Otterloop

Anyone living in the DC area recognize the joke behind the name "Otterloop" (at least I hope they do; it took me forever to get it myself). It's a play on "Outer Loop", the outside, counter-clockwise ring of DC's Beltway. You would most often hear it in a sentence with the word "delays", as in, "Delays on the Outer Loop start at the Springfield Interchange." If you don't live in DC and aren't familiar with the "Outer Loop" be glad, it's usually a nightmare. And the "Springfield Interchange" is even worse.

Looking at the map of the Beltway provided above and comparing it to Mr. Otterloop's head I see a resemblance, kinda. But mostly it looks like an upside-down cartoon dialog balloon.

Family

Here's a panel from a strip that won't be in papers for another month, and since it isn't the punchline I'm not giving anything away. Sometimes people ask if I get ideas from my two daughters and the answer is yes of course, but not directly. Usually things are rearranged for comic effect and filtered to protect the innocent. This, though, is taken almost verbatim from something my wife said to my daughter. I encourage the girls to come up with more comic bits & routines and to say more of the darnedest things, just to help Daddy out with his work. In return we provide them with a household full of eccentrics like James Thurber had, so they'll have material to draw on later in life should they ever take up cartooning or literature. It's the least we can do for each other as a family, I think.

Some Literary Laffs

Tonight I went to a talk on The Graphic Novel in the Classroom with my friend Mike Rhode (see ComicsDC under Nice Places to Visit to the right). Me, I'm all for gettin' kids' noses in them funnybooks, so I say the more of 'em in the classroom the better.

I'm feeling all frisky 'n' literary, so here's this.

I don't speak Italian either

I wish I'd learned how to at some point. From what I can tell, the above is saying something nice about Cul de Sac for which I'm grateful, though I'd like to've seen them translate "Otterloop" into Italian. Mille grazie to Gianfranco Goria for this!

I tried French for a couple of years in middle school, until the teacher finally suggested maybe I'd like to try another language. So I tried German and had an easier time with it. But Italian, that's the language of art, music, love, food. And cartoons! Or as we say, fumetti.

One thing I do know in French is that cul-de-sac means bottom of the bag, and I only know that because Washington Post Genius Editor Pat Myers told me.

Voutch!

Hey, go look at this guy'swork. It's great. And thanks to RC Harvey, who mentioned it on his blog over on gocomics.com.

How would you pronounce Voutch? I'm rhyming it with "couch", but it's French so it's probably more "vooouuusssh". And I wish the images on his site were larger and the type more readable for those of us who squint. Not that I can read French anyway; I got the above image here.

More Names, or, The Place is Getting Crowded

Lyonel Feininger, Ed Koren, J J Sempe, Jim Borgman, Elzie Segar, Frank Willard, Saul Steinberg, William Steig, Barry Blitt, Bruce McCall, John Cuneo, Heinrich Kley, Peter Steiner, Steve Brodner, David Levine, Chuck Jones, Chris Ware, Crockett Johnson, Percy Crosby, Dr. Seuss, Lisbeth Zwerger, Ernest Shepard,...

(click on dailycartoonist at right for some explanation, if necessary)

Peanut Allergies

Here's this week's Poor Almanack. Charlie Brown's head, for all it's simplicity, is hard to draw. And the zigzag is even worse.

Comic Strip Previews

I did this at the beginning of the year. Let's read it and see how well my prognostications panned out.



Yup! Looks like they all came true (I knew that squid would get those Pattersons). Except maybe the last one, but it's only a matter of time before the van pulls up in my driveway and the Pulizter people leap out with a bouquet of helium balloons and the giant novelty check and knock on my door. Or maybe they just push it through the mail slot, I'm not sure. But either way, I'm ready!

Hey Writers!

These are all drawn from real life, except the old guy losing an overshoe in the Metro escalator didn't realize it'd happened until his wife pointed it out. She then turned to me and said, "Isn't life funny?" and I said, "Oh, yeah."

The Pixar Story

On Wednesday I snuck out of work and went downtown with Ann Telnaes to see a documentary called "The Pixar Story". It was produced & directed by Leslie Iwerks, daughter of the great animator Ub Iwerks, and it was showing very briefly in DC to qualify for the Oscars. Ann and I were the only ones in the theater, maybe in the whole theater complex, so we could chat during the show. Ann trained as an animator at CalArts, the school that produced John Lasseter and she knew some of the people in the documentary.

