cul de sac

If you've been in Angouleme, France recently

2012-01-30T19:02:00.000-08:00

... then you most likely were there for the now-wrapped-up 39th annual Festival International de la Bande Desinée. For three giddy days high-ranking cartoonists are borne on floats through Angouleme's medieval streets and the populace cheers, throws flowers, smothers them with kisses and makes them hold symposiums. From the photos I've seen, these are people with interesting faces and they can wear hats and scarves with great aplomb.

by Matthias Wivel, I think

Or something like that. Last year the formidable Art Spiegelman won the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême, an honor that brings with it all kinds of responsibilities, like putting together most of this year's show. So in 2012 he was honored for a lifetime of work in comics' inky vineyards with a career-spanning show of his original art; pages and pages of Maus, New Yorker covers, Garbage Pail Kids, Raw Magazine, etc. And, with the able help of Bill Kartalopoulos, Spiegelman curated a Private Museum of cartoons that inspired him or that tickles his fancy. In this show were gems like Justin Green's epochal Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, works by Rodolphe Töpffer, Chris Ware, Walt Kelly, George Herriman, Bill Watterson, Daniel Clowes, Jack Davis, Loinel Feininger, Ernie Bushmiller, Caran d'Ache, Patrick McDonnell, Los Bros, Hernandez, and on and on. In fact, the list went on so far it reached me, and the cartoon below was slipped into the show.

It'll be there, sitting with the quality, till May 6 2012, in case you find yourself in Angouleme, France.

Fan Art Sunday

2012-01-29T11:30:00.000-08:00

This blog has a long and noble tradition of posting art by fans of Cul de Sac, most of whom draw a whole lot better than the regular guy. One such is Austin Milne, who sent in this deft portrayal of Alice, Petey and Dad. He says he's drawn them all, "from Alice's imagination," which I like because it shows he's figured out the whole point if the strip. And when he's got a moment, I hope he'll explain it to me.

I'm kidding. Thank you very much, Austin! Continue to draw every day, splash around with watercolor and doodle in the margins. The last is probably the most important.

Team Cul de Sac Has A Cover

2012-01-28T19:14:00.000-08:00

Just a few tweaks and some color and there 'tis.

Today's Cul de Sac from Two Days Ago, January 22 2012

2012-01-24T14:24:00.000-08:00

My original plan was to have a week of Mom reading Lewis Carroll to Alice, with Alice responding in various annoying ways. Like here, where she's fixating on some pointless digression because that's what four-year-olds often do.

I don't remember why but the week got boiled down to a Sunday. It's an excuse to try drawing like the formidable John Tenniel, whose definitive Alice illustrations show Wonderland in careful, other-worldly detail and solidity. Which was a stupid thing to do, as I discovered after fussing with the counterfeit Tenniels and using up half a bottle of ProWhite on Alice alone. I meant to save the roughs for this and post them. They were nice and loose and got a semi-Tennielly effect in a few quick lines without any worrying but I must have chucked them.

Millions of illustrators have taken a shot at illustrating Carrol's Alice. His characters and situations exert a powerful visual fascination; you want to draw a croquet game with flamingo mallets just to see what it'd look like. For me, of all the other artists who've tried, only a two have brought something worthwhile to putting Wonderland on paper- Ralph Steadman and Deloss McGraw. But neither is likely to unseat Tenniel as Court Painter to the White Queen.

Happy 203rd Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe

2012-01-19T16:54:00.000-08:00

Oh good, more repeats.

Thanks

2012-01-18T15:34:00.000-08:00

For all the supportive comments and emails. I was glad to hear from so many that you don't mind repeats* and that you'll still be here when I get back. Till then please don't mess with any of my stuff.

*Paul Karasik may actually prefer them.

Today's Cul de Sac, January 15 2012

2012-01-15T14:05:00.000-08:00

...is, as you might've noticed, a repeat of the strip from January 18, 2009. If you hadn't noticed then please go ahead and enjoy it (exploding socks!). But I'm guessing you noticed and you probably noticed that recently there've been a whole lot of Cul de Sac repeats and you're too nice to say anything (though you're likely thinking, Whoa, somebody sure takes a lot of vacations). I mean, c'mon, what's going on here?

Well, I'm taking some time off. Some more time off, three or four weeks. I'm about to start a program of physical therapy sessions designed for people with Parkinson's. I've only been in for an evaluation, but the therapy largely consists of big, exaggerated movements and sweeping silly walks that will so embarrass your body that it'll start behaving itself, I hope. Also I'll learn ten ways to defeat a mugger by falling on him.

Garry Trudeau likened daily newspaper comics to a public utility that delivers its service so regularly that any interruption is seen as some kind of major systems failure. .Though well aware of this, the kind folks at Universal Press have been greatly supportive and urged me to do whatever I needed to do. So I'm'a gonna.

Team Cul de Sac Book Available for Pre-Order at Sparking Design

2012-01-13T16:10:00.000-08:00

Sparking Design, the web & print firm run by the indefatigable Chris Sparks and the irresistible Jamie King, has got the goods! Here's the product information-

Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing (June 5, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1449419666
ISBN-13: 978-1449419660
Drawings of Alice et al by better cartoonists than me.

Why, it's worth it for that sweet ISBN alone! Not to mention you'll be helping the Michael J. Fox Foundation in its good work opening a big can of whupass on Parkinson's Disease!

Here's that link one more time!

Triskedecaphobia

2012-01-12T18:20:00.000-08:00

Here's something from the Post Weekend section from 1996 for Friday the Thirteenth. I also ran it last year, but almost too late for Friday 13th, so here it is early which should give you time to prepare. The cover was watercolor, one of the first large ones I tried. The inside drawings were pen & ink with colored pencil and pastel blotted with Liquin (a weird mix but it reproduces well enough on newsprint). I wish I'd spent more time on the demons unrolling a calendar on the first page. See also here.

We're Number One!

2012-01-12T17:32:00.000-08:00

The Cul de Sac Golden Trasury; A Keepsake Garland of Classics is now #1 in Amazon's Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Comics & Graphic Novels > Comic Strips & Cartoons! I have no clear idea what this means, and it's a vanishingly arcane category and the download costs mere pennies, but number one is number one.

By the time you read this it will have sunk into the low 6 digits, but I'm momentarily elated.

Today's Cul de Sac, January 12 2012

2012-01-12T15:35:00.000-08:00

I used the sled-dragging joke before, in December 2008. It's even the same onomatopoeia. The drawing looks neater in the earlier version; I got fussy with the white-out on this one and didn't know when to stop fixing it. And I couldn't find the pen nib I usually use for lettering. The one I fell back on was feebler. Also, that's the worst signature I ever signed. Why you people read a strip with such shoddy standards is, quite frankly, beyond me.

The Mighty Alice

2012-01-11T17:15:00.000-08:00

Et voilá- here's the final mechanical for the next Cul de Sac book! "Mechanical" is a technical printing term that I've never gotten around to learning, but I think it means a pretty final version in this case. This'll be the first time that I didn't do the color on a CdS book. It was colored by Kansas City watercolorist Peggy McKeehan, who's done a lot of work for Andrews & McMeel, and I think she did a fine job. I appreciate her deft touch and dab hand.

Today's Cul de Sac, January 10 2012

2012-01-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted one of these things. Let's see if I remember how to do it. I chose this strip to annotate because I redrew it 4 or 5 times. The middle panel gave me fits; it kept turning out too tidy, too stacked instead of heaped, too neat. The comics have a distinguished history of eyesore back yards, and front yards too, from Hogan's Alley to George Booth (see below), so I felt I had a tradition to uphold.

Each time I redrew it the dialog and the gag changed, Originally Alice is disgusted by the squalor and says Get me outta here! But there's nothing funny about that and it makes no sense; Alice is a slob with no natural objections to Dill's back yard. She'd more likely go home and try to do the same thing to her back yard. And, as someone who has a messy back yard, I've got no business acting all superior back-yard-wise. So out of great struggle and profound deliberation comes this Cul de Sac for January 10, 2012.

Sneak Peek, Updated

2012-01-05T18:14:00.000-08:00

Here are three roughs for the next Cul de Sac book. Which one will it be? See below.

And the final cover-

If this seems familiar, it is.

RIP, Ronald Searle

2012-01-03T21:20:00.000-08:00

I wrote this for Mike Cavna at Comic Riffs. For a little more, go here; for much, much more, go here (it's worth it). For almost too much, but to understand Searle more fully, go here.

For a long time Ronald Searle's work exerted a tidal pull on me, as it has at some point for a lot of cartoonists. The first time his stuff hit me hard was in 1978 when I got a big, lovely art book titled Ronald Searle, and it was like a window opened. His drawings were so potent and dense and alive with comic energy. His pen could do anything; it went curling and spiraling all over the paper, describing a world that was ugly, bitter, grotesque, hilarious and sometimes, briefly, quite sweet. It made me suddenly aware of how liquid ink is, how it skips and splotches and pools when it hits the paper. It was also obvious Searle had a deep appreciation for the history of the graphic arts and an awareness of how he fit into it. This was heady stuff for a generally clueless 20 year old semi-cartoonist to be exposed to, and it took a few years for me to put my own eyes back in my head.

Searle's style was so powerful that any other artist who mimicked its effects was pretty quickly overwhelmed by it and exposed as inferior. I think Searle himself was a little intimidated by his chops. There's a bit in his biography that tells of him taping the fingers of his drawing hand together to slow himself down and avoid becoming too facile. I've heard that he planned his work pretty carefully and his wiry, sprung lines were laid down with a lot more control than might be apparent.

Pat Oliphant said something to the effect that going through a Searle period is good for cartoonists, as long as they pull out of it before it's too late. The best way out, of course, is to draw and draw some more, as far away from the source of inspiration as possible and under circumstances that don't allow for cheating (i.e., a deadline). It's hard but think I managed it.

But still, I'd give my right arm if I could draw like this-

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T13:59:00.000-08:00

Traditions are important; they're a way of saying, "I did it this way before and it seemed to work OK" or "I haven't got anything new." So to start the year off the same, here's a drawing of an elephant with a New Year's Baby. Because traditions are important, like I said.

A Special New Year Cul de Sac Posted Two Whole Hours Early

2011-12-31T19:00:00.000-08:00

Or two whole days early if you're in Samoa.

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T01:43:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid we'd watch Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians ring in the New Year, brought to us in living black & white from the Waldorf Astoria. The highlight was catching sight of a drunken middle aged reveler dancing on a table top, crazed by all that sweet jazz. To my mind this is what sophisticated adults did. Not my parents, who were perfectly content to stay at home and laugh at the silly party hats and drunken antics of the swells. But we knew how to have a good time: at midnight we'd step out the front door and bang pot lids together and ring a little bell and yell Happy New Year, often enough to a dark and silent neighborhood.

We still do it, but now there are so many fireworks and such going off our racket just blends into the general din. The above Cul de Sac is from 2006 (?). Note that Petey's got a trombone, which turned into an oboe soon as I realized how hard a trombone is to draw.

Hello Bakersfield, CA: Updated Some More

2011-12-27T18:00:00.000-08:00

Cul de Sac just started in the Bakersfield Californian, where it replaced the beloved English strip Fred Basset. Many readers are so far unimpressed. I haven't seen such instantaneous dislike for Cul de Sac since the strip started in '07 (and it makes me feel young again!). My view is that you have to give a comic strip ten years to fully infiltrate you consciousness, and till then your opinions are shallow and worthless. Unless, of course, you like the strip at first sight*.

Update:

Really though, this post is a little self-serving: preaching to the choir and making fun of unadventurous Fred-Basset-loving fuddy-duddies who only ask for a pleasant chuckle and don't need some yacky kid strip foisted on them. So let's just say I'm happy and proud to that my strip is available to actual newspaper subscribers in Bakersfield CA! And I'm very happy to say that CdS just started in the Oakland Tribune. From what I hear the strip was picked up because an editor and his kids saw it online and liked it. That's the best I can ask for and an unheard-of way to get into a paper. So I'm damn grateful and I wish I'd quit grousing.

Another Update:

My friend Mike Rhode tells me the Sunday CdS is starting in the Morning Call of Allentown PA, where it replaces Fred Basset, of course. In the comments on this post, David W outlines Fred Basset's sordid history; how it was put into a decade of reruns after the creator's death and, worse, how it's been drawn by an anonymous and uncredited artist for the past 11 years. There's even this. So I'm suddenly a liitle less sympathetic to unadventurous Fred-Basset-loving fuddy-duddies.
*Thank you, Alex in Oakland!

Saint Santa, Again

2011-12-23T17:31:00.000-08:00

Wouldn't this make a great all-purpose charming though slightly offensive Christmas card?

Goodbye, Kim Jong Il!

2011-12-18T20:06:00.000-08:00

If it's not too much to ask, could everyone on the planet with internet access print this out, construct it as shown and display it in an appropriately wacky place for the next few days? I think it'd be a nice gesture.

See also here.

If You're in San Fransisco or Even Slightly West of the Continental Divide...

2011-12-16T19:10:00.000-08:00

... then please visit the San Fransisco's Cartoon Art Museum, where the fabulous exhibit Black and White and Read All Over: Comics of the New Millennium opens this weekend. Here's a bit from the museum's description-

The Cartoon Art Museum is proud to announce its latest exhibition, Black and White and Read All Over: Comics of the New Millennium, a showcase featuring nine comic strips introduced between the years 2000 and 2010. From talking animals to beleaguered cartoonists, childhood fears to childhood nightmares, the perils of adulthood to the trials of arrested development, the nonsensical to the political (which often goes right back around to nonsensical), the modern comic strip page really does include something for everyone.

Original comic strips on view live and in person in the exhibit are:

La Cucaracha by Lalo Alcaraz
Ollie and Quentin by Piers Baker
Arctic Circle by Alex Hallatt
The Knight Life by Keith Knight
Dustin by Jeff Parker & Steve Kelley
Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis
Tina’s Groove by Rina Piccolo
Lío by Mark Tatulli
Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson

My thanks to Andrew Farago, consummate comics curator, cartoonist and cool guy, for squeezing me in among this august group. Again, the place to be is Cartoon Art Museum at 655 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105, (415) CAR-TOON, (415) 227-8666.

Perhaps the Ultimate in Loungewear

2011-12-15T18:38:00.000-08:00

Now available exclusively on our Cafe Press site! Excellent for lounging, swaddling and bundling.

Tomorrow's Today's Cul de Sac, December 11 2011

2011-12-10T20:02:00.000-08:00

Special sneak peek 50 minutes into the future!

Support the USPS & Team Cul de Sac with these Lovely Stamps

2011-12-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Mike Rhode, Barbara Dale and David Hagen. you can now send your Cul de Sac cards with Cul de Sac stamps! Barbara Dale's stamp has been revised to lighten it up so you can see Alice better, and David Hagen volunteered his artwork for stamp #3. Collect them all! It's for charity!

Team Cul de Sac Stamp #2 (revised)

view product

Team Cul de Sac #3

view product

Yesterday's Cul de Sac, December 3 2011 and Tomorrow's. December 5 2011

2011-12-04T18:06:00.000-08:00

I fretted with this thing and rewrote and photoshopped the dialogue so many times that I was sure it had unraveled into hopeless incoherence. The object of Alice's mockery, the cheesy uplifting TV special full of easy epiphanies, seemed obvious when I started out. But with each little piddly adjustment it grew more unnecessarily complicated. At one point I added "childlike sense if wonder" to Alice's rant, diluting it even more.

So I decided to do the whole thing a second time figuring, if you're gonna fail, make it look intentional. This time the subject is"childlike sense of wonder". And this one was harder to do than the first; each drawing and each bit of text are separate bits hammered together in photoshop (Alice in the third panel looks awfully familiar, no?).

Thankfully one person grasped what I was flailing at, here (scroll down a bit). Now I don't have to make a third attempt at this.

Christmas Cards for the Discerning Person Who Buys Christmas Cards

2011-11-28T12:29:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to introduce our exclusive line of Cul de Sac Christmas Cards, now available on Cafe Press. These are perhaps the finest Christmas Cards currently offered, painstakingly hand-coloured by traditionally trained photoshop colouring artisans (my wife, Amy).

There are presently six designs to choose from, covering everything from Santa's Personality Disorder to Non-Euclidean Trees. Pictured is the Santa Trap, truly a classic sentiment of the season! We are confident that no other vendor offers a finer line of Cul de Sac Christmas Cards than these, and if one does we'll slap him with a cease & desist order so fast it'll make his head spin. So just watch it, bub.

The Mighty Sergio

2011-11-17T15:32:00.000-08:00

One of my childhood (and adulthood) idols, the legendary Sergio Aragones. draws Alice. And Groo, Rufferto, and his usual cast of thousands. See also here and here. I'm speechless with delight.

Old Cul de Sac

2011-11-10T16:23:00.000-08:00

I'm sure I've posted this before, but I couldn't find it and, as I'd just scanned it again (I couldn't find the previous scans either), here it is. I did it in May 2006, and I remember how much fun it was to work on. The drawing is fairly simple and the color, for several panels at least, is loose and wild and something of a special effect. And the gag is good. I hope you agree, because in two or three months I'm going to post it again.

Old Proto-Cul de Sac Pre-Almanac from the Paleozoic

2011-11-03T06:56:00.000-07:00

I found this in the bottom of a drawer of old cartoons the other day. It's a first rough sketch for an Almanac from late 1997 or early '98, so it even predates the name Richard's Poor Almanac. Sotheby's puts the price on this as (conservatively) eighteen cents, so it's quite a find. I don't remember if I ever went to a final and filed this for publication in the Post, but if I did I really hope I came up with a better gag than the penultimate balloon holds. It's pretty lame.

Reminder: Corcoran Chit-Chat Tonight

2011-10-31T19:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight at 7 I'm going to speak at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and I hope somebody's there to listen, and that I can think of something to say. And that it's at least tangentially about comics.

This is in conjunction with a great show of original & historic comic art at McDaniel College called Kings of the Pages, put together by Associate Professor of Communication Robert Lemieux. Graduate students at the Corcoran College of Art and Design planned the exhibit, with professional assistance from Mark Leithauser, Chief of Design at the National Gallery of Art, and Donna Kirk, Senior Architect at the National Gallery of Art.

Who Wrote Shakespeare?

2011-10-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

If you're counting you'll know that today is not Shakespeare's birthday. I'm just posting this to cash in on that stupid movie Anonymous, which reveals who really wrote Shakespeare's plays (one million chimpanzees typing for only eight years). Pab Sungensis says it best, and in the right meter too, and Mike Peterson discusses it wisely as always (scroll down a bit). Please post your competing and unfounded theories in the comments section.

I'm Going to the Corcoran

2011-10-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, November 1st, I'm going to speak at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and hope somebody's there to listen, and that they can hear me. It's in conjunction with a great show of original & historic comic art at McDaniel College called Kings of the Pages, put together by Associate Professor of Communication Robert Lemieux, who I wish I'd taken some courses from when I was educatable.

There Was An Old Woman

2011-10-15T18:52:00.000-07:00

Here's the whole spread and a few close ups, some commentary to come when I think of it. Now go buy the book!

The Dark Side of Alice

2011-10-15T07:07:00.000-07:00

Stephan Pastis investigates Alice's dark side, because he's a braver man than I.

Hello, Miami!

2011-10-14T11:24:00.001-07:00

Cul de Sac starts running today in the fabled Miami Herald and reporter Lomi Kriel makes note of it. Many of my favorite people to work with at the Washington Post were previously at the Herald, including Tom Shroder, who pushed me not-quite-kicking-and-screaming into Cul de Sac.

Moving Day

2011-10-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

The Parkinson Foundation of the National Capital Area, in collaboration with the National Parkinson Foundation, is sponsoring Moving Day, a day of raising awareness of Parkinson’s disease by going for a pleasant 2.5 mile stroll. They anticipate over 2,000 participants, including people with Parkinson’s, families, friends, health care professionals, private and corporate teams, all ambling along while raising funds in support of the Foundation’s mission. I'll be there with the appropriately named Team Cul de Sac, along with family and friends. You're encouraged to join us, in person or in donation form. Or both!

An added incentive: there may be doughnuts.

Nursery Rhyme Comics

2011-09-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

Coming to a bookstore near you on October 11 courtesy of the fine folks at First Second- Nursery Rhyme Comics, edited by the unstoppable force known to his friends as Chris Duffy. Chris is as close to the platonic ideal of a comics editor as it's possible to be (he knows how to get really good work out of people and he's forgiving about missed deadlines, and he's a nice guy; also, he's a talented cartoonist himself, which makes me worry a little).

Using his editorial superpowers Chris got 50 cartoonists to illustrate 50 nursery rhymes, people like Nick Abadzis; Andrew Arnold; Kate Beaton; Vera Brosgol; Nick Bruel; Scott Campbell; Lilli Carre; Roz Chast; JP Coovert; Jordan Crane; Rebecca Dart; Eleanor Davis; Vanessa Davis; Theo Ellsworth; Matt Forsythe; Jules Feiffer; Bob Flynn; Alexis Frederick-Frost; Ben Hatke; Gilbert Hernandez; Jaime Hernandez; Lucy Knisley; David Macaulay; Mark Martin; Patrick McDonnell; Mike Mignola; Tony Millionaire; Tao Nyeu; George O’Connor; Mo Oh; Eric Orchard; Laura Park; Cyril Pedrosa; Lark Pien; Aaron Renier; Dave Roman; Marc Rosenthal; Stan Sakai; Richard Sala; Mark Siegel; James Sturm; Raina Telgemeier; Craig Thompson; Richard Thompson; Sara Varon; Jen Wang; Drew Weing; Gahan Wilson; Gene Luen Yang; & Stephanie Yue. I'm grateful to be among them.

I got to do "There was an old woman tossed up in a basket..."

There was an old woman tossed up in a basket
Nineteen times as high as the moon;
Where she was going I couldn't but ask it,
For in her hand she carried a broom.
"Old woman, old woman, old woman," quoth I,
"O whither, O whither, O whither, so high?"
"To brush the cobwebs off the sky!"
"Shall I go with thee?" "Aye, by and by."

Here's a sneak preview, with slightly variant text-

Ooh! I'm going to rush out and buy that at a bookstore near me!

National Book Festival

2011-09-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

This weekend for two days only the Library of Congress presents the National Book Festival, on the National Mall. Hundreds of authors like Dave Eggers, Tomie dePaola, Rita Dove, Sherman Alexie, Jonathan Yardley and David McCullough will grace the dust-choked midway to demonstrate literary folkways and handicrafts. There'll be out-loud reading, grammar juggling, artisanal autographing and writer's block judging. And I'll be there-

Presentation

Graphic Novels
Sunday, September 25
1:00 pm - 1:45 pm

Book Signing

Sunday, September 25
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm

So come on down for two whole days of literary fun 'n' games!

Last Week's Cul de Sacs, September 5 to 11, 2011

2011-09-17T13:56:00.000-07:00

This is all old news, but Oh Well; The Pancake Princess as seen by Peter Otterloop, Jr.

I'd drawn myself into a corner with the preschool play as I had no clue about it beyond the title and suddenly it was curtain time. There's a whole genre of plays written solely for kids to perform as school plays and I've seen enough of them to've developed a severe facial tick. So I knew what to expect. But I needed what Petey might call a distancing mechanism to disguise my ignorance of the actual plot; in this case, Petey's POV was a great disguise. A technical note: the texture in Sofie's hat is a litho crayon, which I can't use without making a mess. Petey's neater than me.

A few alert readers pointed out the Kevin Bacon joke. It was entirely accidental but I take full credit for it.

Miss Bliss's music cur look is my favorite thing from this week (apart from the Kevin Bacon joke).

Also the third panel, which refers to a strip from July 26. This rewards alert readers and flummoxes everybody else (great way to run a comic strip).

The happy ending.

The meta ending.

And the completely unrelated Sunday. Coming next: Adventures in a Perambulator.

SPX

2011-09-09T08:22:00.000-07:00

I sure hope every one of you is going to the Small Press Expo this weekend in Bethesda MD (even if it is more like South Rockville). I mean, look at this line up-

Petey Sits In, or, Most Of This Week's Cul de Sac

2011-09-03T11:03:00.000-07:00

And not in a small chair, fortunately. The dream of all who draw a daily comic strip is to have somebody else please take it off their hands for as long as humanly possible.

Happily, Petey became available at just the right moment. We were on an abbreviated vacation in Duck NC when some of these strips were drawn, which means I didn't have any of the elaborate technical apparatus normally available when I work. I've grown reliant on a lightbox, a tilty art table, 5,000 pens, a stereo, 3,000 CDs, a messy floor, etc, and downsizing to a dining room table in a beach house that also has a nice & distracting view is difficult. So I let Petey do the drawing for a week of so.

I've been making this stuff up as I go along, more or less from week to week, with only a vague idea of what happens next. It took me a while to realize that Emilio Spinnerack's assignment to draw a comic from real life would mesh nicely with Alice's play, which I hadn't really thought through. All I knew was that the play should be incoherent, as though each player was the author and star. So I get to kill two birds with one stone, or fill two weeks with one joke. Regarding Monday's strip, I don't like drawing in public much either.

Drawing in a "child-like" style is tremendously fun in many ways. I've thought about shifting Cul de Sac's art more toward a style I'd call Little Kid Expressionism for a while. By Little Kid Expressionism I mean the characters' anatomy would be clumsified, the perspective would tilt, adults would loom larger, etc and the whole thing would be easier to draw. I can see this but I can't describe it. So this is a way of sneaking up on it a bit. And if anyone complains I can blame it on Petey.

Though I do worry about the lettering being legible. I'd used Petey's handwriting a few times so it seemed a good idea to keep it going for continuity's sake. Petey is at heart a perverse traditionalist, especially fond if unnecessary traditions, and I figured he'd like cursive, probably fancy Spencerian lettering, just for its difficulty. It makes a nicely absurd mismatch with the art too.

(I forgot to include the above strip in the original post) All I can add is that drawing a ceiling always a good move.

A cameo by Kevin's dad and mayne his mom.I'm guessing the whole Kevin family is annoyinng.

The Onion's A.V. Club Newspaper Comics Primer

2011-09-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

Noel Murray writes a good, easily-digestible primer of America's Most Beloved Art Form That's About to Evaporate. And somehow uses the words "grace" and "dignity" in a paragraph about Cul de Sac.

Stripped

2011-08-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

Dave Kellett, who's a smart and articulate guy as well as the cartoonist behind Sheldon and Drive, has been working with cinematographer Fred Schroeder to film a documentary on the modern state of the comic strip for a couple of years now (and probably thinking about it most his life). Suddenly he's got a trailer put together and a Kickstarter site up for it. For donations of $35 K he'll come to your house and powerwash your deck. More reasonable donations also accepted.

Remembering Elvis Again

2011-08-16T06:42:00.000-07:00

This continues a tradition of running this ancient pre-Almanac on the anniversary of his passing, though I usually forget to.

The Collection

2011-08-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

Chris Sparks has filmed a video tour of the Team Cul de Sac art collection, which is housed in the plush conference room of Andrews & McMeel.

Tom Spurgeon

2011-08-14T17:32:00.000-07:00

Tom Spurgeon writes entertaining, wise and funny posts every day that covers every inch of the wide world of comics. Today, though, he writes at length about something very personal and scary. Here too he's wise and funny and even gently profound in an essay that deals with mortality, his comic collection, the working life and, somehow, the Green Lantern movie.

Today's Cul de Sac, August 14 2011

2011-08-14T05:22:00.000-07:00

Ernesto has been barricading himself in a carrel fort in a remote corner of the library for several summers now though this is the first time he's felt compelled to explain why he'd need to. This Sunday strip is the remnant of a string of dailies featuring Ernesto's latest decline and fall. This time he was caught by the Future Adults of America appropriating a box of doughnuts meant for fund-raising and subsequently kicked out. I think he started a competing group but I forget what it was called.

The origami jumping frog is a real thing, even if Ernesto possibly isn't. I like them so much I included one in the first published drawing of Alice (below), though they don't really look much like that. My wife can make them. She used to carry origami paper in her purse and would sometimes make things at an odd time, like when waiting for food in a restaurant. Then we'd all try to make the frogs jump into someone else's drink glass.

National Book Festival

2011-08-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

The Library of Congress has graciously invited me to participate in the National Book Festival, to be held this September 24th and 25th on the National Mall. I'll be joining hundreds of authors like Dave Eggers, Tomie dePaola, Rita Dove, Sherman Alexie, Jonathan Yardley and David McCullough at the dust-choked midway of gaudy tents and stands lining the Mall. There'll be diversions and games of skill galore, like Whack-A-Motif, Dunk an Unreliable Narrator, Guess-Your-Weltanschauung and Skee Ball plus greasy food on a stick, so come on down for two whole days of literary fun!

Seriously, I'm tickled!

Corey Pandolph Steps Up When Thompson Flubs It

2011-08-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

The ever-reliable madcap polymath Corey Pandolph generously invites a few CdS characters into The Elderberries for a whole week.

This Week's Cul de Sac, August 1 Through 7, 2011

2011-08-07T19:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a whole, solid, brand-new week of Cul de Sacs along with some unnecessary commentary. Last summer Cartoon Camp was taught by Dan Spinnerack (below)

But this year I wanted someone new, though it might upset some, like Pete(y).

I think I redrew him a dozen times trying to find the right guy.

In his earliest, larval stage he resembled the cartoonist Seth (below) if he was played by an anemic Johnny Depp. I didn't think the public was ready for that quite yet.

Casting the right guy for a part in a comic strip is important. It can be fun, if the right guy shows up, but if he doesn't you have to keep looking till you find him. I wanted someone who looked like he could possibly be related to Dan Spinnerack. Beyond that I wasn't sure. One role that I've always been proud of casting was the bit part of the Fed-UPS driver who gave Mr.Danders a lift back in 2006 -

I keep hoping to work with him again, but the opportunity hasn't presented itself.

After redrawing him a dozen times I eventually I found his face, got him dressed and named him. Six months of touring historic cartoon sites would barely scratch the surface of the Buckeye State's offerings (Ohio license plates bear the motto "Incubator of Cartoonists").

I like the idea of a daily diary comic. Those who do it well make lively, interesting comics out of unexpected choices and juxtapositions of the quotidian. I'm not sure that makes sense; just go read everything by Dustin Harbin and you'll be the richer for it.

Really I just wanted the kids to have something different to do at Cartoon Camp this year and this seemed like a good direction to wander off on. Andre, Pete and Loris should each respond to it in some amusing way, I hope.

Although Pete might get too tightly focused on the boring, dull and uneventful part and produce a sluggish comic. This can drag a comic strip down and scare away readers, as I'm slowly realizing.

I've never heard windshield wipers say "Wipey". Those on my first car, an '82 Sunbird, went HIRNK-HORNK, but that sounds too much like an oboe onomatopoeia and I don't want to confuse people.

The next week of Cul de Sac is all repeats I'm sorry to say.

Hey, Kids! Unrelated Cicada Comics

2011-08-03T10:34:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to hear that 13-year Cicadas are popping up in the South and Midwest, because coincidentally I just scanned some old Poor Almanacs. They all date from 2004, when the most recent infestation of the 17-year variety erupted in the East.

And here's an early CdS with a cicada theme. it was redone for syndication and reused a month or so ago. Who knew cicadas were such comedy goldmines? I hope they come back more often!

