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

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Today's Cul de Sac, February 14 to 27, 2011

Uh-oh, the weeks have flown by and once again the supposed purpose of this blog (to force people to read Cul del Sac) has been ignored.
Rutherford B. Hayes has long had a vital place in the life of America's children. Just look at the following Almanac from the early 2000s (which is at least somewhat historically accurate).
So really it's hard to justify Petey's aversion to Hayes in the following strips.
The fun part of this for me was putting in Petey's little under-table gestures.
I had originally planned another shoebox diorama, but c'mon, it's getting a little old. The third panel above was taken from some of my favorite Ah-ha moments in various movies, where someone gives the protagonist an unwitting insight and he gets to say all that "I could kiss you" stuff. The B. stands for Beard; most people, especially historians, don't know this.
Someone pointed out that there has been an actual pop-up comic book. However, until I'm told otherwise, I claim this as the first pop-op comic strip.
Even though it doesn't really pop-op. And I claim this as the second.
On the other hand, I hope some kid somewhere has done this.
When I was in lower grade school all the music appreciation stuff we got dealt with the stories music told. It's a hard habit to shake.
I've been trying to find a role for Loris as she's kind of an untethered character. Maybe she needs her own Sunday strip, like Roscoe Sweeny was Buz Sawyer's comic-relief friend who took over the Sunday page duties.
Clowns again. Clowns are comedy gold, but not the way they intend to be.
The ceiling in panel two was fun to draw, the crowd scene in panel three less so.
Poor Kevin.
And poor Marcus too. I'm starting to feel sorry for my characters, which can be a hindrance to writing for them
This is because I forgot to draw a Valentines Day strip. It was overcome by Rutherford B. Hayes.
This was an excuse to draw in a childlike style. The punchline came much later. A drawing fight does sound like fun, but then I played Pictionary recently and got creamed.

6 comments:

gilda92 said...

Ohmi__(choose your deity and insert here)! You are SO wonderful! I don't even mind when you forget to keep the blog current because when you do a catch-up I feel gods(all, any, none)-in-their-heavens-all's-right-with-the-world!

ranjit said...

Hey! In the shake-hands-with-Rutherford strip, I was curious why you didn't have the fingers stick over the top edge of the frame a tiny bit.

chris said...

I still dress up as Cheeseface!
Ask my wife!

Christmas Music 24/7 said...

Isn't the ceiling that was fun to draw actually the third frame, and the kids that weren't actually the fourth? Or do cartoonists, like computers, start counting at 0? :)

I love these wrapup/summary/behind the scenes posts.

And I loathe the OpenID support by Blogger.com. There are other ways of getting OpenID that just the 4 mentioned there.

mike flugennock said...

Rutherford B. Hayes?

Maybe, but not nearly as challenging as Millard Fillmore was when I was Petey's age.

ther1 said...

SLOTHROP? Do I detect a fellow Pynchon fan?