Watching it I was struck by how dicey a business like Pixar can be, how close it is to the verge of collapse from one blockbuster to the next; Toy Story did spectacularly well, but then A Bug's Life had to do even better, and when Toy Story 2 almost fell apart and had to be redone the whole company almost fell apart with it. And Pixar's partnership with Disney was played as a somewhat atonal counterpoint to its ever-changing fortunes. Ann booed when some of the Disney executives were interviewed, especially when the subject was Disney's idiotic switch from 2-D animation to 3-D, when they let go animators with years of experience in classic animation. Now of course Lasseter's in charge of Disney animation so things have changed and We'll See. Disney's always been a company that can put a smile on your face and make you grind your teeth hard enough to loosen a molar at the same time.

It was an interesting film, very much a bouquet to John Lasseter, his cohort of geniuses and their story-telling skills. We bought a little Pixar stock years ago and haven't paid much attention to it, though they do send shareholders a nice poster every year, so maybe I've got a vested interest. I admitted to Ann that I choked up at the end of both Toy Stories and Ratatouille. But then I blubber when the laundry soap works in the TV commercials, just 'cause everybody is so happy about it.

Drop Panels

Drop Panels are the title panels in Sunday strips that are used as filler or dropped because they're filler. The size and shape of a Sunday strip is an arcane science that I haven't figured out yet, I've just used a default 1/4 page size. But there are things you can do with a drop panel, like do a nice drawing or a separate gag or reproduce a sketch like Zits does, and I need to do something more interesting. So I'm coming up with some different title panels, with maybe a little gag in them. Here are a couple of roughs that I like, especially for the scratchy velocity of the line. They're on my to-do list, like finishing this week's strips, mowing the lawn, cleaning up my studio enough that I can walk from one end to the other, and arranging for a lasting worldwide peace based on love & understanding. And maybe tune the banjo if I've got time.

Your Halloween Treat Guide

Filler

Here's something until I think of something better. Like a bridge column or Sudoku.

Columbus, Ohio

If I'd've had my druthers, I'd've gone to the ninth triennial Festival of Cartoon Art at Ohio State in Columbus this weekend. Did anybody here go? Show of hands please (Heath, are you doodling frogs and not paying attention? good, keep it up). I went to the Festival in '86 and stayed with an old friend and his wife then living in Columbus. The highlights for me were: attending a chalktalk by Arnold Roth on the lawn of the Thurber House (above) on a brilliant, sunny day; laughing really hard at a show of old animated cartoons, some of which I'd seen a dozen times but which became irresistably funny when watched with a crowd in an actual theater; recognizing Bill Watterson, attending but not featured, by his name tag and chatting with him for a few minutes; my friend and I laughing really, really hard at an inapropriate moment during a panel discussion and having to leave the room before we suffocated from holding it in, while his wife just said, You guys. I also remember getting a Big Mac that was unique in my experience for not looking like somebody had stepped on it.

Ah, memories. My wife's from Columbus and we sometimes go back there. What a nice town, especially for cartoonists.

Halloween Putto All Grown Up

As Mark Heath has identified our Halloween Putto as master cartoonist Charles Addams and thereby spoiled out plans to string this out for the next four days, we provide an "After" photo of our Halloween Putto. Isn't he jolly yet sinister? Roz Chast did a great spread on Addams for the New Yorker a few years back, about how she'd sit and read his cartoon collections in the library while her parents were busy there and how Addams' work inspired her. I remember looking through one of his books in my seventh grade classroom where it was shelved among the art books. I could look at those warmly grey-toned little masterpieces over and over. Though when the Addams Family showed up on TV it didn't do much for me. Idiot that I was, I liked the Munsters more.

Halloween Putto

Here's something appropriate for Halloween. Can you guess who he is?

I'm not in Kansas City anymore

I'm back, and I'm pooped, but it's a good kinda pooped. Above is a photo of the area where my syndicate has their offices; they're in the building at right, where you see two towers with lit up points on top, they occupy three floors of the right-hand building. The area with all the lights is called Country Club Plaza, a great place to stroll around and window shop. As most of the stores are high-end boutiques window shopping is about as far as I got. But there is a Barnes & Noble and I bought the Michaelis Schulz bio there to read on the plane and the Rest is Noise by Alex Ross to read sometime later. I stayed in the building at top far right, the square glass thing, it's a Marriot Something and it was hosting a convention of guys in ballcaps who backslapped anyone who came near. If you look closely enough you'll see me waving out of a 16th floor window. Either that or I'm inside the hotel room at the little desk finishing up dailies for Thanksgiving week so I can hand them in this morning, before I ride out to the airport.


