Audio By Carbonatix
Cathy. Luann. Hi & Lois. Calvin & Hobbes. Zippy The Pinhead. All are familiar names that readers have come to know and love through the tangible art of the comic strip. But it’s a medium that has lost valuable print space in an increasingly paperless world. What will happen to these funnies legends when the papers that house them are no longer in printed existence? Stripped, a documentary tracing the past, present and future of comic art, attempts to answer this question by talking to the artists who have lived it.
Funded by two successful Kickstarter campaigns, Stripped‘s creators, Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder, wanted to give viewers a deeper understanding of how cartooning works, how the art form became popular in America and, most important, how it has survived the shift from newsprint to web page and straddled the worlds of both.
“Obviously, these are great artists — but this is also about great comedy and wordplay,” says Sie FilmCenter programming director Ernie Quiroz. “These artists can realize these ideas and put them on the paper, but they also make it look so easy.”
From golden-age newsprint comic artists like Garfield creator Jim Davis to modern day webcomic illustrators like Penny Arcade creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, Stripped is packed with commentary from dozens of valuable voices who flesh out the story of newspaper comic strips while looking positively at the last decade and a half of the medium’s life on the web.
Stripped screens tonight only at 7 p.m. at the Sie FilmCenter, 2510 East Colfax Avenue. Tickets are $7 to $10 and can be purchased at the box office, via denverfilm.org or by calling 303-595-3456.
Wed., April 23, 7 p.m., 2014
