Another thing that's weird when you go back to the comics is that the art style was closer to Code Lyoko, with the Freemans especially having huge foreheads and narrow eyes. But then each animated season looks a little different...
I've started reading the comics. It's actually very different from the show; the tone is more mundane and down-to-earth, and the character personalities differ a little bit.
Yeah. Quite a bit about the show is very different from the comics - everyone's personalities, the character dynamics they have, the kind of jokes and the brand of humor, how political things got, etc, was all pretty different.
Season 1 is much more reminiscent of the comics than the rest of the series (among other things), but even so the show was always a very different experience, to the point where you can't always really look at one as being the same kind of series as the other.
edited 11th Feb '15 8:47:11 PM by KnownUnknown
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Besides the fact that the comics and the show have the same basic cast of main characters (minus one guy of course), you wouldn't be able to tell that they were created by the same person or formed a franchise. The storytelling is very different. But of course, newspaper comics and TV shows seem to have different writing traditions and conventions; you can't fit too much into a three- or four-panel format.
I think the piano style reminded me of Charlie Brown sometimes...
The comic has a lot of allusions to Peanuts. I think they also mention Doonesbury and Calvin and Hobbes.
edited 12th Feb '15 7:18:46 PM by AHI-3000
Role Model
Are you Garry Trudeau up in this bitch?
The show had at least one reference to Doonesbury... in Season 1, of course.
The sad, REAL American dichotomy
Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers
I don't remember which episode that's from.
Role Model
The one where they meet Gin Rummy, and have a send-up of the justification to go into Iraq.
A Date With the Health Inspector
The sad, REAL American dichotomy
I've been reading more of the comics. While I guess they're still amusing, I must say that the rather blatant levels of social commentary, especially when it came to then-contemporary politics and pop culture, has become a bit overbearing, and it makes the TV series look downright subtle by comparison.
And I thought the first season was heavy-handed compared to the later ones... I think I consider the third season the best one now.
While it was still entertaining, the first season had very unpolished animation. They improved a bit in the second season, and then the animation in the third season was fantastic.
While the animation (and arguably the comedy) is improved in the later seasons, season one still had vastly better character and cleverer plot writing, which made it much more entertaining imo. Even if the animation wasn't as great, the writing was good in a way the series didn't really hit as consistently afterwards. While it was there at first, season 2 is where it really started becoming "wacky hijinks with Granddad and Riley," without really balancing the writing well enough for it to stay as entertaining.
Granted, this is just in general. Some of my favorite episodes are in season 2 (by far my least favorite season overall), and season 3 was, while not as good as season 1, a definite improvement over the second. And then season 4 came along and exaggerated everything that was bad about the previous seasons to the point where the whole thing just stopped being likeable.
edited 14th Feb '15 6:24:30 PM by KnownUnknown
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
I guess I kind of agree with your assessment. The humor was best in Seasons 2 and 3, although I admit that Season 1 seemed like it was promising better character development.
edited 15th Feb '15 3:47:14 PM by AHI-3000
Well I read all of the comics. They were a fun read, although like I said earlier, they're very heavy-handed about the messages. Throughout, I kept thinking to myself, "Look Aaron, we all know you really hate black media and George Bush Jr, we get the point!" Although thankfully the last few years of the comics toned it down a little bit, and started to resemble the show (some of the quotes and plots seem to have been adapted as well).
edited 16th Feb '15 8:16:27 AM by AHI-3000
Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers
Seasons 2 and 3 occasionally came up with some pretty good scenarios and character arcs (the story of Thugnificent rolled out pretty well, kickball and the Obama episode were amusing, The Color Ruckus had the best inspection of the series' most outlandish character), but you could see the beginnings of the Denser and Wackier creep which culminated in the gimmicky season 4.
I probably said it somewhere else before, but one thing that bothered me about the show is that they eventually forgot to develop the characters. Considering that Uncle Ruckus of all people got his own backstory episode, it would've been even better if they had some more episodes on the origins of the DuBois and Freeman families (especially the latter, since we all wondered about who and what happened to the deceased father, mother, and grandmother of Huey and Riley).
edited 18th Feb '15 11:07:53 PM by AHI-3000
Speaking of the comics, I heard that there was a previous short-lived version dating back to about 1996, which was published in a college newspaper, and featured a character who was never seen since then. Does it still exist in any form online?
It seems odd that the older version of the comic can't be found as far as I know.
Well here I go, reviving this dead-horse thread yet again, because I have no life.
Known Unknown @ 9th Jan 2014 08:57:57 PM
In other news.... AAAAARGH! Why must I have this unsatiable fanfiction curiosity? Why must I have the masochistic urge to seek out the diamonds in the rough? 
Or, in short, Boondocks fanfiction is terrible. Like, across the board. I couldn't even find a 10%, and I've been looking for hours. I don't even know why I bothered - I knew this wasn't a good idea before I started it...
Much like you, I've also had this same masochistic curiosity recently. It amazes me how the vast majority of The Boondocks fan writers only want to write the same romantic bullshit over and over again.
edited 1st May '15 9:42:46 PM by AHI-3000
Why aren't you laughing?
I don't know how. In the canon, Huey and Jazmine, and Riley and Cindy, they're just friends. But a lot of fangirls insist that they should be lovers.
Known Unknown @ Jan 2014 12:04:59 PM
It's odd, because usually I can find at least a couple fanfics in a fandom that I think are really good. Boondocks only really has a couple I think are above average and a lot of chintzy crap. There's a lot of false starts and "stories that were shaping up to something good but were scrapped two chapters in." Etc.
Most noticeably, it seems like in general almost nobody knows how to write Huey - sometimes he's even written like just a more serious version of Riley. And since Huey's demeanor is kind of the crux of the whole Boondocks universe, it gets really noticeable and the failure to give him a good character drives the stories down. This isn't exactly surprising (he definitely doesn't fit into the preset character types fanfic writers snap to) but it's still very disappointing.
Also unsurprisingly, fanfic writers love Jazmine. It seems like 80% of the stories on FF.net are variations on "Jazmine teaches Huey to love" fics.
This I agree with as well.
In the comics, it's occasionally implied Jazmine has some kind of crush on Huey. But since it's Huey - and Comics! Huey at that - he either ignores it completely or uses it as an excuse to mess with her for what he believes is her own good. Show! Huey is more noticeably fond of her (or at least less dismissive), but there's still no outright romance there.
On the other hand, Fanfic! Huey is a cynical outcast who just needs to learn to accept the love of the right girl in order to understand what it really means to be happy. Blech.
It's also worth noting that since the characters are, like, ten in the actual series, lots of Boondocks shipping fics are also High School Fics, which are often even worse.
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
I would like to give some props to other people involved in the making of the show. Regina King, for example.