Around the corner from the hotel is the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, with a terrific collection and a good cafe tucked into a free-flowing yet compact building that looks like it might take off like a silver aircraft, but didn't. The piece above by Tom Otterness called Crying Giant sits out on the lawn. The feet make me happy.

Kansas City Here I Come

I'm off for a few days to confer, converse and otherwise hobnob with the ladies & gentlemen of the Syndicate who so expertly handle Cul de Sac. (Above: front of the Universal Press offices, with a good view of the reflecting pool and the statue representing the Cherub of Comedy Presenting the Fruits of his Labors to Commerce, Who's Holding a Big Stick. Below: the shed where they put bad cartoonists who miss their deadlines)

I'll be updating remotely, including photos of Syndicate Big Shots, podcasts of us chewing some Big Meals, and of course, live blogging of Big Deals Being Made!

No I won't! I'm lying! I don't know how to do any of those things! You're stuck with this post for the next three days! So let's just all quietly meet back here on Friday. Otay?

A Bigger Book

Anybody reading this? You should be; it's probably a lot more fun to read than the Michaelis Schulz biography and it's definitely more a labor of love. Reading this makes me want to be a strip cartoonist, and write about exotic locales & vertiginous adventures. And it makes me want to learn how to use a brush, and how to spell chiaroscuro without looking it up (I looked it up).

It's National Folksong Month!

Did you know it's National Folksong Month? Well, you're wrong, I don't think it is. Still, here are two lovely folksongs just waiting for you to sing.

Cartoon Roundtable

Another old cartoon, from the days when "Opus" launched. I just like the little bit with Charlie Brown's shirt, which seems an apposite gag seeing as how Schulz is in the news.

I learned the word "apposite" from Alex Hallatt, comic genius behind the strip Arctic Circle (see Moontoon under Nice Places to Visit to your right).

Advertisement disguised as vital information

The statistics above are provided by Amazon.com. I'm not really sure what they mean, but boy, whatever they're describing sounds great, and it's probably a bargain, too.

No Mitt

So, that drawing of Mitt Romney for the NYer fell through. After they okayed the sketch and I'd finished the color final and was about to email it, I got a call from the AD saying, Yikes, the editor got his copy of Harper's Magazine, and the cover of Harper's features four views of Romney as a bobblehead. My sketch, above, had him as a rotating blur, and the coincidence made everybody uncomfortable, as I can understand. And I didn't have any time to do something new, so alas, much regret and tears all around, and promises to work together again soon (the NYer has some really nice people to work with, a lot more loose and funny to deal with than you'd expect from a weekly, high-pressure magazine). And hello kill fee!

What the heck, posting the sketch of a killed drawing is what blogs are for, man.

Oliphant

I missed a book signing tonight at Politics & Prose by the Mighty Pat Oliphant. The deadlines done got me and I'm lonesome, blue and stuck at home. I owe Pat some massive thanks for many things, not least years of inspiration. And he taught my older daughter how to pick her nose when she was a little over a year old. How can I even begin to pay him back for that? (photo above of Oliphant's Mighty Left Hand at work by Bruce Guthrie, who made it to P&P and reported back)



Everybody! Go buy his book!

A Big Book

Anybody read this and care to comment on it? If you do, could you also cut and paste the text of the book into your comment? It'd make it easier for us cheapskates. Thanks!

I'm disappointed that they didn't make the zigzag on the cover hand-drawn in Schulz's distinctive line instead of so cleanly graphic. It looks like chomping teeth and I'm afraid to buy it.

Dream Spoiler Alert

Hope this doesn't ruin things for anybody.

P J Piehole's

While looking through some old drawings the other day, I was shocked and embarrassed to find that I'd used the same joke twice in cartoons about a year and a half apart. The reference in the cartoon above to P J PIehole's being closed because of obscenities in the Find-a-Word Puzzle was repeated a month or two ago, though not word for word.

I'm especially shocked that the management at Piehole's hadn't cracked down on this problem. And thank heavens it didn't happen in a comic strip; using the same jokes over and over in a comic strip could end a cartoonist's career pretty dang fast.

Guy Mitt Smiley Romney

So I have to draw Mitt Romney for the New Yorker and I find he's tougher to draw than you might think. They liked the sketch I sent them just fine, but Guy Smiley is stuck in my head and it's making it hard to draw Romney not as a Muppet.



As far as I know, Romney Muppetness was first pointed out on the Daily Show a few weeks back, but it may be something everyone was already aware of but me.

surPRISE!

