According to Bark Magazine, Mutts cartoonist Patrick McDonnell’s real-life dog, “Earl,” (shown below) will be turning 18 this spring. In case you’re not a dog person, in “people years,” that means that Earl, inspiration for the comic strip version who shares the name, is roughly 85.
2008 will see the release of McDonnell’s newest book, Shelter Stories, which will include not just Mutts strips, but also real-life “shelter stories” drawn from reader submissions. The call for entries went up in early March and is still open. See the Mutts site for details.
In other Mutts news, McDonnell was recently interviewed on Animal Radio in conjunction with national “Spay Day” USA. He’s at the very end of the show, which you can download in MP3 format here.
The Sunday Mutts strip is a ray of sunshine in the otherwise pretty dismal world of modern newspaper cartooning. The strip’s level of craft and artistry is far, far beyond pretty much anything else you’ll find being done today, but what makes the Sunday Mutts such a joy in my opinion is really the strip’s pacing… or lack thereof. Whereas most modern newspaper strips operate in the well-worn mode of “narrative setup/gag,” the Sunday Mutts strips operate more as little objects of beauty in which to immerse oneself briefly each week–more in the mold of Little Nemo, or Gasoline Alley Sundays from the early twentieth century than the ubiquitous modern gag and/or pratfall strip.
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