Today's Cul de Sac, July 27 & 28 2011

2011-07-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

Originally I was going to have Camp Blisshaven be a craft camp where kids would make knicknacks and. tchotchkes and other hard-to-spell-things. But I changed it at the 10th hour, which is 60 minutes before the 11th hour, which is when most such important decisions are made. Please note the small injoke that I got a little wrong; the comedy & tragedy masks are based on the Andrews & McMeel logo. The goofier GoComics logo would've been more appropriate.

Theater camp was such an obvious and inevitable choice for Camp Blisshaven, not only for the ripe opportunity for small-kid comedy that it offers, but also for more sentimental reasons. My wife Amy has worked in theater with kids for quite a few years, starting with my daughters' elementary school, which has a Shakespeare program for fifth graders. The kids spend half the school year working on a Shakespeare play, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a tragedy. It's a cut-down half-hour version with multiple casting, several to a part in the big rolls. The first time we saw a production, when my older daughter was in kindergarten, they did Romeo & Juliet. We didn't know quite what to expect.

A few minutes into the play I was almost suffocating with laughter, and some other emotion that I'm not sure what to call; awed delight, maybe, that peaked during Mercutio's death scene ("A plague on both your houses") after a hugely energetic sword fight. When I was in school we didn't touch Shakespeare till 9th grade, when we read Richard III in English class and looked confused. But these fifth graders were giving a passionate, lively performance, made irresistibly funny by the fact that they were fifth graders. Also, all of the Juliets were about a foot taller than all the Romeos. It always takes me a few minutes or longer to get into the rhythm of a Shakespeare play, but I remember picking up on this Romeo & Juliet right away. Maybe the brevity of the production helped.

Anyway, Amy started volunteering to help run the production a few years later and got pretty intensively involved. One of the more glamorous skills offered in the program is stage combat, taught by a professional stage combat artist, where the kids learn how to fall, swordplay, do fake hairpulls and other vital life skills. There's even a production stuntman, a kid-size doll Amy made that gets tossed around and man-handled, and spends its offstage life on a chair in our living room. In the last 3 or 4 years Amy's been working at various after-school and summer theater camps too, and my older daughter's first summer job was assisting at one of them.

Surrounded as I am by theater folk, it's inevitable that some of it leaks into the strip. And I didn't even mention that my brother has been the master sound designer at Arena Stage in DC for almost 20 years.

Today's Cul de Sac, July 24 2011

2011-07-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

I've done a few Alice-in-the-shrub cartoons and each time I think they'll be easy to draw. Alice sitting amid a mass of leaves, what's difficult about that? But somehow each time I end up getting into the leaf-scribbling a little too intensely and I have to back off and use white to loosen things up and undensify the texture. Next time I'll either use a fatter nib or stand three feet away.

Stuff for Sale at Team Cul de Sac!

2011-07-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

The following is a post from our brother blog, Team Cul de Sac, which is ably helmed by Mr. Chris Sparks. Take it away, Chris-

Team Cul de Sac Print

This is our limited edition Portfolio 11" x 13.06" print. Signed by Richard Thompson and numbered by the one and only Mike Rhode. This is limited to 25 prints. All proceeds (including any extra shipping charges) will go to Team Cul de Sac. We will be picking prints at random as they are ordered.

The prints are $50.00 each and $15.00 shipping.
I ( Chris Sparks) will also be more than happy to sign the prints.

Team Cul de Sac Fanzine

Above is the Richard Thompson-drawn cover to FAVORITES, a home-grown zine where notable comics critics, artists and bloggers write their individual answers to a single question: “What is my favorite comic, and why?” For an excerpt, see here.

The contributors are an all-star line-up: Derik Badman, Noah Berlatsky, Alex Boney, David Bordwell, Matthew J. Brady, Scott Bukatman, Johanna Draper Carlson, Isaac Cates, Rob Clough, Corey Creekmur, Andrew Farago, Shaenon Garrity, Dustin Harbin, Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, Gene Kannenberg Jr., Abhay Khosla, Susan Kirtley, Sean Kleefeld, Costa Koutsoutis, Andrew Mansell, Robert Stanley Martin, Chris Mautner, Joe McCulloch, Ana Merino, Mike Rhode, Jim Rugg, Frank Santoro, Chris Schweizer, Caroline Small, Tom Spurgeon, Ben Towle and Matthias Wivel.

FAVORITES is 40 pages long, and can be ordered via the PayPal button below. The cost is $5.00 plus $1.25 shipping and handling. (All the money that isn’t spent on envelopes and postage will go to Team Cul de Sac, and research into a cure for Parkinson’s disease.) Thank you for your support!

I hope you don't think this place is turning into some kinda rag and bone shop, pushing books (that Amazon sale is still on!) and art and such. We offer only the most select rags and bones. and all for a good cause. Namely, to bring high-quality cartoon entertainment to you, the discerning consumer of high-quality cartoon entertainment!

Today's Cul de Sac for Yesterday

2011-07-18T17:53:00.000-07:00

I'd forgotten all about this Sunday strip. Not because I did it so long ago; it was probably drawn only a matter of hours ago. But I did get a nice surprise when it showed up, which doesn't often happen. Usually it's more a feeling of weary recognition, like, oh, you're that one, I'd forgotten about you, you used to be funny, when did you get so worn-out looking.

This one I like just fine. It's simple enough that I could draw it half-asleep, and probably did. But it's got enough complexity to hold its own and opens the door for further elaboration in future strips. And further elaboration is something that anyone who draws a cartoon every day is always on the lookout for.

More Savings Galore

2011-07-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

And now the first Cul de Sac book is only $5.07 on Amazon! Is 507 a prime number? Who picks these prices anyway?

Amazon Sale!

2011-07-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

Cul de Sac Golden Treasury a Garland of Classics is only $6.80 on Amazon! Wowee, somebody's losing money on this crazy sale!

Today's Cul de Sac, July 5 2011

2011-07-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

Alice has a small history of putting together guidebooks (badgers), but this was mostly an excuse to use a music staff nib to draw something. In this case, water. These nibs aren't hard to find (Barnes & Noble has some in their stationery section) but they're of kind of limited value, unless you want to draw something five times at once. Or line a music staff, if people do that anymore. The nib looks like this-

and it can be a bugger to get all five nibs firing simultaneously. Usually getting just one to behave is all I ask.

Today's Cul de Sac

2011-07-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

And while there's time, here's today's strip. Hey, look at that crosshatching, huh? Somebody must have time on his hands to monkey around with that stuff. Though it looks like he hasn't had a new idea in two years.

Fourth of July

2011-07-04T19:52:00.000-07:00

Quick, while it's still the Fourth of July, here's an old Cul de Sac from July 2, 2006.

Today's Cul de Sac for the Last Week or So

2011-07-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

We seem to have lost track of what's going on for the last month or two (and this isn't even today's Cul de Sac). Let's partially rectify this by cramming a week's-plus of daily strips into one belated post.

I've got to admit that when I drew this I wasn't too sure what would happen next, or how it would end.

When in doubt on this strip, it usually helps to add Dill.

But here Dill is not of much help.

In fact, he's no help whatsoever. Though his demented wasp bit was fun to draw. it's always good to drop in a little showstopper like this during the week. And lets throw in some more characters.

As some may recall, Alice got a bit of a crush on Andre when they first met last summer

So she's ready to be impressed. And Dill's not ready for anything.

I gave a talk at Heroescon in early June and I mentioned something I figured out about Petey, Andre and Loris during their cartoon camp last summer. Petey's a comic by Chris Ware, Andre's a comic by Jack Kirby and Loris is manga. I had a hard time here not expanding on Andre's warning, like "Great will be my wrath! So says Andre!" and stuff like that. Fortunately I ran out of room.

And Petey comes to a conclusion just in time to miss the whole epic adventure.

Ice Cream on Sunday Again

2011-06-26T07:55:00.000-07:00

As today's strip is a repeat, this post is too.

