Scott Stantis didn’t set out to make everyone happy. Actually, if you look at the track record of the Prickly City comic strip, he probably set out to do the exact opposite. Launched in 2004, right in the heat of a polarizing American landscape, this strip carved out a weird, prickly space in the funny pages. It’s a desert. There’s a coyote. There’s a little girl named Carmen. And then there’s a whole lot of political bite that most legacy strips are too scared to touch.
Most people think political cartoons are just those single-panel drawings you see on the editorial page with labeled trash cans and fat-cat lobbyists. But Stantis took the "strip" format—the four-panel daily grind—and turned it into a rolling commentary on conservative thought, libertarian leanings, and the sheer absurdity of Washington. It wasn't just about Republicans vs. Democrats. Honestly, it was more about the frustration of the average person looking at the desert of common sense in government.
What Most People Get Wrong About Carmen and Winslow
If you just glance at the Prickly City comic strip, you might think it’s a rip-off of Calvin and Hobbes or maybe a desert-themed Bloom County. You’ve got Carmen, this fiercely intelligent, ultra-conservative young girl, and Winslow, her coyote sidekick who often plays the foil or the wandering soul. But the dynamic is different. Unlike Calvin, who lives in a world of imagination to escape reality, Carmen is hyper-fixated on reality. She’s obsessed with it. She reads the Federal Register. She worries about the national debt.
It's kinda wild when you think about it.
Winslow provides the heart. He’s the one who reminds the reader—and Carmen—that there is a world outside of the 24-hour news cycle. He’s skeptical, sure, but he’s not a partisan hack. Stantis uses their relationship to explore the tension between ideology and actual living. That’s the secret sauce. While other strips were making "orange man bad" or "sleepy Joe" jokes, Prickly City was often digging into the deeper, more uncomfortable questions about what it means to be a "constitutionalist" in a world that feels increasingly unmoored.
The Scott Stantis Factor
You can't talk about the strip without talking about Scott Stantis himself. The guy is a powerhouse. He’s been the editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune and the Birmingham News. He lives in the world of high-stakes political commentary. But Prickly City is his playground. It’s where he gets to be more narrative.
He didn't just stumble into this. Stantis has a background that spans decades of watching the American political machine grind people down. He launched the strip through Universal Press Syndicate (now Andrews McMeel Syndication) specifically because there was a void. At the time, Mallard Fillmore was the primary conservative voice in the comics, but Mallard was often seen as angry or purely reactionary. Stantis wanted something that felt more like a conversation—albeit a sharp, thorny one.
Why the Desert Setting Actually Matters
The desert isn't just a backdrop. It’s a metaphor. The "Prickly City" of the title is a literal place in the strip, but it represents the harsh, unforgiving environment of political discourse. In the desert, everything has thorns. Everything is trying to survive on very little.
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Basically, it’s Washington D.C. with more sand and fewer expensive suits.
By removing the characters from a standard suburban setting, Stantis strips away the distractions. There are no neighbors to worry about, no school PTA meetings to attend. It’s just the ideas. When Carmen rants about the overreach of the executive branch, she’s doing it under a scorching sun that doesn't care about her opinion. That creates a specific kind of "lonely truth-teller" vibe that resonated deeply with a specific segment of the American population in the mid-2000s and continues to do so today.
Evolution and Survival in a Dying Medium
Let’s be real for a second. The newspaper industry is a ghost of its former self. When Prickly City started, being in 400 papers meant something massive. Today, the "funny pages" are shrinking faster than a puddle in the Arizona heat.
How has it survived?
- Adaptability. Stantis isn't afraid to pivot. When the Tea Party movement rose, the strip reflected that energy. When the GOP shifted toward populism, the strip grappled with the internal conflict that caused for traditional conservatives.
- Character Growth. Unlike Peanuts, where Charlie Brown is eternally eight years old and never learns a thing, the characters in Prickly City feel like they are weathering the storms of history. They aren't aging in real-time, but their cynicism is definitely "leveling up."
- The Digital Pivot. The strip has found a massive second life on GoComics. The comment sections there are a battleground. You'll see people praising Stantis for his bravery and others calling him a "RINO" or a "radical."
Honestly, if a political strip isn't making both sides mad at least once a month, is it even doing its job? Stantis seems to take pride in the fact that he doesn't just parrot a party line. He’s a critic of power, regardless of who holds the gavel.
