'Aaron McGruder would have been impossible 100, even 50 years ago,' he said. A more recent phenomenon is the gradual acceptance of certain levels of political and social commentary, which has been traditionally reserved for the editorial page and the alternative weeklies. Matters of taste have been debated in the funnies 'as long as there have been comic strips,' Harvey said. 'Readers complained about the possible influence of these lowlifes on the upbringing of their children.' 'These were vulgar, low- class kids' in the strips, Harvey said. Some of the earliest strips - the Yellow Kid, the Katzenjammer Kids - were tailored to immigrant adults, he noted.īut even then they attracted strenuous objection. Harvey, author of 'The Art of the Funnies' and a member of the Cartoon Art Museum's advisory board. Oddly, the comic strip originated a century ago as a mass entertainment for grown-ups, said historian Robert C. The irony is, that strip was actually very much appreciated by adults.' But Schulz's dogged maintenance of innocence perpetuated the idea, Breathed said, that comics 'don't stretch the envelope.' 'I think ( Charles Schulz's) Peanuts solidified that idea.

The Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Breathed, retired from the funnies since 1995, said that in a country nostalgic for its lost innocence, 'the comics page is still perceived as the page laid out on the living room floor with the kids laying on top. But you can't just say 'I don't want to hear dissent.' ' 'At the end of the day, people just need a reason to get mad, to justify their anger.

'The argument that the comics should be innocent is really just an excuse to attack political views (some readers) don't like,' he said. McGruder, speaking on the phone from his Southern California home, said campaigns to keep the comics page innocent and issue-free are misguided and outdated. Framed originals of the McGruder and Trudeau strips, as well as others by artists including Berke Breathed (Bloom County and Outland), Scott Adams (Dilbert) and Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse), leaned against the baseboard, awaiting hanging. 'People actually believed newspapers had pulled his strip,' said Cartoon Art curator Jenny Dietzen the other day, standing in the main gallery with director Rod Gilchrist. 'R-E-A-G-A-N.' In subsequent days, McGruder - anticipating the backlash - ran farcically jingoistic surrogate strips called The Adventures of Flagee and Ribbon. The strip's precocious young activist Huey Freeman calls an FBI anti- terrorism hot line, ready to name names: 'Reagan,' he begins.

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