Today is June 8, and on this date in history, in 2000, Jeff MacNelly, died of cancer at age 53.  He was an editorial cartoonist and creator of Shoe.  This was great entertainment--really funny. Its social commentary was the tops.

Once-fine rendering has given way to sloppy, phone-it-in, slap-dash work, and the tub-thumping is self-indulgent and appealing only if you enjoy being lectured to.

The soul of this strip is as dead as poor Jeff. It should have been buried with him. A ghost of once greatness.

Great entertainment ! Of course it changed when Jeff died, but still my favorite. Thanks for keeping Shoe alive...

It's just not Shoe without Jeff McNelly, sorry.~Erg!

Jeff MacNelly was so good at wordplay that my dad and I almost didn't mind the lack of themes. The current cartoonist is just short of his talent.

Here's another comic strip that's jumped the shark big time. Back when its original creator Jeff MacNelly was drawing it, and when it focused on the workplace--the lives of the birds (who had all-too-human problems) working in the newspaper office--it was witty, clever and funny. Even if we weren't journalists, we could identify with the characters in the comic strip. (My office, with all of its papers stacked around, resembles that of the Perfesser at work.) I had visited many offices and cubicles which have had Shoe comic strips posted; there was no doubt that many people could recognize themselves and their workplaces in the comic strip. Today, however, there are relatively few references to the newspaper office and few references to the lives of the characters themselves. The strips have dwindled to one-panel gags that one might find in greeting cards. I would probably say that this decline began when MacNelly began to turn over work on his comic strip to his associates and accelerated big time after he died. The current people behind Shoe can draw and write well, but they will never fill MacNelly's shoes. There will never be another Jeff MacNelly--he was one of the greatest cartoonists--perhaps the greatest.

An English teacher once gave us a copy of this strip when the kid writes a 200 word essay on how Huck Finn and some other book are alike. Good example of how NOT to do an essay.

I went to school with the daughter of the creator of Shoe She was kind of cute, still did not make me really like the comic strip though.

women's shoes

Not actively annoying, not especially entertaining. Just there.