| The Angriest Dog in the World | |
|---|---|
 "It doesn't get any better than this" | |
| Author(s) | David Lynch |
| Current status/schedule | Ended |
| Launch date | 1983 |
| End date | 1992 |
| Syndicate(s) | LA Reader |
| Genre(s) | Humor, Absurd humor |
The Angriest Dog in the World was a 1983-1992 comic strip created by film director David Lynch. [1]
The strip was conceived by Lynch in 1973 during a period when he was experiencing feelings of great anger. [2] First published in the LA Reader , the strip ran from 1983 until 1992. [2] It was also serialised in the comics anthology Cheval Noir . [3]
Each strip is introduced with a small caption:
The dog who is so angry he cannot move. He cannot eat. He cannot sleep. He can just barely growl. Bound so tightly with tension and anger, he approaches the state of rigor mortis.
Visually each strip is the same. The first three identical panels feature the black dog growling, tied to a post in a yard by a chain. He is between a tree on the left and one wall of a house with a window on the right. The fourth panel is the same, but at night with a circle of light coming from the house's window.
A word balloon appears in one or more of the panels, indicating speech from a member of one of the house's unseen family, either Bill, Sylvia, Pete or Billy, Jr. Usually the speech is in the form of an aphorism or a non-sequitur. Such sayings include: "If everything is real... then nothing is real as well." and "It doesn't get any better than this."
In a short essay on Lynch's Rabbits , Objectif Cinema notes:
David Lynch has of course used animals within his back catalogue of work before. Dogs for instance feature in nearly every one of his movies usually as a visual prop: who could forget the scene in Wild at Heart in which our canine friend scampers away with the Bank teller's severed hand? Or the mewling pups in Mary X's living room in Eraserhead ? Indeed a dog, albeit in cartoon form, took centre stage in Lynch's cartoon series for the LA Reader, The Angriest Dog in the World. But it is here on his website that Lynch seems to be opening up more to the wonders of nature: Bees, Coyotes and Dead Mice all have a part to play in various guises and manifestations within www.davidlynch.com, and as part of the pay-per-view series, the Rabbit has been given the starring role. [4]
In September of 2020, the first official reprinting of The Angriest Dog in the World, approved by David Lynch, was published by Rotland Press, collecting 17 of the original strips. [5] Limited to 500 copies it featured new lettering to match Lynch's handwriting and a foreword by Michel Chion. [6]
A comic strip is a sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with daily horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in newspapers, while Sunday papers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the advent of the internet, online comic strips began to appear as webcomics.
A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images intended for satire, caricature, or humor; or a motion picture that relies on a sequence of illustrations for its animation. Someone who creates cartoons in the first sense is called a cartoonist, and in the second sense they are usually called an animator.
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Speech balloons are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words to be understood as representing a character's speech or thoughts. A formal distinction is often made between the balloon that indicates speech and the one that indicates thoughts; the balloon that conveys thoughts is often referred to as a thought bubble or conversation cloud.
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Los Angeles Reader was a weekly paper established in 1978 and distributed in Los Angeles, United States. It followed the format of the (still-active) Chicago Reader. The paper was known for having lengthy, thoughtful reviews of movies, plays and concerts in the L.A. area.
DumbLand is a series of eight animated shorts written, directed and voiced by director David Lynch in 2002. The shorts were originally released on the Internet through Lynch's website, and were released as a DVD on March 28, 2006. The total running time of all eight shorts combined is approximately a half-hour.
Belvedere is a single panel comic strip created by George Webster Crenshaw which ran from June 18, 1962 to 1995. The star of the strip is a white dog with black spots. As of at least 2009, reprints of the strip were distributed by Johansen International Features.
The Strange World of Mr. Mum was a surreal humor comic panel by Irving Phillips which was published from May 5, 1958, to 1974. At its peak, it appeared daily in 180 newspapers in 22 countries. Initially distributed by the Hall Syndicate, it was later handled by the Field Newspaper Syndicate. A Sunday edition began October 4, 1959.
Jay Allen Sanford is an American author and cartoonist best known for his work with Revolutionary Comics, Carnal Comics, and Pacific Comics. He began writing the comic book Rock ‘N’ Roll Comics in 1989 as of the title's second issue, and still oversees the rock comic reprints published by Bluewater Productions and others. The publishing company he co-founded, Carnal Comics, is best known for launching the movie and cartoon character Demi the Demoness. Sanford ran Carnal Comics from 1994 through 2000, before handing over the publishing reins to SS Crompton.
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Cheval Noir was a black-and-white anthology comic book published between 1989 and 1994 by Dark Horse Comics. First edited by Dark Horse founder Mike Richardson, Cheval Noir aimed to showcase the best work by international creators to the English-speaking audience.
