The Morbidly Fascinating Monomania of Gearhead Gertie

It’s a testament to what a wonderfully weird website this is that when I have a blog post that does very well it’s generally because I write about something juicy and commercial about big celebrities people feel passionately about or because I write about a shitty comic strip seemingly no one even knows about, let alone cares about.

I’m talking about stuff like last week’s article on Bill Murray’s disconcerting cult of personality and Elisabeth Moss’ indefensible commitment to Scientology or a morbidly fascinating train wreck like 9 Chickweed Lane.

So I feel weirdly obligated to let you once again know about the existence of something mind-bogglingly terrible in a weirdly fascinating way.

As probably none of you can guess, I am talking about a bewildering weekly comic strip called Gearhead Gertie.

Gearhead Gertie is such a surreally lazy, one joke comic strip that its single abysmal “gag” is right there in the title.

It’s about an old woman named Gertie who is a gearhead, which is slang for someone who loves cars.

Hoo boy does Gearhead Gertie love cars! She’s a total gearhead. But she does not love every kind of car. She only loves NASCAR but good lord does she ever love NASCAR!

That is the very narrow focus of every single comic strip. It’s the same goddamn thing over and over and over again with only the tiniest possible variations.

Gertie LOVES Dale Earnhardt, something that comes up in strip after strip and, like the strip as a whole, is NEVER funny but weirdly fascinating in its single-minded stupidity.

Gearhead Gertie’s regrettable existence seems attributable to the popularity of its subject. People REALLY love NASCAR and people who REALLY love NASCAR consequently are an ideal audience for a comic strip about how people REALLY love NASCAR.

Then again, if I were to launch a weekly comic strip called Juggalo Jimmy, Phish Head Phil or Weird Wally and the only “jokes” are about how Juggalos love Faygo and Facepaint, Phish fans love to take drugs and listen to lengthy guitar solos and “Weird Al” Yankovic fans are exuberant nerds I imagine that Juggalos, Phans and “Weird Al” Yankovic super-fans would feel insulted rather than flattered.

The crazy thing about Gearhead Gertie is that its creator, Mike Smith, is not wholly devoid of talent. He’s not a bad editorial cartoonist with a leftist bent but when it comes to Gearhead Gertie, he is intent on driving one semi-joke into the ground over and over again.

Gearhead Gertie is a curiously joyless proposition. It feels like the product of cynical calculation rather than a genuine enthusiasm for NASCAR.

Then again I’m not a NASCAR fan so maybe I just don’t understand. Gearhead Gertie may only have one joke but perhaps that one single gag is perhaps beyond my feeble comprehension.

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