30 August 2008

She's a Galaxy Girl

Francesco Marciuliano of Sally Forth and Medium Large got to do a guest comic in Bizarro this month, and this is what he came up with. In response, an Ontario reader complained:

At best, it elicits a sigh of disgust. At worst, it mocks The Little Prince, the wartime masterpiece by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. This runaway world best seller may be understood on several levels. It captivates as a children's tale. It symbolically tells the story of creation. At its peak, it is the autobiography of a sensitive and lost soul dedicating his work to a dear friend in need of consolation. The friend is cold and hungry in Nazi-occupied France, while the author is safe in New York. . . . Writing like that deserves better treatment than an ill-considered distortion.
Meanwhile, webcomic readers who commented were almost entirely interested in identifying the interplanetary objects in the background. Okay, I know that Marciuliano (bio here) invited us to do so, but that still seems to say something about different community priorities.

1 comment:

dot said...

I think that this comic wouldn't have had quite as harsh of a feel if it had included the satirical title of "Machiavelli's Little Prince", which I'm sure *had* to have been in the artist's head, and would've made it more evident as a parody.