04-2-06

Seinfeld Syndrome

Everything has to end.  The price of life is death; the cost of starting is finishing. It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the bottom.  Last week the author of Sexy Losers recognized that fact, and announced that he would no longer be updating, ever.  Sadly, some series never get that lucky.
          "Seinfeld Syndrome" (look mom, I coined a term!) is the unfortunate tendency that some serials have of continuing beyond their reasonable ending.  I'm taking a page from Eric Burns's book and naming the syndrome for ease of reference and elegance, rather than historical accuracy.  Sure Seinfeld went on a couple of years beyond the point when the producers should have pulled it, and many of us continued watching, despite our knowledge that all of the worthwhile stories (if anything that ever happened in Seinfeld could be called a story) had been done, that even the creators were tired of it and phoning it in.
          Seinfeld wasn't the first show to suffer from the syndrome, of course.  All in the Family (which extended into Archie's Place), The Brady Bunch, and Happy Days are all notable sufferers of the syndrome that predate Seinfeld.  But Seinfeld is the best known, and besides, the term is elegant and alliterative.  So there.
          It's good to know that there's only one Harry Potter book left.  It was a good run, but...it's over now, or will be soon.  I was sad for Douglas Adams when ridiculous fan response caused his publisher to back a truckload of money up to his door and threaten to dump it on him unless he wrote one more Hitchiker's book.  He did, but his heart wasn't in it.  And in the end he killed everyone of consequence in the series.  I sometimes wonder if his last thought as the fatal heart attack took his life wasn't one of relief that he wouldn't have to contrive a deus ex machina escape for the crew of the Heart of Gold.
          Fur Will Fly, by Brian Daniel et al, suffers from Seinfeld Syndrome, and it has for some time, since even before longtime artist Cami Woodruff dropped out of the project.  It's a shame, too, because there was a time when FWF was one of the better comics out there.  Sure it started out roughly, Daniel's art has never been Louvre fodder, but the writing was good, the jokes were tight, and there was a sense that Daniel cared about his characters.
          When Woodruff joined the project, her artwork served to illustrate Daniel's words and thoughts better than he could himself, and FWF entered its best age.  Freed from the necessity of writing only things he was reasonably sure he could draw, Daniel expanded the plot and the character list.  He continued writing mostly one-off jokes, but a larger story was developing, and, occasionally, the joke would be dropped in favor of suspense or drama.
          The series reached its crescendo in the "Werewolf" story arc.  Daniel's writing and Woodruff's art were spot on, and the two collaborated in a perfectly timed symphony of humor, suspense, and drama.  Then, the series lost its way.  The story arcs following the "Werewolf" arc never quite reached crescendo.  The "Return of the Werewolf", showed promise, then failed in that promise as missed updates, sketchy writing, and half-hearted art conspired to undercut a sequel that could have been as good as its original.
          Then Woodruff quit the strip.  Daniel looked for a new artist, and for a while, it looked like Isabel Marks was going to breathe new life into the series.  But Marks left soon after she joined.  Daniel found two new artists, one for Monday and Wednesday story strips, and another for Friday one-offs and short humor series.  Almost immediately, FWF was again plagued with the missed updates that had hurt the series drawn by the previous artists.
         By this time, Daniel was concentrating a lot of energy on his new project, Surviving Mars.  Now... well, now I often wonder if Daniel only maintains the domain as a convenient place to pimp Mars.
          But it was good, and when it was good it was very good.  So, go and read the archives.  Just don't expect much in the future.

Fur Will Fly by Brian Daniel and...well...a lot of people
Updates: M/W/F
Caveats:  Inconsistent Updates, changing art.
Rating: