Dandy & Company
Derrick Fish
Out of the Doghouse
Big Pond Comics
No ISBN Number $14.95 128 page
Running with the Big Dogs
Big Pond Press
No ISBN Number $14.95 128 page
Anthrology
Mainstay Studios
No ISBN Number $3.95 28 pages comic book sized magazine
All black and white interiors with full color covers
There are those that take the funny strips in the newspapers very seriously. Every time there is a change made, the fans cry out in anger and frustration. Sometimes it is something there is no control over, like the death of Charles Schultz, and the adventures of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the cast now told only in repeated strips from days gone by. Sometime it is that the creator decides to take a break, as in the case of Berke Breathed, and his beloved Bloom County -yet when they return, they are but a shallow shadow of their once greatness. Poor Opus the penguin now having to appear in the appropriately named strip Wasteland is but a caricature of what he once was. Then again, sometimes, the artist just has run out of things to say, or is just tired, as in the case with Calvin and Hobbes. And I have to admit, even though it has been several years since the last new strip was printed, I still miss the adventures to the boy and his, for a stuffed toy animal, very active tiger.
But now I wallow in the despair of strips that try to claim the throne of greatness no longer with the discovery of the only rightful heir--the web based strip Dandy & Company by Derrick Fish, now at last presented in two beautifully bound trade paperbacks, and a comic book sized magazine entitled Anthrology.
Yes, you read that correctly, web based. The place to find some of the brightest strips around, no longer hampered with syndication and distribution problems, creators are free to tell their stories the way the want to and with that freedom comes some of the best the medium has to offer. I have sampled many that the on line world presents, and for my money, the best hands down, is Dandy & Company.
This is the tale of Dandy, a talking dog that is anything but cuddly, instead filled with an attitude that would give any a good reason to visit the pound--like they would want him anyway.--His foil throughout the adventures is his, I dare not say owner or master, least Dandy track me down, so let's just say his boy, Bernard. It is obvious that Bernard loves his dog, always willing to forgive and forget the sometime mean spirited but always-hilarious pranks...
