Darby Conley
Amazon Price: $8.79
List Price: $10.99
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Amazon Marketplace: 38
new & used starting at $5.81
|
Buy at Amazon.com
|
Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Comics & Graphic Novels -> Cartooning
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Humor -> Cats, Dogs & Animals
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Humor -> General
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
From fantastic to mediocre 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.
Let me get this out from the start...I have been buying the Get Fuzzy books since number one came out. Saw it at a bookstore, wondered what it was and just started reading it. Loved it the minute I did. So, I have been following this dysfunctional family for the past 7 years, enjoying it immensely while turning other people on to it (it was not running in our newspapers at the time). What has now turned me off to the strip are 2 factors: 1.) The mean attitude given to Bucky and 2.) the artwork.
in the early days, Bucky was just a dumb cat with a lot of attitude. This made for some hilarious situations. He made Satch make him soccer balls, made stink bug cookies, had his own cable show, wrecked the house making "art", attacked and got owned by a ferret, chimp and chicken. I read and re-read these all the time. But starting with Scrum Bums to Movie Contract, Buck has been given a cruel streak with Satchel. Numerous times he implied he wanted to off or get rid or Satchel (which he has done in the past but just not so seriously). His physical attacks on Satchel have also increased. I was just reading online the strips from the past week (8/4/08-8/8/08) in which Bucky sets up an office supply shop and tries to sell Satchel a "3 punch hole" (complete with punches to Satchel) and "punch-it notes" (again hitting Satchel even though he didn't want it). This kind of needless and cheap violence to try to get laughs is both unfunny and sad.
My second point is the artwork. Again, back with the first half of the books (especially books one and two), Bucky looked just liked a siamese cat, Satchel looked just like a wrinkle-dog mix. Slowly, their distinct features were evened out (I guess to make them easier to draw?) and have now become shallow images of their former selves. Now, I know this kind of thing very well. I have collections of Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, Sherman's Lagoon, Zits, Foxtrot, etc. ALL of them start out crude and become more defined. Seeing Opus now in his own strip is seeing an abomination compared to his Bloom County heyday. Again, which is why I did not buy the Outland and Opus books. But the sad and ironic part of this is that Bucky Katt now looks nothing like a cat, more like a monkey! They very thing in the whole world that he wants to eat most off all is what he has evolved to. Oh the irony.
Anyways, sorry for the tirade. This book is funny at times, sad at times and overall just ok. It will be the final Get Fuzzy book I will buy.
Editorial Review:
"The humor is a wickedly authentic blend of young-professional-bachelor shtick and pets-from-hell high jinks. . . . And, perhaps best of all, the strip keeps getting better." --Milwaukee Journal-SentinelGet Fuzzy was named Best Comic Strip of the Year in 2002 by the National Cartoonists Society.
Satchel, the Shar-pei-Lab mix in the Get Fuzzy family who actually believes what TV commercials say, and his owner-housemate Rob Wilco, a single, somewhat befuddled, Red Sox-best-sellers obsessed ad exec, endure the scourge of their daily existence, Bucky Katt. Whether baiting the ferret down the hall for battle, gorging on rubber bands (and the ensuing gastric consequences), or joining the gun repair club, Bucky continuously tests the patience and endurance of his hapless mates.
Three Get Fuzzy books, Bucky Katt's Big Book of Fun, Blueprint for Disaster, and Say Cheesy, have been New York Times best-sellers.
