Thoughtful naughtiness at 9 Chickweed Lane

Brooke McEldowney plays with the panels

Brilliantly.


You'll definitely want to click on this one to get the full impact.

Dasher on Dancer

Too dirty for Mippyvile...

But too good to miss. McEldowney originally conceived Pibgorn as newspaper strip to follow his successful 9 Chickweed Lane. One can only assume this particular gag would not have been included in this version.

Brooke's pushing the boundries again

And in a family newspaper, too.

When it was just a succubus, a tree fairy and a reconstituted cyborg vampire with an enormous

...all fighting off an alien invasion, that was one thing...



but jumping into an entirely different strip, that's just weird.

Heartbreakingly effective 9 Chickweed Lane strip

Check out how Brooke McEldowney uses shifting perspective to reinforce the impact of the scene.

More sex

The residents of 9 Chickweed Lane are straight or gay. A few are bastards (in the literal sense). They have sex, prompted by romantic love or base lust or some combination of the two. This leads to inevitable complications which they deal with like adults.

This is not the Golden Age of the comic strip, but there are still nuggets out there for those who take the time to look.

Style and sex at 9 Chickweed Lane

In the Forties, they had to substitute style for sex. Now we often substitute sex for style.

But in this storyline, told now about events in the Forties, McEldowney combines sex and style with extraordinary results.

"Umping Bugglies"

As mentioned in the previous post, the characters of 9 Chickweed Lane have exceptionally healthy sex lives for comic strip characters. In this ongoing storyline about a Forties romantic triangle, Brooke McEldowney shows some new sides of the strip's matriarch.





And back in the present day...

Frank Cho is not a leg man

For years, the title of best good girl art -- funny pages division was shared by two extraordinary strips: Brooke McEldowney's 9 Chickweed Lane; and Frank Cho's Liberty Meadows. Cho's characters showed more skin; McEldowney's had more sex. McEldowney's women had the supple, leggy beauty of ballet dancers. Cho's women also had dancers' bodies, but not that kind of dancer.

And while on the subject of sexy hands

Click for the punchline.

And you thought barbwire wasn't sexy

From 9 Chickweed Lane's account of Gran's WWII adventures.

Click on the images for something incredibly sensual.