ext_89821 ([identity profile] kip-w.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] kip_w 2012-12-02 09:52 pm (UTC)

Muffaroo is the name I write under at the Comics Curmudgeon. AKA Old Man Muffaroo, or [Old Man] Muffaroo, or if it's anagram season, [Damn Ol'] Forum Oaf.

The original Old Man Muffaroo was a character in the early comics pages who was downright hallucinogenic in his visual originality. Each strip was invertible — you had to read it through, then turn it over and read the rest. Gustave Verbeeck somehow managed to make a strip each week that followed this astonishing discipline, which would have done in a lesser cartoonist. [Examples here.]

When I was in "Rumors" at Peninsula Community Theatre, there was a very good moment, due entirely to Brian, who was brought in partway through rehearsals to play a policeman who answers a noise complaint and ends up being told a long and intricate cock-and-bull story that is the show's climax. True to his bit part, Brian brought out a little notebook, and his attempts to write fast enough to keep up with the story were funnier than many of Neil Simon's lines.

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