Prickly City
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Prickly City is a daily comic strip drawn by Scott Stantis, the conservative editorial cartoonist for the Birmingham News, and distributed through Universal Press Syndicate. The cartoon is set in the American Southwest and details the adventures of Carmen, a young girl in pigtails, and a coyote pup named Winslow. The strip is frequently — though not always — politically-oriented.
The cartoon's name is a reference to the many prickly pear cacti in the Southwest.
The strip is heavily influenced by Calvin and Hobbes, though with some key differences beyond its political leaning. While Hobbes is seen simply as a toy to all adults, Winslow interacts freely with people. In Prickly City, usually only Winslow and Carmen are ever seen in the frames. Stantis also cites as influences Doonesbury, Bloom County, Skippy, Li'l Abner, Pogo, and Peanuts.
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[edit] Characters
- Carmen is a feisty, if somewhat naive, libertarian-conservative and a Republican.
- Winslow, named for the town of Winslow, Arizona, is a coyote with political aspirations and often acts patronizing, condescending and impulsive. Carmen is continuously frustrated by Winslow's assumption that she should be a liberal feminist. At times, Winslow has been characterized as a liberal. However, he is more often called upon to make the "mistake" of the strip for Carmen to comment upon. As such, during a week of strips in which the planning of the invasion of Iraq was criticized through a Prickly City "war" against "desert hamsters", it was Winslow who took the neo-conservative role. He also joins Carmen in mocking figures disapproved of by Stantis like Michael Moore and Dan Rather, and criticizing the publishers of the New York Times (shown in the strip as Prickly City Picayune).
- Minor recurring characters include Dio, a chameleon named for Diogenes the Cynic, who first appeared as a campaign director for Winslow, and Kevin, the Lost Bunny of the Apocalypse, who reports on signs of the "end times".
[edit] Controversies
In response to charges that Stantis, himself a middle-aged white man, chose to make Carmen a minority as part of a "strategy of softening the impact of ultra-conservative views by putting them in the mouth of a black girl" -- and that he draws her with exaggerated features such as lips reminiscent of the racist black stereotype Sambo -- Stantis has replied that "I never said Carmen was black. Or Latino. Or native American. She is a girl of color because, as early as the year 2020 the United States will not have a majority race. She is, in my view, the very image of an American." [1]
When the cartoon debuted in the Birmingham News, it displaced Mary Worth on the comics page. Protests from Mary Worth' fans restored Worth to the comics page and Prickly City was moved to the editorial page.
A prank was played on Stantis and his readers when a fictitious website mentioned in Prickly City was later registered by a bestiality porn site.
The Chicago Tribune refused to run the February 7, 2005 strip, which inaccurately quoted Ted Kennedy. According to Stantis, the syndicate eroneously added quote marks to the dialogue without his permission.
Less than two months later The Seattle Times did the same for a series of strips about the Terri Schiavo case. On March 28, the series began with a scene of Carmen upset, after watching her team lose an NCAA basketball tournament game on television. Winslow offers to "end her agony" by taking away her food. The strip scheduled for publication on March 31 illustrates the kind of comments that generated the controversy:
- Carmen: Stop denying me food, Winslow!
- Winslow: I'm doing it to stop your suffering, Carmen. Besides, suicide and euthanasia are cool now. Hunter Thompson, Million Dollar Baby. It's all the rage.
- Carmen: But my parents want to take care of me. They love me and don't want me starved to death!
- Winslow: Well, don't come whining to me because you're not a cool dead person.
January 20th, 2006 strip about "Brokeback Mountain" caused a minor controversy. Stantis later confirmed in his podcast that the strip was poking fun at the cowboy genre and not the movie's subject in general.
[edit] Tributes
Prickly City has paid tribute to the passing of famous people during 2006. On July 31, they paid tribute to Hooters president Robert H. Brooks. Frank & Ernest cartoonist Bob Thaves was remembered in the September 10, 2006 edition.
[edit] External links
- Prickly City daily strip at gocomics
- Prickly City at Universal Press Syndicate
- Shrubville daily critique of Prickly City
- Controversies (as reported by Editor & Publisher):
