“Kidnapped by Gnomes” reviewed by Anthony Cardno

I couldn’t resist the title. I almost called the review “All Dressed up with Gno(me)where To Go,” but figured that’d be pushing it.

Kathy Peterson’s twice-weekly strip will certainly not be to everyone’s liking. Anyone expecting a cute little strip about garden-dwelling, nature-loving little people will be disappointed right off the bat. These gnomes, Ed and Wilson, are furry little guys with pot-bellies and pointy ears who dwell in the house of author Peterson’s doppleganger (who we never actually fully see, but often hear from). They might like nature, but they love all the modern American conveniences and virtually worship the television. (Okay, Wilson is equally prone to worshipping Ann Coulter. Peterson, through Ed and Wilson, promise us right off the bat that her strip will not include what seems to predominate webcomics currently: no anime, no video-game or tv show references, no anthropomorphic characters. As the series continues, there are some pop culture references but she doesn’t rely on them for the funny.

Within the first five posts I knew I was going to enjoy the series; despite the fact that the main characters are virtually look-alike gnomes (Wilson is a little shorter and colored slightly darker than Ed), I felt like I was reading an old favorite strip. I couldn’t figure out why I felt that way, but I was enjoying all the political banter, the light jabs at the system and at both the major parties (the subject that our Esteemed Moderator was sure would polarize we Reviewers) and the “average” American, mixed with some pages that are not topical at all. It wasn’t until the 36th entry that I realized why I felt so comfortable: Peterson is a huge Bloom County fan, and proudly so. I should have seen it right off: so much of what she’s doing here matches up to that classic newspaper strip. She mines the same territory that Breathed did with Opus, Bill the Cat, Binkley and Milo, (Ed wakes Kathy up with his concerns at crazy hours of the night just as Binkley did his father; Wilson is beset by a troll Kathy says doesn’t exist, much like the creatures that step out of Binkley’s Anxiety Closet) but puts her own twists on it – the “Pandora’s Box of Political Lies,” Ed’s attempts to become Emperor of Delaware. There are topical political references, but Peterson’s stated goal is to keep the political humor more broad (targeting parties rather than people) so that it’s still funny a decade or more from now (as the best of the Bloom County strips are). Like the best political comedy, she beats up on both parties equally, and often on herself in the process. And like Breathed, Peterson breaks away from the topical for pages of simple slapstick, like a recent encounter with a waxed floor.

The art is simple, although as the series progresses Peterson experiments more with backgrounds and camera angles to vary up the look of the strip.

Bloom County will never come back to the newspapers as a daily (and the current Sunday-only Opus is good, but not as good), but we get a decent successor in Kidnapped By Gnomes. Four stars from me. Can’t wait to see what my fellow Reviewers thought of it. Rating:

Kidnapped By Gnomes

by Kathy Peterson

http://www.kidnappedbygnomes.com

review by Anthony Cardno