Michael Jantze
Author of The Norm In Color
Series
Works by Michael Jantze
Night of the Wookiee 1 copy
Associated Works
Funny Times: A Monthly Newspaper of Humor, Politics & Fun, Volume 16, Issue 3 (2001) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- male
Members
Reviews
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 26
- Also by
- 3
- Members
- 144
- Popularity
- #143,281
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 5
- ISBNs
- 21
As I mentioned above this issue covers the courtship, the proposal, planning of the wedding, and the wedding itself. See Michael decided to skip all of the above. We knew Norm and Reine were in love (and frankly I think most of the readers had been waiting a good while for the characters to realize that,) but what happened after they got married? And that’s what this covers. While it would have been interesting to see everything play out in the comic, Michael was right, it is much more interesting to see what happens afterwards rather than seeing them go on dates and what leads up to it (although I do remember at the time going “wait...what?? I want to know what happened!” And so this short comic gives us the inside scoop of how Norm and Reine got married.
I think what attracted me to the comic most of all is the fact that The Norm is everyman. There’s something about his character that everyone can find something to relate to and how he handles his world around him. Yes of course he’s an artist so he’s a bit different (in one series in the strip he storyboarded his entire day...which put him way behind when he was storyboarding lunch and it was time to go home) but even so he functions as the rest of us. Which is something that at the time was difficult to find in the comic strip world (still is in some cases.) Even better Norm had his...inner characters...that he could talk to, most famous of them was Boy Norm, his inner child, that he could talk problems through (of course at the 6 year old perspective.) And the other characters that show up were also ones that we could recognize.
I like Michael’s simple line drawing style. it captures just the right amount without being overwhelming. I think one of my favorite things about his depictions of the characters though are that we never really see Norm’s parents. We see them as off body voices, the backs of heads, or even in one case in the series as Norm’s childhood crayon depictions of them. For me, it meant that it was easier to imagine they were my own parents, or at least aspects of them. Because by being off body voices it was very easy to see my own parents there.
The Norm was, and still is, one of my favorite strips. Michael has moved on to doing other projects but the book collections can still be found on Amazon and the strip is still running in repeats on gocomics.com. If you’re looking for a quirky, funny, daily strip that has characters that represent you then this is one that you’ll enjoy.… (more)