I read about this Plainville, Mass., cartoonist a while ago, but didn’t get my hands on a Providence Journal to see his new comic strip, Gil, until today. It’s sweet. I think regular readers of the funny pages are going to like following little Gil.
Taryn Plumb wrote about the glass-is-half-full antihero in the Boston Globe: “Gil is chubby, gap-toothed, not too bright, and his working-class parents are divorced.
“The central character of a new syndicated comic strip penned by Plainville cartoonist Norm Feuti, the 8-year-old bucks the idealized tradition of the comic pages, representing the norm of many 21st-century American families.
“ ‘I always wanted to do a family strip that was more down-to-earth,’ said 41-year-old Feuti, a full-time cartoonist.’’
Plumb notes that Feuti and “his older sister were raised in rural Rhode Island by his mother, who, much like [Gil's mother], worked in a factory.”
“ ‘Immediately you love this kid,’ said Tom Racine, the San Diego-based host of the entertainment podcast Tall Tale Radio, for which he’s interviewed more than 250 syndicated and Web cartoonists and animators.”
He tells Plumb, “ ‘It’s one of those things where its time has come,’ … calling ‘Gil’ ‘truly one of the best things I’ve seen come along in years.’ ’’
Feuit’s blog is here. The Globe article is here.
