In America, newspapers’ daily comic pages would always have several archaic four-panel strips which were in fact soap operas about nothing, but maintained their decades-long appeal with routines of romance, tragedy, and suburban woes. I could never understand why anyone followed them, as the stories were hilariously unfeasible, especially in the short, daily format. After years of being irked by their inescapability, my response was to create Healthy Life Funnies in 1978. The surface scum of the story lines would be a warped reflection of the soap opera strips, but all my characters would be drawn as surgical procedures. The piece here is merely the first installment. The subsequent strips were stolen. But I remember well the initial four, and can describe them thusly:
- The first, shown here, begins with the suburban male character returning home from work, only to find that his wife has hung herself. His anguish is displayed for us to see.
- In the next strip, the male lead is agonizing, when he is interrupted by the neighbor lady coming over to borrow some sugar. Suddenly, they make passionate love below the remains of his wife.
- Revolted by what he has done, the male character murders the neighbor lady, thus doubling his calamitous devastation.
- The first panel shows the male character desperately fleeing through wildlands in horror, while police dogs bark as they pursue him. Then comes a panel with words over the scene advising that the best thing to do in such circumstances is to sing a song. The remaining two panels have the lyrics at the top with -in bouncing ball style- follow-along images of many of the countless styles of mastectomies available (some quite primitive). The song says: “When the chips are down/ And you’re shit out of luck/ Just smile, smile, smile!”
see below and hover anywhere for enlargement
