Women are from Venus, Men are Idiots – A Close to Home Collection


By John McPherson (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
ISBN: 978-0-74079-739-2

Hc: 78 pgs Andrews McMeel Publishing; 01 edition (12 Jan. 2011) Dims: 135 x 135 mm

Although in something of a decline these days, for nearly 200 years gag-panels and cartoon strips were the universal medium of wit, satire, mirth and cultural exchange.

Sadly nowadays, after centuries of pre-eminence, the cartoon has been all but erased from printed newspapers – as indeed the physical publications themselves have dwindled in shops and on shelves – but thanks to the same internet which is killing print media, many graphic gagsters and drawing dramatists have enjoyed a resurgence in an arena that doesn’t begrudge the space necessary to deliver a cartoon in all its fulsome glory…

Moreover, no matter how we trumpet the sales of the latest hot comicbook or collection, we purveyors of sequential narrative have to admit that we can’t get anywhere near the reach of the creators of strips such as Dilbert, Prince Valiant or Doonesbury, whose daily readership might be numbered in millions, if not billions.

Mainstream cartooning remains an unmissable daily joy to a vast, frequently global readership whose requirements are quite different from those of hard-core, dedicated comic fans, or even that ever-growing base of intrigued browsers just starting to dip their toes in the sequential narrative pool.

Even those stuck-up holdouts who have pointedly “never read a comic” have certainly enjoyed strips or panels: a golden bounty of brief amusement demanding no commitment other than a moment’s close attention. Truth be told, it’s probably in our genes…

And because that’s the contrary nature of things, those gags now get collected in spiffy hardback books like this one (and also in online editions) to enjoy over and over again…

With that in mind, here’s a long-delayed peek at a (relatively) recent strip celebrating all the traditional values of family life – boredom, resentment, acrimony, distrust, jealousy, etc – with verve and a keen eye for the surprise spit-take and involuntary belly-laugh…

Close to Home was created by John McPherson in 1992, after the mechanical design engineer and part-time cartoonist had spent a few years moonlighting: selling cartoons to periodicals as prestigious and varied as The Saturday Evening Post, Campus Life, Yankee, Christianity Today and others.

Delivered in the manner and style of Gary Larson’s The Far Side, McPherson’s daily cartoon panel was originally released through Universal Press Syndicate to 50 client papers, which has grown to 700 since the syndicate merged with online provider Uclick in 2009. The new entity – Universal Uclick – consequently absorbed United Feature Syndicate to become America’s largest Press Syndicate; marketing original print, online and mobile device material including lifestyle/opinion columns, strips, cartoons, puzzles and other content.

McPherson’s feature derives its name from its broad subject matter, casting a barbed and wickedly humorous eye on the unchanging travails which perennially hit “Close to Home” such as marriage, kids, employment, domestic duties, school life, sports and health. In this particular volume – one of dozens including Dangerously Close To Home, The Silence of the Lamberts and The Scourge of Vinyl Car Seats – the subject is sex and relationships, raging from the eternal battle between husbands and wives, getting back on that dating horse, boys and your daughters and the tricky hurdles of geriatric connubiality…

Grippingly grotesque, impressively irrepressible, remarkably even-handed and laugh-out-loud hilarious, Women are from Venus, Men are Idiots is a solid and rewarding example of an art form that we must not lose and one guaranteed to deliver delight over and over again to seasoned romantics who wear their scars with pride.
© 2010 by John McPherson. All rights reserved.