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Loading... Cul De Sacby Richard Thompson
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. A great peek into the world of real kids -- I found it charming and funny. I liked the "rough" and sketch-y feel of the artwork. Definitely a worth checking out if you liked Calvin and Hobbes. (I don't think it will be as well-remembered, though.) (  )Corvidae | Jul 7, 2009 |   This was cute! Much better than anything currently in my local paper. I requested this because of the Calvin and Hobbes comparison, and it is deserved, I would say - clever and and cute and I laughed out loud more than once. For me it wasn't quite as memorable as C&H, though, and I do not think I will care to revisit it nearly as often. ( )victrola | Mar 13, 2009 | 1  Cul de sac is a graphic novel based on the ever popular Calvin and hobbes. I recieved this courtsey of Library thing to review. I need to say while the concept is similar to its illustratous predecessor, it lacks the finesse and conceptualization of the former. It is not fair to be judged with the same yardstick as Calvin but unfortunately tha is the way the world functions. Hopefully the author's future works would be an improvement on the present one. (  )haritsa | Dec 28, 2008 | A new strip, and one of the most quirkily charming and funny I've seen in quite a while. The main characters are a suburban family, the Otterloops, with 4-year-old Alice, older brother Petey and the sort of loopy parents. I really haven't seen a strip quite like it, and the artwork is nicely unique too. I think my favorite strip here is on pg. 65, where the pre-school teacher brings in s guest folk-singer, whom the kids promptly bombard with a series of surreally kiddish comments. In the last panel, the kids are all in "Our Time-Out Corner", and one of them is saying wistfully "Every time that woman tries to cram culture down our throats, THIS happens." Boy, does that take me back... (  )burnit99 | Dec 14, 2008 | Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac caught my eye in LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program by mentioning one name: Bill Watterson. I'm certain that this applies to many others, as well. After all, any comic praised by the creator of Calvin and Hobbes should be worth a try, and I'm extremely pleased that I did get the chance to read it, because I definitely didn't regret it. This comic strip features Alice Otterloop, a preschooler with a creative imagination and the kind of wide-eyed gullibility that is found in most four year olds. From the pet gerbil's eloquence to the oddity that is her schoolmate Dill, Thompson's characters provide the kind of hilarity that almost anyone can appreciate. I often found myself laughing out loud, which doesn't often happen when I read newspaper comics today! Before opening the book, I didn't think I would appreciate the art and drawings, which I judged to be a little bit crude and unfocused. However, I found that it contributed to the silliness and child-like innocence, features that I love about this comic. What I thought to be unrefined drawings became adorable and befitting representations of the world as understood by a preschooler. Cul de Sac isn't the philosophical genius that makes us adore Calvin and Hobbes, but I don't think that's entirely what the author was aiming for. The comic shows its charm through its quirky dialogue and entertaining take on suburban life. In one strip, Alice's brother, Petey, claims that newspaper funnies are a dying artform. If they are, then Cul de Sac may be one of the few great ones left. ( )elsh | Oct 19, 2008 | 1 0.052 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0740776517, Paperback)I thought the best newspaper comic strips were long gone, and I've never been happier to be wrong. Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac has it all--intelligence, gentle humor, a delightful way with words, and, most surprising of all, wonderful, wonderful drawings.Cul de Sac's whimsical take on the world and playful sense of language somehow gets funnier the more times you read it. Four-year-old Alice and her Blisshaven Preschool classmates will ring true to any parent. Doing projects in a cloud of glue and glitter, the little kids manage to reinterpret an otherwise incomprehensible world via their meandering, nonstop chatter. But I think my favorite character is Alice's older brother, Petey. A haunted, controlling milquetoast, he's surely one of the most neurotic kids to appear in comics. These children and their struggles are presented affectionately, and one of the things I like best about Cul de Sac is its natural warmth. Cul de Sac avoids both mawkishness and cynicism and instead finds genuine charm in its loopy appreciation of small events. Very few strips can hit this subtle note. I also like the nightmarish suburb that the Otterloop ("outer loop") family inhabits: the identical houses crammed in endless rows, the relentless highway traffic strangling the soulless development, the ugly shopping malls, the oppressive parking garages, and sticky-floored restaurants. Like most of us, the family negotiates this modern awfulness as a simple matter of course; the critique appears only in the drawings, where the strip suddenly works on another level. And oh, those gorgeous drawings! With a mix of rambling looseness, blotchy crudeness, and sheer cartoony grace, Thompson's expressive pen line is the equal of any of cartooning's Old Masters. Thompson has a very sharp eye and a command of technique we almost never see anymore. He reminds us that comics can be more than illustrated gag writing, and that good drawings can bring a comic strip's world to life in countless ways that words cannot. The artwork in Cul de Sac bowls me over. It's a pleasure to study long after the strips are read. The first fifty pages of this book are taken from the earlier incarnation of Cul de Sac that appeared in the Washington Post Magazine. Here we discover that Thompson has a natural flair for watercolor painting too. At this point, however, I'm not even surprised. I hope you enjoy Cul de Sac as much as I do. I think you're in for a real treat. --Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, 2008 Alice Otterloop brings the funny to suburbia in Cul de Sac, "a suburban community ringed by a mighty wall and girded by a moat of stagnant traffic." More than half of our nation's population resides in the "burbs. Knowingly, Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac follows the antics of four-year-old Alice Otterloop as she navigates her way through life at Blisshaven Preschool, "the scene of [her] daily toil." Suburbanites across the nation will easily recognize the quirks and conundrums associated with house-lined streets, sidewalk canvases, and magnetified refrigerator art. Instructed by the proper Miss Bliss, Alice regularly has issues with taking a nap, speaking out of turn, and remembering what a triangle looks like. Helping her through life's ups and downs are her eight-year-old brother Petey, Dad (a.k.a. Peter), and Mom (a.k.a. Madeline), as well as Mr. Dander (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:52 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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