This is the original, slightly different, version of today's Cul de Sac (you'll note I changed Britons to Picts in today's strip for increased historical accuracy). This is drawn from life, as we have a Baskin & Robbins about three blocks from the house, and I've never been able to eat an ice cream cone neatly. I can recall eating an ice cream cone once when I was about six and having my usual trouble with it, and hearing my aunt say to my mom, "How'd he get it in his socks?" It's a skill I've passed on in varying degrees to both my daughters.

Another thing I've always had trouble with is drawing food. When I try to draw it, I end up with a mass of lumps colored brown or green, with red specks. But I do like this drawing of an ice cream cone, drawn for the Diabetes Association about 20 years ago. I like the lumpiness of the background and the textures in the ice cream (pistachio?). I wouldn't care to eat that cone, as I'd probably drop it and kill myself, but also because I'm just not a huge ice cream fan. Usually about halfway through eating it I get bored with it and give it to somebody else. Now pie, that I'll fight you for.

Happy Birthday, Chris Sparks

2011-06-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

This is a desk at Andrews & McMeel in Kansas City MO, and mostly obscured behind that pile of packages is Caty Neis, who works at that desk. Caty's editing the Team Cul de Sac book, a project launched by my friend Chris Sparks, whose birthday is today.

I met Chris mostly by accident at the Charlotte Heroescon in 2008, when he kinda blundered into a room where Tom Spurgeon and I were giving a talk. For scheduling reasons, the rooms had been switched around among the various panels and discussions on the top floor of the Charlotte Convention Center, and our talk was moved into a larger room so all 7 of the attendees could have their own section of 40 chairs or so to sprawl out in. Chris came in a few minutes into the talk, looked around and asked me What do you do? I must have given the right answer because we became good friends, practically family, and when he heard about my Parkinson's deal he decided to take on a project with a goal that'd make a difference.

I've met some interesting and excellent people in the last four or five years and that's the part of this side of the comics business I've enjoyed the most. Few have blundered into my life so gracefully as Chris, and I'm glad he did.

At the Reubens from left to right, me, Caty Neis, John McMeel, Chris Sparks.

Today's Cul de Sac, June 19 2011

2011-06-19T06:39:00.000-07:00

For those who can't see it on GoComics, here's today's strip. Kids looking at clouds is one of those little comic strip conventions that pops up now and then because clouds are funny, at least when they look like something else. And people daydreaming out loud is always funny.

Happy Early Bloomsday!

2011-06-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

This is an old and lost Poor Almanac from 2004 that was scanned off a newspaper and sent to me by Steve Dutky, who hoped I could find the original. I couldn't, so here's Steve's scan cropped down a little. It's the best I could do and feel free to replace "the Clinton book" with something more timely. So Happy Bloomsday!

My Favorite Part of HeroesCon

2011-06-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

These are cookies commissioned and provided by Kathy Parham, ingenious wife of the illustrious Craig Fischer. After dinner on Friday night Craig said they had a surprise dessert planned and took us up to their hotel room then sprang these masterpieces, made by Leila Jackson of Sweet Creatures Bakeshop, on us. I got Mr. Otterloop.

Craig was the moving force behind Favorites, a fanzine that consists of essays written by comics critics, artists and bloggers about their most cherished comic strips, comic books and graphic novels. It debuted at HeroesCon and sells for $5, every penny of which goes to Parkinson's research. Some fine family, those Fischers.

Something to Make You Happy

2011-06-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

I know it makes me happy. By the wonderful Karl Kesel. Who'll also be in Charlotte.

Reuben Report

2011-05-31T04:34:00.000-07:00

It's all a happy blur. More to come when things are clearer. Right now go see Dave Kellett's journal strip.

Hello Again, Charlotte

2011-05-31T04:21:00.000-07:00

This weekend I'll be going down to Charlotte NC with my pal and comics enabler Mike Rhode to Heroescon, well known as the friendliest comics convention on the face of planet Earth. I'll bring some books and sit at a table and look hopeful and needy, which is what you do at a convention if you're selling stuff, and woe to any passerby who makes eye contact. But I'll also be on two panels on Saturday.

10:30 AM
Richard Thompson: A Celebration
Room 209
Is Cul-De Sac the best comic strip being published today? Perhaps, but one thing is for certain, it is the best drawn and the funniest. Okay, that’s two things. Please join Mike Rhode and some fellow strip creators as we sit down and examine the art of Mr. Thompson. In addition to discussing craft and daily deadlines, we will see if Richard can provide any insight as to whether poor Petey will make it through the entire soccer season without having a psychotic breakdown. Ahhh, total Bliss (haven).

12:00 PM

Approaches to Humor
Room 209
Sure the convention is HeroesCon, but let’s never forget the funny side of the comic book world. Join The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald as she sits down with three of the very best cartoonists in the business. They are able to me us smile and even laugh out loud: Richard Thompson (Cul De Sac), Roger Langridge (The Muppets, Fred the Clown) and Evan Dorkin (Milk & Cheese, Yo Gabba Gabba!) are three of the wizards who put the comic in comic.

Given the touchiness of the subject matter and the volatility of the personalities involved, either one of these could turn into a chair-throwing brawl. Plan to it there but please note where the exits are, just in case.

This Thing

2011-05-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

The NCS handed me this last night for which I'm grateful in countless ways, not the least being that I didn't fall over. A longer post to come.

Where I'll Be

2011-05-26T18:10:00.000-07:00

This weekend is the annual National Cartoonists Society Reuben Awards and I get to go. And I get to take my family along to subject them to all the fun. As in past years I'm taking the train from DC, this time to Boston, disembarking at South Station, which is only a few blocks from this hotel.

It's the fabulous Fairmont Copley Plaza, an ornate ocean liner of a hotel that floats on Copley Square in Back Bay. In its famous Oak Bar you can buy a special engagement martini priced at $12,500! There's a resident dog named Copley that guests may rent for walkies! There's a lobby with big plush chairs where you can sit and look directly at someone else in a similar chair! Each room features beds with a pillow arrangement so complex and hard to disassemble that most guests give up and sleep on the floor! Okay, not all of that's true, but this is the venue that the NCS has chosen for its annual bash.

We'll be staying next door at the Westin, which is also a nice place, and much taller.

More TK.

The Experts Speak

2011-05-24T20:13:00.000-07:00

Over at the Team Cul de Sac Blog Craig Fischer unveilss the cover Favorites, a zine of essays written by comics critics, artists and bloggers about their most cherished comic strips, comic books and graphic novels.

The style is familiar.

Joyboys of Radio

2011-05-22T17:12:00.000-07:00

Michael Cavna and I will be on NPR tomorrow at 11:00 AM. The show's called Tell Me More and I don't know what we're going to say but it promises to be laffs galore. They'll have a sound effects guy to jazz things up when the conversation stalls.

Basically True

2011-05-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

As far as it goes. This was drawn for the Post Magazine, and Mike Cavna's fine piece of journalism.

Post Mag Blows Lid Off Cartoonist's Shady Past

2011-05-19T20:18:00.000-07:00

Article here, photos here, and my profound thanks to Michael Cavna for omitting the embarrassing stuff and Dustin Fenstermacher for only getting my good side.

An Old Cul de Sac

2011-05-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

This was drawn for the Post Magazine in early 2007 then redrawn for syndication later that year (I haven't recycled any old strips in a while, I think because I ran out of good ones). To see the syndicated version, plus some nice words by Tom Spurgeon, see this review.

When I first drew this it was instantly my favorite; it's got drama, comedy and meta-ness, and it makes a point that's self-deprecating enough to be self-loathing. All you could ask for from a comic strip! I was looking at this original the other day and realized something. Recently I've gotten obsessive about the shape of Alice's head. I want it to be perfectly spherical, but it keeps getting lumpier and more oblong. I've always had trouble drawing these characters on model and I stand in awe of those cartoonists who can reproduce shapes and sizes from panel to panel effortlessly. Especially someone like Charles Schulz, who designed one of the subtlest shapes in pop culture- Charlie Brown's head- and replicated it endlessly (though there was some gradual evolution in it, of course). But I realized that Alice's head here is a doughy, unformed lump, and it looks better than any platonic sphere ever could.

