Death of the party is a comic by a man who's fed up with the system and not going to take it anymore. It's about frustration with all of society's flaws. It's about an ordinary man at war with the everyday world.

No, wait. that's the plot to Falling Down.

A new article about DotP posted on Bigcheese Press.

On Death of the Party - an Analysis
By Anderew Joanis, Esquire. Political Science scholar

I've been reading Death of the Party for years now and it feels like the strip has finally achieved an almost meta state in regards to political commentary. Fischer has crafted a world so distinct that for a strip to not feature political subtext would be odd, would seem incongruous, would seem unreal. That strip would stand out amongst the rest as a strip untrue to the very nature of DotP's being. DotP has moved beyond using political commentary as the basis for a joke, choosing instead to intigrate it so thoroughly into the dialogue and manner of speech, the composition, the very structures of every component building block used to construct the comic that it actually reaches a point where political symbolism and analysis is so expected as to be almost ignored.

This in itself could be a commentary on the overall uselessness of politics, wherein any idea acquires momentarily support before a massive shift in public opinion pushes back against it, negating any forward progress. In this vein, the use of political knowledge in the comic rarely provides the characters with the ability to absolve themselves of their real-life problems.

Or the constant presence of political undertones could mock the fluctuating will of the masses, acting through politics as they shift ideas with little understanding of the actual results of their support, or even their reasons for doing so. This could comment not just on the electorate but on the politicians themselve, who often seem unaware of what they are doing as seen outside of the Beltway and off of the Hill. Characters in the comic often appear unaware of their political influences, in everyday situations aping politicians and political ideas unknowingly, without any special regard to how similar situations played out in the political arena.

Or the prevalence of political motifs and buzzwords could comment on the sometimes-absorbtion of politics into daily discussion in levels aligned with pop culture; political commentary and the latest celebrity gossip interspersed in news reports blurring the focus between the two. This proves evident in the strip, the result being political disccusion sometimes replacing pop culture as a common topic amongst the youth of America.

A somewhat decent similar case would be how Peanuts often moved beyond the individual children and their lives, focusing instead on pyschoanalysis and human interactions in the abstract. or something. Death of the Party chooses to move beyond not the lives of the characters, but the political discussions and analysis that permeate their lives. Through the overabundence of political commentary, we see through the politics, catching fleating glimpses at the people and actors that would otherwise seem masked.

More than you ever possibly wanted to know about the history of DotP

(as of 07/05)

Before developing into its current incarnation, Death of the Party had modest beginnings at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus as another of a long line of collegiate strips about drinking and casual sex and drug use. The artist’s older brother, also a student at Madison, started it all with a comic entitled “Let it Ride,” an humorous indictment of student politics and fine pale ales. Jonathan collaborated on writing several comics and found he had a natural talent for pacing and art derived from a youth spent meticulously studying Breathed, Spiegalman and Kirby, and soon decided to start his own enterprise. He began running “Quickie” (a poorly conceived title concerning sexual innuendo) at the end of his sophomore year in 2000, filling a space at the Badger Herald when LIR pulled a Benadict Arnold and left for superior rival newspaper The Daily Cardinal.

Things were going swimmingly. The art style was rapidly progressing and the comic’s name was changed to Death of the Party the following semester as an homage to the artist’s favorite band, blur (interestingly, the song title referenced is actually named “Death of a Party,” however Jonathan’s editor misunderstood and changed it to the superior present title).  However, Jonathan was still struggling to assemble some greater meaning to his work other than simple hedonistic pursuits.

Then September 11 happened.  A previous casual interest in politics turned into a hard pressing obsession centering on figuring out just what the fuck was going on. Instead of going hard right and turning into a flag-waving automaton, the artist went further left. Think of him as the anti-Dennis Miller. The following semester saw DotP turn into an angry soapbox in the Conservative Herald’s comics page, as Jonathan expressed his disgust with the coming inevitable war.

Death of the Party left the Badger Herald in 2003, following the footsteps of his brother for the liberal underdog The Daily Cardinal. This bears mentioning for the drastic change of working environment, production and relationships that resulted. Fischer left the Herald for multiple reasons concerning the Herald’s management and the disgusting conservative think tank ads they were running in their paper.

Editor's Note:

The People's History of Death of the Party is still under construction. It will be updated when Mr. Fischer can find time to meet with his biographer again.