Mark Pett's "Lucky Cow".

If Lucky Cow walked into a therapist's office, it'd be diagnosed as having “Dissociative Identity Disorder”. This frustrating comic strip by artist Mark Pett plays Hyde ‘n’ Seek with itself daily because it doesn’t know what it wants to be.

Usually, it’s mind-numbingly awful. Set in a generic fast food restaurant, it’s just another mediocre comic strip taking up space in the newspaper. When the characters aren’t being irritating, they’re dull. The jokes are predictable. As a cartoonist, Pett couldn’t get a job sharpening Gary Trudeau’s pencils. Lucky Cow is so bad, I’m surprised it hasn’t been made into a sitcom.

But I swear to God, just when I’m ready to give up on Pett, he turns into a genius. On those rare days when he dumps his idiotic characters and decides to be an editorial cartoonist, Lucky Cow is smart, nasty, funny, and disturbing. It’s an savage condemnation on fast food culture and how it dehumanizes us and ravages the earth.

That’s the Good Pett. The next day, the Bad Pett will be back.

Science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once theorized, “94% of everything is crap.” And as crappy as Lucky Cow most of the time, it’s that 6% that keeps me coming back.




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