Review by Frank Plowright
Anyone who’s bought one of Roger Langridge’s three previous collections of daily strips will have a good handle on what to expect, so there’s no disappointment with Double Summer. Continuing from Year of the Lettuce, much of the content is day to day family observations by Langridge, funny comments watching movies or playing scrabble, inventive speculation, often while out walking uncontrollable dog Luna and a few strange dreams. When there’s no real life inspiration the day before or Langridge needs a few days grace, the strips are hijacked by mad scientist Pyles or Luna’s inscrutable alter-ego Old Bubba Crumpet. Providing a laugh is the primary concern, but takes many forms ranging from outright slapstick to the sly observation, plus occasionally sticking it to pompous know-it-all windbag Gyles Brandreth.
That’s as pointed as the strips get. Langridge’s sense of humour is gentle and absurdist, so there’s annoyance and frustration, but no malice, and many strips feature either the wisdom of age or its inconveniences, the former usually with indecisive son Thomas. Langridge is also seeing age from the other side, via elderly relatives and their friends. Even beyond the fact of most content being personal experience, many are strips that no-one else would come up with due to the observations. If you want Muppet substitutions for movie casts the Langridge family should be the first point of call, and the surreal dog walking conversations between Roger and Thomas are always a delight.
Everything is drawn in Langridge’s exquisite style, expressive, and suitable for the real world and the most ridiculous situations imaginable. Even though the same panels are repeated with new scripts you can greet Bubba Crumpet and the old film director like old friends. These scripts, by the way, are witty enough to utterly transcend the repeated art, and for readers looking forward to the daily strip online each morning infinitely preferable to a gap day.
It’s not necessarily the intention that you become absorbed in Langridge’s life beyond the duration of each strip, but he’s such genial company those small details matter. Did the books arrive? What were they? Did that redacted potential project come off? Has the end of year plumbing stayed the course? That may be answered with next year’s final collection.
The opportunity is available to check these strips online to see if your humour dovetails with Langridge, but seeing the strips digitally just doesn’t compare with holding the neatly produced hardcover volume and its crisp white pages. It’s not available online other than directly from Langridge himself, so visit here.
