Considering that his little fictional world is populated by black folks and women who spew Bozellesque swill, maybe he’s a Surrealist?

so, apropos of nothing, my lovely wife and and I were out to see my favorite band Wussy, and who shows up, Dennis Kucinich and Sean Freaking Penn. Cool. We had a nice (short) chat with them, got a bad picture, and they went on their way.

Yeah, I live in Cleveland.

It was really strange. Wussy is great, though. Check ‘em out.

That’s a nice trick, that one trick Muir seems to know–the gradient tool in Photoshop. So on the woman’s pants, he just vacantly throws on the gradient like a tipsy glazier with a can of spackle, so that her nearer leg becomes nearly black and the viewer at first can’t figure out what the fuck kind of pretzel is being depicted. Then there’s the subject/ground Modigliani bit under her left armpit, fascinating…fascinatingly lazy. He literally did make that left line of her torso become the right arm of that green car she’s sitting on the trunk of. What’s that? It’s a chair? o.0

Actually, since his drawing is significantly better than mine, and since my favourite comic is drawn with stick figures (xkcd.com), I’m not going to fault him for his artistic abilities.

That said, the man is a dick.

The little touches reveal the master’s genius–the overstuffed chair is apparently tilted thirty degrees toward the viewer, its right arm apparently absorbing the woman’s arm in an amoebalike fashion. Her unmatched legs (thunderthigh on the right and matchstick on the left) perhaps are meant to evoke a subliminal sympathy for her childhood struggle with polio. I have seen unibrows before, but never a uni-eyelash. The final touch is the incomprehensible object the man is holding in the first panel. This is all enhanced by the elusive dialogue, just on the edge of having actual meaning in the English language, like a joke translated from Urdu.

Is this that postmodernism stuff they keep talking about?

I guess I can see why she’s a little suspicious of his “guy visit” since he seems to be holding a white bikini bottom in panel 1. But then, she’s got to be uncomfortable, since she appears to be kneeing herself in the left breast. What kind of freaky conservatives are these people?

It’s very cruel of the cartoonist to force her to squeeze into something so uncomfortable as a strapless push-up bra and skintight capri pants when she has such obvious physical problems. And besides that it’s cold enough in the house for the triangle guy to be wearing a sweater, so she must be freezing.

Does the eggplant in frame 2 magically transform itself into a book in frame 3 or am I projecting my veganism onto the world’s shittiest comic strip(tm)?

Didn’t this woman just have twins? So how is she wearing belly-baring outfits like this? And how does she have enough time to sit around reading a book…let alone an eggplant?

Zed is dead, babe. Zed is dead.

But he makes up for his lack of drawing skills with a keen wit, doesn’t he?

Chris Muir seems nearly to be a complete fucking asshole. Did I miss something?

I’ll say it again. Cartoonists who have no idea how to draw the female figure should avoid drawing them in various states of undress.

To put it more crudely, what the f*ck is wrong with her left leg anyway? Her thigh bends at a left 45 degree angle.

Well, I know one thing: no one ever smiles in this crappy strip; they’ve always got a frowny face on. I suppose that’s supposed to be hip post-modernism or some such shit.

Though if I was trapped in this discordant, disconnected “comic”, I’d be frowning too. Maybe over the dialog, maybe over the sadistic contortionism required of the females, or maybe because some sick fuck gave me triangles for eyes.

Actually, as an artist and graphic designer myself, his drawings are quite minimal and beautifully drawn…it’s his politics and clueless copy that is sub par and annoying…

Picasso? Er…no.

Muir’s license with perspective and human anatomy most remind me of a picture from a book titled (I think) “Bad Art”.

The work in question was titled “Man with no crotch sits on yellow couch next to girl”, and this was in fact exactly what the painting depicted.

You don’t read Chris Muir for the drawing quality. You read him for… er… ummm.

Why do you read Chris Muir, anyway?

Ah, more wingnut welfare at work, I see.

So if I spout conservative bullshit and do stick figures, I can get the Bush Junta to send me to Iraq and rich cons to make me their figurative cabin boy?

I find the political “perspective” even more warped than the visual perspective. Usually, it requires a few Advil for me to recover from one of these strips.

Does Muir even draw these things? I think I remember reading somewhere that someone else does the art for him.

That’s a nice trick, that one trick Muir seems to know–the gradient tool in Photoshop.

In 2003, he told Dean Esmay about his ‘methodology’:

All art is drawn on a Wacom 11×16 tablet, using Adobe Illustrator, then exported over as a gif in Photoshop. All coloring is also done natively in Illustrator. I have templates of bodies, heads, expressions, etc. If you look at the cartoons closely, you may notice that, at this time, each character has about 5-6 head positions only. I will be adding, over the course of time, more head shots. I tend to draw the bodies and the backgrounds individually, though (but not always).

[my emph]

So it’s not even as if he’s relying upon a set of badly drawn limb templates, or the Illustrator ’splay’ tool.

Actually, as an artist and graphic designer myself, his drawings are quite minimal and beautifully drawn…

Wahaha! As a craftsperson and a graphic designer myself, I guarantee you you’re the only one who thinks this. I have to laugh out loud. His lines are of the quality of ‘first time I played with MacPaint,’ made by a lawyer on his first mac classic. Picasso in grade school could draw a horse’s head with a line that’d make you cry. Muir at his advanced age can’t trace the silhouette of a square. Allow me to show you some professional vector art to compare to Muir: http://www.youworkforthem.com/…..?sku=P0615

All art is drawn on a Wacom 11×16 tablet, using Adobe Illustrator,

You can see the Illustrator all over this. The guy doesn’t know how his beziers from a hole in the ground. A better craftsperson would finish things better, even print out and trace his computer lines over by hand and scan the result back in, then color in Photoshop, a workflow used by many of the better illustrators out there. But no, Muir’s too lazy.

Did anyone else notice that the “plant” in front of the guy is exactly the same as the one behind the girl?

And can someone tell me WHAT he is holding? Is that wire hook thing coming off his right hand part of the white thing? For a second I thought he was tying up a white quail…Oh wait…He’s wiping his sunglasses! I see it now. Jesus. Looking at his strip is like looking at a magic eye. You just gotta wait for some image that makes sense to appear from the mess of shades and squiggles.

Its really the chair that gets me in this one. The right arm of it looks to be more in the forground than any part of her body (or even the other half of the chair). I think its the gradient on her pants. The darkness of the left calf hints that it should be buried in shadows and therefore further back in the picture, but it is not.

The whole thing is one nonsensical optical mind-fuck.

I won’t even get into the words because those make even less sense.

i bet she’s reading Ayn Rand. ; >

(give me A Town Called Dobson anyday)

The knee bone’s connected to the breast bone…

Oh wait…He’s wiping his sunglasses!

And using underwear! Why do I get the impression that Muir is the kind of guy who figures you can launder bath towels infrequently because you just use them to dry off after you’re clean, and then wonders why they feel like cardboard after a few weeks?

Well, it’s no Goofus ‘n’ Roofus*, that’s for sure.

*I think Buckley does the artwork.

xkcd is orders of magnitude better than DBD artistically; the former’s artist’s reach doesn’t exceed his grasp.

And by the way, you know, when you’re telling these little stories? Here’s a good idea – have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!

I thought Muir outsourced his artwork.