The above Alice is as close to a Platonic ideal of Alice as I can imagine. The drawing is rough and scratchy and the lines seem to have landed on the paper almost randomly. The watercolor defines things as much as the linework does, one of the main differences in the strips drawn for the Post Mag and for syndication.

Triskedecaphobia

2011-05-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

Here's something from the Post Weekend section from 1996 for Friday the Thirteenth. I'm putting it up quick while it's still Friday the Thirteenth. More vital commentary to follow when I get a chance. See also here.

Today's Cul de Sac for May 12, 2011

2011-05-11T23:05:00.000-07:00

GoComics is still down for those of us browsing with Safari, so here's today's strip as a public service. Long time readers with their memory still intact will recognize the childish taunt the two rowdies are using as a cheer. And just look at that jungle gym! Giovanni Battista Piranesi would weep to see such perspecstive!

Today's Cul de Sac for May 11, 2011

2011-05-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

GoComics.com is doing some upgrading, maintenance and vacuuming up right now and some people, like me, are having trouble getting to the site (Safari users are having the most trouble). So for those of you who can't see it on its home page, here's today's Cul de Sac. Didn't I start posting these every day at some point? I forget. This one's a little violent with all these tiny soccer hooligans but the perspective on the jungle gym is dandy, if you like that kinda thing. As the week goes on the jungle gym seems to get denser and more pointlessly intricate. I must've been obsessing.

Team Cul de Sac Deadline Extended; Grateful Cartoonists Nationwide Heave Great Sigh of Relief

2011-05-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

This is a cross post from the Team Cul de Sac Blog. We have extended the deadline for donations to the Team CdS fundraiser until June 17th! This was done for a couple of reasons. Lee Salem, Caty Neis, Richard Thompson and Chris Sparks will be at the Reuben awards in Boston in less than three weeks. Chris will personally be asking cartoonists to contribute to Team Cul de Sac, Caty might be singing and Richard will be juggling (possibly unintentionally). Ooh, this could get ugly!

The following weekend please visit Heroescon in Charlotte NC. Team Cul de Sac will be releasing The Fanzine for the ages put together by Craig Fischer. The contributors are an all-star line-up: Derik Badman, Noah Berlatsky, Alex Boney, David Bordwell, Matthew J. Brady, Scott Bukatman, Johanna Draper Carlson, Isaac Cates, Rob Clough, Corey Creekmur, Andrew Farago, Shaenon Garrity, Dustin Harbin, Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, Gene Kannenberg Jr., Abhay Khosla, Susan Kirtley, Sean Kleefeld, Costa Koutsoutis, Andrew Mansell, Robert Stanley Martin, Chris Mautner, Joe McCulloch, Ana Merino, Chris Pitzer, Mike Rhode, Jim Rugg, Frank Santoro, Chris Schweizer, Caroline Small, Tom Spurgeon, Ben Towle and Matthias Wivel.

The Zine will be a word-packed 40 pages, topped off by a cover by some fledgling artist whose name I forget. Please come by and say hi to Craig, Mike Rhode , Richard and Chris.

Thank you to everyone who's helping out!

Thank you, Happy Deadline Clown!

Happy Cartoonists Day Again, Again

2011-05-05T10:22:00.000-07:00

You may be wondering, "How can I best celebrate this festive day?" You might consider:

Finding a cartoonist near you and mowing his lawn, at least the front lawn (especially the hard part with the hill).
While you're at it trim his shrubs, so the mailman can find his front door again.
Does his house need vacuuming? Well, what are you waiting for?
Who left all these dishes in the sink?
The cats; somebody feed the cats.
You could take him to lunch at the Mexican place down the street, where they're having some no doubt cartoonist-related celebration.
For God's sake laugh at his cartoons. If they appear in a newspaper, buy extra copies (or multiple subscriptions, even) and laugh at them too.
Is he not posting anything new on his stupid blog and it's driving you crazy? You should send him a cheerful card stuffed with cash to inspire him.

Note: if the cartoonist near you is a lady, please substitute "her" for "his". The original of the cartoon reproduced above is in the collection of the fabulous Mr. Jef Mallett, so this is a scan of the Almanac book page. And it's the same one I ran last year, and the year before, if it looks familiar.

May the Fourth Again

2011-05-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

Today, for those of you who care about such stuff, is May the Fourth Be With You Day. Back in 1977 I went to see Star Wars (the first, real, one) on its opening night at the Uptown Theater with a bunch of friends, which establishes my geek cred if there was any doubt. All the shows were sold out, there was a line around the block, and we ended up seeing the added-on midnight show, and some of us appeared in a photo in the Wash Post the next morning of all the geeks in line to see a movie. Somehow we all knew it was an event and the line was the place to be. The Uptown is still the best theater in DC; it's got a huge screen and a balcony and the blockbusters open there. I've stood on that sidewalk out on Connecticut Avenue for dozens of movies since and nowadays I drag my daughters along, or vice versa.

The above cartoon is one of a few Star Wars Poor Almanacs I drew, the others having now been lost. One was about the Star Wars exhibit at the Air & Space Museum back in the mid-90s and the only bit of it I remember is something about them discovering a colony of midgets still living in the giant rubber Jabba the Hutt. There was another, unfinished cartoon about the new characters in some of the prequel movies; one was a robot that was just a dangling boom microphone named Oopsie Boomshot, ha ha.

Each of the subsequent movies in the SW franchise were, for me, another big step down from the fun of the original. When the last one came out I was ready to throw something big and wet at the screen. The above was drawn before I saw it, but I'd already figured it wasn't going to be much fun. George Lucas will likely spend the rest of his career tinkering with his Star Wars oeuvre, reworking CGI effects and monkeying with the explosions and stuff. And I'll likely keep recycling old blog posts, sometimes adding a little bit here and there. Like this one.

Obsolete Cartoon

2011-05-01T23:30:00.000-07:00

From late 2001-

Happy Easter Part 3

2011-04-25T17:51:00.000-07:00

This is the result of rigorous research. You could base a school report on this cartoon. See also here.

Happy Easter Part 2

2011-04-25T17:33:00.000-07:00

The further adventures of Hopsy Bunsy & Peeps McCracken. I did another one of these with one of Stephan Pastis's crocs emerging from the egg, but I gave that one to Stephan Pastis.

Happy Easter

2011-04-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

This makes slightly more sense if you know that the Almanac was printed next to Doonesbury in the Post. I did several like this and if I can find them they'll be posted too.

Sneak Peek into the Future

2011-04-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

As long as I've goy you all here, this is a panel from a Sunday strip for next month. I swiped from an old drawing, below, hat I did because trees are fun to draw. Monday is Arbor Day, at least in Virginia, so this may help prepare you for it, if you live in Virginia.

Team Cul de Sac Has Some Nice Friends

2011-04-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

Team Cul de Sac, the Parkinson's research fundraising project started by the indefatigable Chris Sparks, has received some inspired contributions by artists and cartoonists. The recent donation pictured above is particularly eye-catching. It comes from Mr. Bill Watterson, who's got a dab hand with a paintbrush and whose beloved Calvin & Hobbes stands as the platonic ideal of the comic strip, or as close to as such a thing is possible. I once saw a comment on a comics thread from someone saying that he'd dreamed about hiking in the Cascades and coming across a church newsletter stuck in some bushes that featured new Calvin & Hobbes strips that were being published nowhere else. That strikes me as eerie and charming and a good measure of the depth to which C&H has permeated the popular imagination.

So I was floored when I got a call yesterday from Chris saying that Caty Neis, who's shepherding the Team book project at Andrews & McMeel, had gotten a painting from Bill. An oil painting of Petey Otterloop of all people. After studying it pretty closely for the last consecutive 12 hours or so I can say that he's done Petey as much justice as possible. Adding another dimension to a 2D character is a tricky business and Petey's awkward enough in dealing with the two he's normally confined to.

