What makes a toy truly “special”?

March 19, 2011 4:11 PM

Francesco Marciuliano (writer of the comic strip Sally Forth) presents The Catalog of Unfit Toys, mixed in among many other random amusements and strange humor at the blog for his webcomic Medium Large (oh yeah, and there's a cat: cat poetry, that is - parts 1, 2, 3).

Previously, 2009: Write Your Own Irish Memoir. Also previously, 2005: unfortunately dead link (replay at the Wayback Machine; possibly heavily updated as Comic Strip Writing 101).

posted by flex (9 comments total)

Holy crap, for a guy who writes a comic that regularly fails to amuse, some of this stuff is pretty funny; some of the unpublished Seuss books, for instance (One Drink Two Drink Three Drink Floor), and this:

“When the first draft of A Brief History of Time arrived it was 1385 pages. I had to make some tough edits. Removed an entire subplot about a magical amulet and ‘Robbits.’ Stevie was mortified but I think the sales speak for themselves.”

...

“The next morning I awoke in a bathtub of ice with two fresh surgical scars and a note on the tenement floor that read, ‘We took your breasts.’”

posted by Halloween Jack at 4:55 PM on March 19, 2011

Marciuliano occasionally riffs on Ted Forth on his blog: Ted Forth In His Own Words (Part The Final). Clearly, not canon.
posted by tommasz at 5:07 PM on March 19, 2011

9/11 JENGA

Too soon.
posted by Splunge at 5:11 PM on March 19, 2011

This is the same guy (and blog) that brought us the totally viral "Cats Quote Charlie Sheen" (and more) (and almost too much) (and responses) (and the reverse). Probably the only ongoing Sheen-related nonsense I liked.

Also notable is his "The Day Penthouse Shot on Our Dinner Table: A Childhood Memory" Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...

and deconstructing the oddest character in the comic strip he writes but did not create... "Ted Forth: In His Own Words" parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (explaining maybe why the day-job comic is not humorous enough - damn you tommasz, i was interrupted)

He has been blogging like a madman in the month since he drifted away from the parody-of-everything webcomic format, and it's almost all good, even the occasions when he returns to comic strip format.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:28 PM on March 19, 2011

after you follow Marciuliano's blog/online strip long enough you start seeing Sally Forth in a different light. I still won't say I like it, but there are weird cues that you are more in tune with. And.. I suspect he is putting it through a sea change (in the original sense) and 5-10 years from now it'll be a lot different then, say, five years ago.

Marciuliano also shows up as a commentator at the oft referenced Comics Curmudgeon from time to time as well.


(ps. thank infini for auto spell checker on Saturday night)
posted by edgeways at 5:47 PM on March 19, 2011

Oh man, I was psyched for the business meeting board game until I realized he was just funnin'
posted by Ad hominem at 6:23 PM on March 19, 2011

I remember Sally Forth, some time back (probably over ten years ago at least, which is when I last really read the comics section), as being a little better than the average newspaper comic. Not *much* better, but it had a little more wit than Blondie. It doesn't surprise me at all that its writer is able to be more generally funny.
posted by JHarris at 6:34 PM on March 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

From Mr. Marcuiliano's original run of "Medium Large": The Many Moods of Sally Forth. (via Websnark, which still has a copy of it)
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:52 PM on March 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

And.. I suspect he is putting it through a sea change (in the original sense) and 5-10 years from now it'll be a lot different then, say, five years ago.

If he was really working on a long-game subversion of a long-running comic strip, that would probably be the coolest thing in the history of newspaper comics since Windsor McKay died.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:56 PM on March 20, 2011