Carole Bender Comments

For those who don't know, there is a private FB page dedicated to Alley Oop. In the last couple of days, Carole Bender, who wrote the strip for a couple of decades, sounded off about the current version of Oop. Here are her two posts with responses from current Oop artist, Jonathan Lemon:

Carole:

"What's become of this beloved strip breaks my heart. I unscribed over at gocomics, just couldn't take another day of it. And readers complained about the Benders?"

"it's not the artwork that drove me away. I actually like the way that you draw Ooola. What drove me away is the writing. It's horrible. It just goes around in circles. Another thing is how do you expect the readers to just forget all of the Moovians that were part of our lives for decades. I am 64 years old right now and I grew up with Alley Oop. I miss the gang from Moo. The same three characters over and over and over on a yearly basis is boring. Bring back Guz, Umpa, The Grand Wizer and Foozy and family. PLease."

Lemon: 

 "I appreciate the comment, and thank you for still reading the strip. However, since I'm not the writer, I can't respond to your point. I'm only 5 years behind you in age and may have been reading and enjoying the strip just as long as you. All I can say is that the syndicate picked JAS for a reason, and the fact that the strip is now in more newspapers than it has been in decades probably indicates they made the right decision for "them". But I understand your concerns. Change is hard. I hated it when they tried to bring back Pogo, and the new Popeye and Flash Gordon are not for me, but clearly some people like them. In an ideal world, legacy strips would be replaced by fresh new strips, but sadly, especially right now, the world is far from ideal."

When asked about the comment ban on the strip, Lemon responded:

"AMU turned them off. It had nothing to do with me or Joey."

I just thought I would share this with people who aren't members of the group that might find the comments interesting.