elektra”, or that “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” is kinda-sorta an American “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, or that “Babylon 5” is kinda-sorta a post-Vietnam “Lensmen”. That “Heavenly Nostrils” appears (so far) to have a partial resemblance to “Calvin & Hobbes” may be use to someone compiling a thematic index to the next “Encyclopedia of Newspaper Comics”, but it really doesn’t mean much. Besides, it’s not as though “Calvin & Hobbes”, itself, doesn’t owe a debt to “Barnaby”, and, in fact, to a whole line of comics going back to before World War I.

Maybe the unicorn was just fashionably late…

On the subject of B5 and Heavenly Nostrils… there was an episode of B5 in which Marcus the Ranger confessed his virginity to Susan Ivanova. A bit later, he’s looking at the scanner and says, “I see something…” To which she replies, “A unicorn?”

…of course, the legend about who can see unicorns implies something rather nasty about the rest of Phoebe’s class…

You can be a guy and still like stuff that girls like, you know.

I like “poonicorn” better than “stupidcorn”. “Stupidcorn” sounds like she’s insulting a food item.

This strip has been out for only two weeks & I love it! I read many strips on this website and I read all different types, especially strips that talk about the innocent age of children.

I hope this strip will be around for a long time because its fun!Anyway, if Marigold ticks off Phoebe anymore, maybe Phoebe can sell this Unicorn to a meat packer.

Danae and Lucy, sorta…

“Eric the Circle” doesn’t tickle me, perhaps because I grew up on Roger Price’s “Droodles”.

“Babylon 5” has a very close family resemblance to the “Lensmen” series (which Joe Straczynski has expressly cited as an inspiration for B5) in the common thread of, “Humans and many alien races get caught up in a billion-year-old war between good godlike aliens and evil godlike aliens.” Except, of course, that “Babylon 5” subverts it.

But that’s neither here nor there. My entire point is that, while some measure of that sort of analysis can be of academic use, it says virtually nothing about the actual success or failure of a work. Every creator gets the same little monthly packet from Poughkeepsie; Art is in the execution. The questions to ask are, “Does HN take us out of ourselves?” “Does it do something for us besides feed our self-centered phantasies?” “Is it [seeing that it supposed to be] funny?” “Is it wise?” “And [since it comes in installments] does it grow?” (One might also add, for Dana’s own sake, “Does it cause its creator to grow?”)

Thus far, it seems to me that “Heavenly Nostrils” is doing very well in all those categories, as far as can be judged from such a minuscule (considering the genre) sample.

Great strip Dana! Thanks!

Don’t suppose there’s a way of purchasing a ‘portrait’ of Phoebe and Marigold?

Butt! Poo! Booger![Giggle]

If it weren’t for all these people who feel compelled to point out that the strip seems like — wait for it — “a female Calvin & Hobbes,” I’m not sure it would have even occurred to me that it might be… “a female Calvin & Hobbes.” Whether it is or not is beside the point, in my view. What matters most is that I can enjoy it on its own terms — and that’s enough.

poo-nicorn! I love it!

Yes, Phoebe, “poo”. Peepee-poopoo-caca-doodoo.