Bruno

Discussion (8) ¬

1. 
   SomeOldGuy

   March 2, 2019 at 3:35 am | #

   She needs to get together with Stanley. He’s her stabilizer. He’s been that since they first met.
2. 
   llirium

   March 2, 2019 at 11:57 am | #

   I was wondering when this part was coming. It’s not exactly “jerking off”, but somewhat self-indulgent, which was probably healthier than it looked for Chris at the time.

   The tyranny of the muse is pretty awful, it can do whatever it wants with you and only rarely does it come easily.
3. 
   Christopher

   March 2, 2019 at 12:00 pm | #

   <3
4. 
   SteveNance

   March 2, 2019 at 4:23 pm | #

   Wow, even the comments section busts the fourth wall this time. Judging by the diary comic, seems things are better these days, I hope. Thanks for all these lovely things you’ve created for us all these years, Chris. It is deeply appreciated.
5. 
   Peter Rogan

   March 2, 2019 at 9:13 pm | #

   I’ve never seen these strips before, and my reaction is both curiosity and, well, impatience. The device of the characters coming into the author’s life is not new, and has been used by everybody from Philip K. Dick to Corey Pandolph. With uncomfortable results. PKD essentially came apart due to his temporal lobe epilepsy that really did force his consciousness to telescope inwards, and Pandolph, already a successful magazine cartoonist, backed out of syndicated cartooning in singular fashion, his entire cast of “Barkeater Lake” characters revolting and going on strike, not just breaking the fourth wall but building a fifth wall behind both him and his audience, trapping us all within his attempted resolution.

   Both times I came away with the impression that when your characters are compelled somehow into your life, bringing complaints about the way they’re made to act, you’ve lost control of them and what you were doing with them. And that this is creative self-immolation, not very different from pouring gasoline over yourself and striking a match. A painful and showy form of suicide.

   And yet your delivery stays intact — situation, comment, retort and counter-retort, tools that typically whittle down the coarse substance of what is happening to a singular and sharp point. Your method is there. But not your faith in its ability to reveal. You and Bruno are well aware that she’s going nowhere because you FEEL you’re going nowhere and can’t live the life you want to. Only the life that’s been handed to you.

   I’m reminded of “The Natural” and the way Roy Hobbs, when he tells Iris that life didn’t turn out for him the way he wanted, then sees her leave without explanation. He didn’t know he had gotten her pregnant at 19. He didn’t know how he failed. He just knew he did. He never learned, as Iris was forced to, that failure has no hooks; you have to carry it. You never question why you have to carry it, you just do. Iris didn’t do that. She lived the life she had been handed, regardless. With the tools she had, the knowledge she had, and no backward look. Ever.

   Hobbs can never put his feelings into words but he knew when he had been rebuked, and sharply. In the book this begins his undoing. In the movie it’s the start of his recovery. Pick your route. Or let the route take you.

   In the end we’re left with the words of that other great flash in the pan, dying too young, Jack London: “Life’s not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.” Something to consider before you get up from the table.
6. 
   ronald

   March 4, 2019 at 12:07 am | #

   This is a strip where nothing happens and nothing changes. What’s one more at THIS point?

   ;-)

   I generally don’t care for “fourth-wall” material either, but I’m not sure what anyone would be impatient about in this case. This strip obviously took longer to draw than most others, so the artist can hardly be accused of laziness. If anything, it allows Bruno MORE character development than average.

   IMHO Bruno doesn’t necessarily need to get together with Stanley (since that would almost certainly involve also getting together with his nightmare b|tch-child who’d be glat to repeat whatever complaints about Bruno Amy might have shared with her), but she might benefit from getting together with multiple friends at the same. Bruno always seems to do better with a crowd.

   Incidentally, she looks more Charlie Chaplin in that last panel…
7. 
   ronald

   March 4, 2019 at 12:54 am | #

   And I see that, back in June 2010, you noted that the full strip originally ran for eleven years. So I guess it’ll be 2021 before we reach the end of the reprints. Be sure to make allowances for Skynet’s initiation of Judgment Day.

   :-)
8. 
   ronald

   March 4, 2019 at 12:55 am | #

   Okay, that post was supposed to go on THE NEXT DAY’S page (where I was already talking about 2010). I just didn’t notice which page I was on. Stupid, right? My apologies. :-|