On Today's Alley Oop - 24 April 2021

Sorry for the lack of reviews the past week-and-a-half. Wootie has gone AWOL and I just haven't had a chance to write anything. Rather than go through the tedium of critiquing each day's episode, today's review will be a look back at nine days of "Alley Oop" from April 15 through today, April 24, minus the goofball Sunday "Little Oop" which deserves, and receives, no comment.

In an action / adventure strip, the reader expects that in nine days there would be a lot of action, something to keep them interested. Not so here where talking and silly jokes has replaced meaningful action of any kind. Doc explains on 4/18 that they are here to do "some good old-fashioned exploring" but still has never explained why of all the millions of universes, they picked this one, other than it is "mysterious". All of the other infinite universes are well understood and documented but this one is mysterious? If you say so, Joey.

But this universe looks like something out of a 1950s TV Western except that it must be the boring universe because, as we find out, there is no fighting of any kind. Or as Sequitur said over on Comics Curmudgeon last week, "Since Alley Oop was rebooted a couple of years ago or so, instead of time travel they’ve been dimension hopping. They just hopped into a dimension that looks like the old West but the fella’s reaction when Alley bumped into him makes me think they’re in Canada." Alley Oop nearly gets confrontational but Ooola talks him out of it. Of course the long-suffering readers know this is fake because the once rough-and-tumble caveman hasn't had a real fight since the Undynamic Duo took over. Whether it has been with a Minotaur or with an alligator, any Oop fight has ended in a Kumbaya hug with grins for everyone.

Maybe the worst gag since the gag-a-day format took over occurs on the 22nd when two cowpokes look like they are going to have a gunfight, count off ten paces, then turn and dance in the street. It really cannot get any sillier - or stupider - than that. At least I hope so. Joey throws in a little drama in today's strip with a mention of the terrible "Chrabs" but they will be as boring as anything else in this overly drab and boring story.

The art has retained its awful flavor although the golden backgrounds are a step up from the usual industrial gray and green that Lemon likes so much. Ironically over at the "Alley Oop Classics" blog, the first "Jack East" story from 1957 is running which shows beautiful, detailed art from a story set in 1857. A competent artist can at least bring some authenticity to a story and compensate somewhat for an uninteresting or dull story. But Lemon, always the perfect match for Joey, matches the uneven storytelling with visually distracting artwork. The April 15 daily stands out, not in a good way, where Ooola's head seems to have fallen off her neck and is just one example of how bad the artwork has become.