Cul de Sac

I'm a big fan of Cul De Sac in the local newspaper and this collection doesn't disappoint. I laughed a lot while reading it, which annoyed my family (always a bonus) and now they're busy fighting to see who gets it next. I was especially happy to see the early colour strips from the Washington Post Magazine, because they were all new to me. I love the art - so expressive. I love the characters: anarchic Alice, who has issues with authority and big brother Petey, who has answers to many of her questions (I especially liked his explanation of why the flash and the boom of fireworks don't match up), mum and dad (and dad's teeny car - the dad in my house has a teeny car, too), and Alice's little preschool pals, and Mr. Danders, the class show more pet, and Miss Bliss, the outclassed preschool teacher. I love the humour, which is dry and gentle and subtle and the way the kids can be simultaneously kid-like and make wry comments on adult life. It's just perfect.

Well, except for one little niggle. I'm a librarian and a cataloguer and the cover title of this book is Cul De Sac : This Exit, which is also how the publisher's letter refers to it, but the spine title and the title page title is just Cul De Sac. For future reference, librarians hate this kind of thing. Be consistent! show less

This charming collection of comic strips comes with a foreword (and high praise) from Bill Watterson, author of the popular Calvin and Hobbes strip. Fans of Watterson's strip may approach a new series with caution (after all, nothing is ever quite as good!) but Cul De Sac stands up to scrutiny by even the most skeptical.

In this book, the Otterloop family is introduced: Alice, who attends Blisshaven Preschool with a collection of quirky fellow classmates and a guinea pig with aspirations to an honorary doctorate for his many years in the classroom, Petey, who views the torments of elementary school with an ironic eye, and Mom and Dad, who zoom through suburban family life, often bemused by the antics of the youngsters.

The first 50 pages show more are, as noted in the foreword, an earlier incarnation of the strip. While they are noteworthy for their medium (watercolor), the early strips lack the cohesiveness and character development of the later strips. Readers who are already fans of the strip from their daily paper may enjoy those more than the Cul De Sac neophyte, but overall, comic fans will find the deftly rendered adventures of the Otterloop family rewarding. show less

Cul De Sac is a newspaper comic chronicling the daily adventures of the Otterloops as seen primarily through the eyes of Alice, the family's 4-year-old daughter. While the basic idea of drawing a comic strip about a suburban American family is far from original, Thompson’s interpretation of the genre is fresh and inviting. All of his characters have their own unique personality, each drawing you a little further into the microcosm he has created. The art is slightly crude in an attractive, practiced fashion that compliments the author’s quirky sense of humor.

The first section of the book is devoted to the watercolor works created for a run in a magazine that predate the comic’s introduction to the funny pages while the second show more moves on to the syndicated dailies. While the plot regression experienced when moving from section to section is slightly startling, I found I enjoyed being reintroduced to Cul De Sac midway. There was a bit of repetition and I find the lack of a page to separate the sections worrying (not everyone will read the forewarning in the forward, methinks) but the transition wasn’t bad.

Blisshaven Preschool’s guinea pig, a most highly aspiring character, was one of the “secondary” features of the strip that truly pulls the reader in and gives the world through which the Otterloops meander a bit more depth. Alice’s 8-year-old brother was another such character, punctuating his family’s otherwise glass-half-full lives with his cynicism and his perpetual sense of impending doom.

The most intriguing and appealing characteristics of this comic are not the “main jokes” of each strip; you have to look slightly deeper for the whole picture. From Alice's preschool to the local shopping monstrosity, Thompson subtly paints a backdrop of suburban America that is both entertaining and horrifying. The way Thompson portrays the adult characters going through their day is full of an understated feeling of blissful ignorance. They look to sense nothing amiss as they struggle through intimidating big-box stores and drive their tiny cars to work, navigating the modern world as though it was the most natural way to live.

Overall, I highly recommend this to other lovers of funny, intelligent comic strips and will surely be loaning my copy out to friends and family in a dastardly attempt to hook them as I have been hooked. show less

I expected to enjoy Richard Thompson's comic collection, Cul de Sac, but I didn't expect to find myself crying tears of laughter. As the parent of a four year old in preschool, I'll just say right now that Mr. Thompson has the demographic pegged. The family dynamics have been seen before--precocious children, clueless adults--but Cul de Sac makes them seem fresh and new instead of pithy and angry.
My favorite sceens are those in which the entire family participates, each lost in his or her own contributions to the conversation and not really listening to the rest of the family members. In its own way, it makes me think of opera when you have several characters singing, one on top of the other, raising up to the creshendo, at which point show more Mr. Thompson has one of the characters make some earth shattering (or not) observation. This man is genius. I am only peeved that my local newpaper doesn't carry this comic. show less

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 show more 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. show less

When you have children, a little insanity goes a long way in keeping you sane. This might sound bizarre but the truth is that children have a way of making adults look at the world through the eyes of their innocence... which in turn reveals just how insane "life" truly is.

If Richard Thompson doesn't have kids, then he's definitely around a lot of them because the antics portrayed in Cul de Sac are dead on. In the same manner that Bill Waterson's Calvin was a little boy with a very grown-up logical mind, so too do Alice and her peers question the world around them in a way that makes adults think... and laugh at the insanity.

Although the art made it a little difficult to get right into the book, it eventually did grow on me due to the show more way those simple scribbles were full to bursting with emotion and expression. And the characters? Priceless! For example, I loved how Alice would never accept her Father's absurd answers to any of her questions, because she preferred her brother Petey's even more absurd ones! It does not take long to get to know the characters and you quickly start looking forward to the next Mr. Danders strip, or seeing more of how Alice's preschool classmates deal with their daily routines.

This collection did not have many laugh-out-loud moments, but there were plenty of snickers along the way. I did not know of this cartoon strip prior to this book but I do look forward to reading further adventures. show less

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...