Thanks to Bill from the bottom of my heart. And thanks also to Alex, Jim, Jerry, Bill L, Crow, Stephan, Steve, Ron, Matt, Canaan, Jim D, Shannon, Pab, Matt, Mo, Mark, Lynn, Peter, David and everybody else who's contributing. I appreciate it more than I can say.

Today's Cul de Sac for April 17, 2011

2011-04-17T17:08:00.000-07:00

They really have these things, musical toothbrushes, only not quite as advanced as the one pictured. I use a small toothbrush to clean pen nibs and the one I've been using is called a Firefly toothbrush. You squeeze the handle and it lights up and blinks for one minute, so you know just how long to brush your teeth. These things might be aimed at children or at people who use them to clean pen nibs, I'm not sure which.

Lazy Tax Joke Repost

2011-04-14T22:33:00.000-07:00

I hate to say it, but here it is that time of year, April being the cruelest month and all. You know that if it says "From the IRS" it must be real, too.

Your Unnecessary Spot Illustration of the Day, Nobel Edition

2011-04-13T07:39:00.000-07:00

Reading from left to right in the row of framed caricatures is Kenzaburo Oe, Toni Morisson, Seamus Heaney and Wislawa Szymborska, all of whom won the Nobel Prize for literature. This was drawn about ten years ago for a New Yorker piece on the backstage hijinks at the Nobels, here depicted as a brawling mass of distinguished gentlemen. Evidently the actual process of determining who wins the Nobel for literature, so dignified on the outside, is inside like a that Three Stooges short where a well-mannered dinner party devolves into a pie fight. It was a joy to draw that brawling mass, though it probably took me a while to lay it out so that it made visual sense (drawing crowd scenes or even groups of more than three people is not one of my favorite things). But this tangle of people came out well enough that I reused one of them, the airborne berserker on the right, when I drew something on Senate hijinks for the New Yorker a few years later.

The caricatures of the Nobel laureates are Okay though I wish I'd pushed them a little further, but the rioting Nobel committee still makes me happy.

Today's Cul de Sac for April 10, 2011

2011-04-09T22:56:00.000-07:00

This is still the way I do math, fractions especially, a talent I've passed on to both my children. Whatever a drawing fight is I'm glad I thought of it (though others may have preceded me in inventing it). The actual fun in this, of course, is Andre's kinetic energy contrasted with Petey's stasis. They get along well as friends because their basic tastes are alike and their temperaments are not too mutually exclusive. But I think after spending extended time in each other's company they're kinda relieved to go their separate ways and be alone again.

More Damned Cherry Blossoms

2011-04-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

The DC Cherry Blossom Festival continues today with the big parade. It's not the greatest weather for it, being cool, grey and dampish, and the blossoms are long past their peak. So here are some half-hearted reposts of cherry blossom cartoons. The cherry blossom trees around the Tidal Basin, the major players in the Festival, are not really this pink. They're white with a pinkish cast. I point this out so no one's too disappointed, in case anyone's using this as a visitor's guide.

The last one still makes me laugh. Coming up next: something fresher.

Your Guide to DC Children's TV Show

2011-04-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

I was looking for something about DC kids' TV shows and found this post from 2008 and decided to put it up again. This may be one more sign of this blogs creeping senescence; soon every post will be about how great something was that happened on the blog two years ago.

Though I was born in Baltimore, I grew up in and around DC. And one of the things that struck me as a child about the Capital of the Free World was the number and complexity of local TV kid's shows. These are the ones I remember best, though I'm sure I'm leaving some off the list (hello, Pick Temple).

The local TV newsman/broadcasting-personality who puts on a silly costume and stands in front of a cardboard set to introduce ancient cartoons and Three Stooges shorts is something kids today just don't have access to and I think they're the poorer for it. These shows were central to our daily routine and the local stations put a lot of love and work into them. Well, some. When you only have six or so channels available on your TV then each one has a more distinict personality, and these shows were a large part of it.

When I was about seven I got to be on Ranger Hal (I was wearing a kilt; long story) and, instantly if briefly, my status in the neighborhood shot up. I remember one kid asking me if I got to meet Felix the Cat, whose cartoons were a fixture on Ranger Hal, and I had to let him down gently as to Felix the Cat's incorporeality. I don't think he believed me.

And I think appearing on these shows probably did the TV newsman/broadcasting-persornality a lot of good too. If someone like say, I don't know, Bill O'Reilly had a half-dozen seasons in a clown wig and giant bowtie back early in his career he might be more grounded today.

Today's Cul de Sac, March 15 to April 3, 2011

2011-04-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

In a blinding burst of speed we go blazing right through today and into the future!

Like I said, this keeps happening to Petey. I think he's starting to enjoy it.

If Andre hears about Pevey he's going to want a secret identity too.

Between the time Alice wastes getting ready for bed and waking up for nightmares I can't imagine she's getting enough sleep. No wonder she's kinda cranky.

Though it looks like she's also enjoying herself.

Maybe enjoying herself too much.

This has happened before, you know.

Bedtime entertainment is a wide-open field in the arts if you're looking for a job in a related field (I hope you're listening, Julie Taymor).

This is a well-known fact.

Running around and making noise is how I usually handled sports, so I never got around to learning the rules of most games.

I was afraid someone might complain about the ball rolling into the street.

Beni in for Andre and Petey.

Those wooden paddle spoons have mostly been supplanted by plastic spoons. This is probably epochal.

I'm hoping that Petey hasn't discovered a latent talent for soccer. It might spoil his life.

Sssshhh. This doesn't come out till tomorrow, but I'm sneaking it in (of course, half the papers in the country deliver Sunday supplements on Saturday). Dill's poignantly strange toy first appeared in Christmas of 2007. I hope nobody plays with it from a range of more than four feet away unless they're wearing protective gear.

Today's Cul de Sac, March 14 to 20, 2011

2011-03-30T19:46:00.000-07:00

I look forward to drawing Andre playing soccer.

This keeps happening to Petey, like maybe twice a year.

Leaving unfinished jokes lying around means you can bring them back again and pretend you've accomplished an actual punchline.

And I keep drawing this somewhat sinister playground.

I'd like to make the playground an actual character. Here it looks a bit like Howl's Moving Castle, which if you haven't seen you should.

Take that, singing cartoon animals.

This is not too different from the way I work sometimes. When stuck for an idea I've often contemplated cutting up old strips, strewing them all over the floor and mixing & matching them until they seem to make sense. Or I'll just bring back the tiny missing clown.

Today's Cul de Sac, March 7 to 13, 2011

2011-03-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

We've fallen behind again. How does this happen?

This week was all about the fun of drawing mud.

And at some point it occurred to me: how did she get out there anyway?

I just hoped that it didn't occur to anyone else, that everyone would be too caught up in the riveting drama to question the logic. Like a Hollywood movie.

But you have to admit, that is some nicely drawn mud.

She skipped. Of course, how simple.

Thus ends one of the randomest weeks of strips I ever foisted on an unsuspecting yet disinterested public. I do like the idea that 15 minutes to her mother equals days to Alice.

This is a salute to all those double reed wind players out there, especially those who can manage circular breathing (I tried it and all I can manage is rhomboidal).

Today's Cul de Sac, February 28 to March 6, 2011

2011-03-21T23:29:00.000-07:00

It's time to claw our way somewhat closer to present-day.

The pre-Alicians were first mentioned in early 2009.

Or more likely, the hairdo is immortal and Miss Bliss is its present avatar.

Petey's semi-aversion to being photographed was first shown here.

Marcus briefly had his own blog, putatively run by his mother, until a certain unnamed person lost interest in it.

This could've been expanded on. And I wish I'd pulled the face in that second panel even more. It looked more distorted when drawn at 5 inches tall, the usual size I draw these things.

Boy, now that plot will really take off.

Trees are among my favorite things to draw. I may drop the human characters from the strip and introduce a flock of comic birds so I can draw trees all the time.

Two Views of Spring

2011-03-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

Reposted for like the umpty-umpth time.