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As a cartoonist myself I find this strip offensive to the eye to begin with. This is the work of dilettantes with a tin eye who think that a cartoon is nothing more than illustrated text. Reinforced by the sloppy font, for one thing(did you know that using a tiny font, which they do to crowd all that dialogue into the first frame, reads as whispering?). I wouldn't go so far as to say it's done in MS Paint. This looks like it's done in Powerpoint.
Carol Lay is a CARTOONIST. This, however, is a journalist and an illustrator, probably both excellent in their usual fields, who thought to themselves, "Ah, this couldn't be that hard." As these are the sort who'd think that comics are just easier writing for illiterates, one wonders why they'd bother. But judging from its dashed-off, sloppy, and lazy look(how many times will Bachtell paste in the same identical faces? At least Tom Tomorrow doesn't pretend he's not using clip art), I guess they didn't.
And did I mention nothing in the INTRODUCTORY STRIPS has happened that could possibly grip a new reader? At first I thought this was a parody, if a weak one. But it's not. It's not ironic, it's just bad.
And who exactly is this executive's daydream meant to appeal to, with all the smug elitist(economically, not artistically) references to certain wines and French phrases dropped in for no real reason? Why, the kind of wealthy, vaguely-liberal(but not committed), NPR-centric, Hamptons-vacationing, conspicuously-consumptive readership Salon has been trying to cultivate, as signalled by their fawning piece about Alice Waters, as well as any of Fahrad Manjoo's pieces(which are written with the assumption of wealth on the part of the reader). The kind of people who would have eaten nouvelle cuisine and actually claimed to like it. Who would deeply identify with UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN. The people who don't even notice you walking the other way and try to knock you down while their cellphones are stapled to their ears. Who claim to hate George Bush but are the only ones who've economically benefitted from his reign. Liberal versions of Patrick Bateman, basically.
And who don't read cartoons, and even if they did, wouldn't know a good one if it bit them hard upon the hindquarters.
Stop this thing and put Carol back in her slot. It's painful. I imagine you're getting a lot of pageviews of it solely because of amazement at its utter badness. That will last you exactly three, maybe four, weeks. Then the novelty will wear off.
We're laughing AT you. Don't you get it?
