Land Of This Guy

(Click the comic for a larger size)

This particular comic was meant to address the concern that I had regarding how people too young to even have searching for cartoons in a newspaper be a part of their childhood would have no recognition of any of these comic strips from an increasingly dying medium such as print periodicals. Even my own kids, thirty year old millennials by now, didn’t grow up reading Andy Capp and The Family Circus. My son knows far more Manga and Anime characters than 100 year old characters like Blondie or Snuffy Smith. Therefore, I sought to include that demographic by including a parody of an more recent genre manga like “Bleach” (which follows the adventures of a teenager Ichigo Kurosaki, who obtains the powers of a Soul Reaper—a death personification similar to the Grim Reaper—from another Soul Reaper, Rukia Kuchiki. His new-found powers allow him to take on the duties of defending humans from evil spirits and guiding departed souls to the afterlife, and set him on journeys to various ghostly realms of existence. -thank you, Wikipedia) and turn it into a parody of the way local grocery store chain, Ingles, has a side business as a property speculator. Some links:

https://avlwatchdog.org/answer-man-can-asheville-force-ingles-to-tear-down-the-old-kmart-store-locomotive-mystery-in-canton/

https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2021/08/26/answer-man-ingles-plans-old-bi-lo-store-abc-store-closed/5584577001/

https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2023/11/20/answer-man-ingles-on-patton-still-coming-what-about-stein-mart/71407011007/

https://news.yahoo.com/answer-man-whats-innsbruck-mall-090110006.html

https://www.hendersonvillelightning.com/business/13025-ask-matt-will-laurel-park-get-a-new-ingles.html

https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2018/07/23/ashevilles-bleachery-factory-village-teemed-where-walmart-now-sits/810422002/

Unfortunately, after all the work to draw it in that style and write it up, the paper said they could not run it. No reason was given, but since the small, free, local, alt-weekly still counts on advertisers and donations to keep publishing (in the afore-mentioned dying realm of print periodicals) and the one constant, full-page color ad-buyer for the lucrative back page of the paper each week is indeed, Ingles Markets, I can’t help but put two and two together and figure out they are not dumb enough to bite the hand that feeds them over a cartoon most people won’t even bother to read anyway.

But anyway, I can post it here, if just to make the whole creation of it not quite so pointless.
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Cartoon originally published in the Asheville, NC alt weekly paper, “The Mountain Xpress”.

© 2024 – Brent Brown, Brent Brown Graphix
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