The Final Indignity

Well, here it is ... the final installment of my weeklong Doonesbury blog bender. As I indicated at the start of the week, my main purpose with these posts has been to give our readers an opportunity to see the too-controversial-for-print comics and judge their content for themselves.

As an extra St. Patrick's Day bonus, I have posted two additional nuggets from the comics page (click on the thumbnails under "Blog Photos" and click again to see the larger view). I post these two specimens — from Bizarro and Frank & Ernest, respectively — to illustrate (pardon the pun) the idea that sometimes two creative minds can generate the same idea simultaneously and coincidentally. This week, they both use a St. Patrick-meets-Medusa gag.

One might think that since the Bizarro cartoon appeared in the newspaper two days before the Frank & Ernest panel, this must be a case of one cartoonist stealing the other's idea, but in reality, all these syndicated cartoons are conceived, drawn and delivered weeks (sometimes months) in advance, so there's no way Bob Thaves plagiarized Dan Piraro's concept. Perhaps the two artists happened to tap into the same creative vein in some Jungian collective-cartoon-unconscious.

I've noticed similar coincidences on the comics page in the past, including one instance in which we had two comics about armadillos (of all things!) on the page on the same day.

Anyway, I'd like to wish all (both?) my readers a mirth-filled St. Patrick's Day. Have fun getting in touch with your inner leprechaun, but don't consume so much Guinness that you end up in the Tri-County Blotter ... or in a future Doonesbury.

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If you're new to this thread of comics-related posts, you might want to review what I posted on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, and Thursday. And feel free to access the entire "Bill's Broadsides" archive.