In Praise Of: Girls With Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto

Staggered home last night after watching "The Future is Unwritten", Julian Temple's bio pic on Joe Strummer, and got into an animated discussion with the wife, not only of the merits of hearing "London Calling" at high volume in a theatre with a good sound system, but on art that doesn't fall into a single marketable niche. Music, theatre, movies, comics: if you're outside of the tiny slice of the expected norm, you find your self as the also-ran, the almost, the most likely to pull a "Firefly" on DVD.

I don't know Danielle Corsetto, have never met her at any of the conventions, but I appreciate that she has, little by little, piece by piece (the old fashioned way) built up a great little webcomic that would have not found a home anywhere except the internet.

Girls With Slingshots deserves a load of praise for being well written, for having evolved into being well drawn, for having a great cast, and for having great timing. None of these are nearly as easy as good cartoonists seem to make it look. Thankfully Danielle has worked out the kinks ( or in the case of Candy, in) on the personalities of Hazel, Jamie, Maureen, Clarice and Jameson, so much so that they have taken on their own voice, one that doesn't simply seem like the two hemisphere's of Danielle's brain taking positions and shouting at each other.

It should be said that occasionally Danielle writes herself into a corner, as she did last week, with Hazel and Zack, and you could tell that she wasn't sure what she wanted to say, thus the detour into slapstickville, and the current storyline with the talking cactus, McPedro. But that is all part of the fun, honestly. I find myself wondering if she's decided that her Moonlighting-killing moment of Havel getting laid is something that will never happen, and I actually hope that that is not the case. She's too good a cartoonist to believe that the strip will fall apart if Hazel finally falls into bed with someone. In fact, if she did, chances that she'd end up pining even worse when she can't get it again, so the humor is actually accentuated. Will Jamie give it up either? I'm voting for never here, only because the virgin having the best curves in the strip is just a great idea. No need to worry about jumping the shark for a long time here.

Hop on board the bandwagon early and go on over to Girls with Slingshots. Pour a shot of tequila and join in with the girls. Its a hoot. And I mean that in all the best ways.