The blog of Richard Thompson, caricaturist, creator of "Cul de Sac," and winner of the 2011 Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Three Easy Steps to a Sunday Cartoon


Last Sunday's Cul de Sac made me happy, mostly because it started out as a kinda lame idea but ended up being pretty good. And , look, the colors came out pretty!
Above is the first sketch, where I had a vague idea involving Alice barging into Petey's room and annoying him with chatter. It was boring, so I gave her a puppet, which helped, but it didn't come alive until Beni joined her.
When in doubt for a big finish, introduce Dill. But I didn't know what he'd say until the very last minute. Above is the rough I sent my editor; you can see that I added the final comment outside the box. Then I moved it over to Dill's balloon, et voila.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Shakespeare's Birthday, Again


Today is Shakespeare's birthday, or maybe not, nobody knows for sure! Like nobody's sure if he wrote all that stuff, or looked like those pictures of him, or if he was really Sir Francis Bacon. Please post your competing and unfounded theories in the comments section.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Take a Poet to Lunch, Again

It's National Poetry Month, so here's something old and poetic.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Today's Poor Almanack


I've been wanting to do a cartoon about the Twitterverse ever since I heard the word, and figured it'd be something like the Blogosphere cartoon I did a year and a half ago. The plan was to end the cartoon with a link to a Twitter site that would, once you got there, provide the ultimate punchline. Well, that part didn't work, and I was so far behind when I got to drawing the final cartoon that I left out half the jokes I thought up (and they were classics, each and every one). And the cartoon goes off on a weird, pointless tangent about Twitterature, a word I made up after 120,000 people had already thought of it. A better cartoonist would've done a Twitterized version of Absalom, Absalom, but I've never read it and I'm lazy.

But what I'm left with is a stupid Twitter account with no ultimate punchline on it. Twitter seems to perfectly fit Dorothy Parker's implied definition of a fresh hell, but I figure let's keep our hells nice and fresh, so I'll try it until the banality and tedium of what I tweet becomes too starkly apparent. I read somewhere years ago that birdsong is really just a way for the bird to say, "bird here!" and all the music is just lagniappe, which can be extrapolated in humans to "Mozart here!" or "Leadbelly here!" or "Britney Spears here!" This doesn't have much to do with Twitter, but it is a little depressing.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Cul de Sac on YouTube, For Real This Time, No Kidding


Thanks to the fine folks at Ringtales and the geniuses at Jantze Studios, featuring the voice of the awesome and adorable Colette Jantze.

Talking Stick.

Fontanelle.

Badgers.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Coming Soon to a YouTube Near You


Okay, Okay, tomorrow I'll have the links up to the Ringtales Cul de Sac animations.

No, really.

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For all of you who asked for it (and I mean both of you), Uh-Oh Baby T-shirts in the above style are now available in the Uh-Oh Baby store (entrance on your right). They come in various sizes, including baby and toddler. I'm of the opinion that a baby's first word should be "uh-oh", just so he or she learns early how quickly things can go south.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Deadline Enstranglement


Here's the Happy Deadline Clown, instead of the Creepy Deadline Zombie.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Scusi prego il mio italiano dei poveri

A tutti gli miei amici nella speranza dell'Italia- I siete bene. Ciao.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Cherry Blossom Time, Again



Two cartoons from years past, reposted because some things never change.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

April Fools!


Kathie Kerr, the gracious human whirlwind at Universal Press, sent out this photo of the just-installed sign at the new Andrews & McMeal headquarters in Kansas City. Evidently my syndicate is now in the fast food business, which, given the state of the economy, is probably wise.