The Controversy That Nobody Talks About
Every political strip hits a wall eventually. For Prickly City, that wall is often the "offense culture" of the modern era. There have been several instances where editors pulled specific strips because they were deemed too "hot" for a general audience. Stantis has faced backlash for his depictions of various political figures, but he’s stayed remarkably consistent.
One of the most interesting aspects of the strip is its treatment of environmentalism. You’d think a conservative-leaning strip would be anti-green, but Winslow the coyote often brings a perspective of land stewardship that is surprisingly nuanced. It’s not about "save the whales" slogans; it’s about the reality of the land. It’s a brand of conservatism that traces back to Teddy Roosevelt—conservation as a fundamental value. This confuses people who want their political media to be a binary "us vs. them" shout-fest.
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Reading Between the Lines
To really "get" the Prickly City comic strip, you have to understand the era of its birth. 2004 was the year of the Bush/Kerry election. The Iraq War was in full swing. The country was starting to fracture in ways we hadn't seen in decades. Prickly City was a response to that fracture. It provided a voice for people who felt the Republican party was losing its way and that the Democratic party didn't understand them at all.
It’s a strip for the politically homeless.
The Technical Artistry of Stantis
We should talk about the art for a minute. Stantis has a very "scratchy," high-energy style. It’s not clean like Dilbert or minimalist like xkcd. There’s a lot of cross-hatching. The characters have expressive, almost manic eyes. This isn't accidental. The visual tension matches the thematic tension.
When Carmen is angry, her whole body seems to vibrate with ink lines. When Winslow is contemplating the vastness of the desert, the backgrounds open up with beautiful, sparse line work that captures the emptiness of the American West. It’s some of the best drafting in the daily syndicate world, even if people are usually too busy reading the dialogue bubbles to notice.
Is Prickly City Still Relevant in 2026?
With the 2024 election in the rearview mirror and the political landscape shifting again, you might wonder if a strip about a coyote and a girl in the desert still has something to say.
The answer is yes, mostly because the core problems Stantis writes about haven't gone away. Bureaucracy is still bloated. Politicians are still, well, politicians. And the "prickly" nature of our public discourse has only gotten sharper. If anything, the strip feels more prophetic now than it did twenty years ago. It predicted the "siloing" of American thought long before social media algorithms made it a daily reality for everyone.
Navigating the Archive: Where to Start
If you're new to the Prickly City comic strip, don't just jump into today's daily. You’ll be lost. The strip often runs long-form "story arcs" that can last for weeks.
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- The Early Years (2004-2006): Essential for understanding the "founding principles" of the characters. This is where the dynamic between Carmen and Winslow is established.
- The 2012 Election Cycle: Some of Stantis's sharpest work regarding the internal struggle of the GOP.
- The 2020 Pivot: Watch how the strip handled the pandemic. It wasn't about the science as much as it was about the reaction to the science and the government mandates that followed.
You can find most of this on GoComics or in various print collections like Prickly City: A Guide to Narrating the Chaos.
Practical Steps for the Modern Reader
If you want to engage with political satire that doesn't just confirm your existing biases, here is how to approach Prickly City and similar works:
Don't read it for the "punchline."
Legacy strips often feel like they need a "joke" at the end of the fourth panel. Prickly City often ends on a beat of silence or a poignant observation. If you’re looking for a "ba-dum-tss" moment, you’re missing the point. Read it as a daily journal of a skeptical mind.
Compare it to the Editorial Page.
Look at Stantis's editorial cartoons for the Chicago Tribune and then look at the day's Prickly City. You’ll see the difference between "shouting a message" and "exploring a theme." The strip allows him to be more philosophical and less "on the nose."
Check the Comments (With Caution).
The community around the Prickly City comic strip is one of the last places where you’ll see genuine, albeit heated, debate between different wings of the political spectrum. It’s a case study in how people interpret satire based on their own filters.
Support the Creator.
If you value this kind of independent-minded commentary, follow Stantis on social media. He often shares "behind the scenes" sketches and thoughts that don't make it into the final strip. Seeing the raw ink work gives you a new appreciation for the labor that goes into a daily strip.
The Prickly City comic strip remains a vital, if somewhat underappreciated, part of the American cultural fabric. It’s a reminder that even in a world of 280-character outbursts and viral video clips, there is still a place for the slow, deliberate work of the cartoonist. It invites us to sit in the desert for a moment, away from the noise, and look at the thorns for what they really are. It doesn't offer easy answers, and it certainly doesn't offer comfort. But it offers a perspective that is increasingly rare: one that is fiercely independent, deeply skeptical, and unashamedly prickly.