Cartoon review 3 - Arlo and Janis

[jack]

Cartoon review 2 is Angst Technology, but is postponed because the site seems to be being redesigned and the archives are not easily accessible.

Arlo and Janis is an honest to god newspaper cartoon about a middle aged couple called... Arlo and Janis, and their cat Ludwig and teenage son Gene. It's mostly realistic, with the humour coming from them doing day to day things and getting an amazing insight into "Oh yes, we do that too..." Occasionally he'll go off on a self-referential or absurdism riff, but for once there isn't any roleplaying.

It's been going for fifteen years, and is still fresh, and in which time, unusually, the son has grown up. Though otoh arlo and janis and ludvig have evolved artistically, but not really go older.

There's a daily strip from comics.com.

Better, there's a daily update by the author at arloandjanis.com when he makes some comments and posts a few strips per day from the old archives. (This week he's taking a break and talking about the Hurricane, but see for instance http://arloandjanis.com/juneaugust2005.htm)

They mostly stand on their own. A fairly representative sample chosen randomly from there:

http://arloandjanis.com/albatross.htm
http://arloandjanis.com/another_bikini_2.htm
http://arloandjanis.com/shakeitoff.htm
http://arloandjanis.com/introducingludwig.htm
http://arloandjanis.com/economicsexperts.htm
http://arloandjanis.com/ruth3.htm
http://arloandjanis.com/canmay.htm (Another grammar clip. Make sure to click through to the next one too.)
http://arloandjanis.com/gloomygus3.htm

Click on the cartoons to see the next in the sequence.