Thanks to all those who squatted in the darkness of Nick Galifianakis's living room Saturday night waiting for me. The look of shock still hasn't left my face and may be permanent. Thanks a lot. Really.

Chat 'n Chew

So that went pretty well, though the audience seemed dismayed that I appeared to be 3-dimensional. More TK.

Hurry!

You haven't yet, Little Neuro, but time's running out! Those in foreign lands had better leave soon if they want to make it! Tonight at 7:30 at the Writers' Center in Bethesda. Type writers.org into your window up top for more information, news, traffic and weather.

Did I mention there'll be snacks? Well, there will.

Deadline Disaster Fun-Time Literary Limerick

So my big idea for the Almanack cartoon that's due today fell apart into little pieces and I had to think of something else. Which seems to've turned out OK so far, though it could head south any minute.

Seems like a good time for a Literary Limerick!


Though donnish and quite dignified,
Tom Eliot once versified,
On the greenish-tiled wall
Of a men's restroom stall,
He signed it and then flushed with pride.

Poor Almanack for October 7th

Can you find THIS blog in that mass of tiny dots? Hint- it's 23,476th from the bottom right. Can you find YOUR blog? Other hint- it's between mine and the banjo smashers.

I Need This

A Ceramic Phrenology Inkwell, phrenological areas marked in black, mid 19th century, English, excellent condition. Only 536 English pounds (chicken feed in US$). C'mon, all I got for my birthday was a lousy storm door. And Christmas is coming. Halloween, too.

Phooey on the #*@%ing the Deadlines!

I've still got time to put this up (which I swiped from Jim Borgman, who kindly put it up. When I learn how the scanner works I'll return the favor).

The Post runs a column listing restaurants closed because of health code violations, and I sometimes do one of my own. Because, well, because restaurants are inherently funny, and those closed because of health code violations are funnier still! Until you order the fish ceviche.

Crushing Deadlines of Doom

It's that time of the week again again. And I'd so hoped to share my technique for inadvertantly giving yourself a jailhouse tattoo using only a dip pen, some ink and a moment's clumsiness. Maybe later, but till then please enjoy a drawing of Petey looking beleaguered, as always.

Real Estate

This illustrated a Wash Post Magazine story by the genius polymath Joel Achenbach. Briefly, he hit a bunch of open houses on a Sunday, houses for sale in the DC area, each one of varying price and history. And wrote a great piece on what he saw. The former Nixon house is real, as is the asking price. Kind of a cool looking house, in a morbid, slightly creepy way.

My neighborhood is a mix of old houses from the 30s, 40s & 50s and new monstrosities squatting on land previousley occupied by old houses from the 30s, 40s & 50s. Our house is one of the few on the block that hasn't be at least added on to, and boy does it need adding on to. And a new roof, too. For my birthday I'm getting a storm door on the front entrance, so that's taken care of.

Old Cartoon I Still Like

Here's a cartoon that's about 8 years old that I still like. (I tried to post it earlier; if you're getting a blank space let me know, unless you really prefer the blank space, in which case keep it to yourself. Image swiped from Amazon's Look Inside the Book feature despite their evil spells). I might do a cartoon on Edward Hopper this week as there's a show of his stuff downtown that I have yet to see, and this one sprang to mind as inspiration. Or I could just cross out "Norman Rockwell" and write in "Edward Hopper" and hope no one notices. Don't tell.

Embarrassing Technical Difficulty

Apologies for the blank space that appeared instead of a cartoon in a previous and now-deleted post. The image was swiped off of the Look Inside feature at Amazon, and they've got spells protecting their pages that couldn't be broken. Something better will be posted directly, with an actual image.

Till then please enjoy this lo-res grumpy Alice, our go-to girl for embarrassing technical difficulties.

Late Night Nib Talk: My Favorite Nib

Ooh, lookit that baby! The Hunt #101 Imperial nib, excellent for penmanship, copperplate calligraphy, ornamental work and funny cartoons. With its dual shoulder slits, fleur de lys vent hole, compass, and this thing in the stock that tells time, it's a cartoonist's best friend. Unless, of course, the tip is a little bit askew or there's something wrong with the tines, or it's got a little schmutz in the main slit, in which case it's an evil, twisted, deceitful little monster who'll screw up every drawing it puts its point to, dribble ink down the sheet and break your heart. And you know what the difference between a good nib and a bad one is? It's microscopic! You can't see it! But you'll know it the instant you put the nib to paper. And don't get me started on brushes.

Next on Late Night Nib Talk: how to give yourself an inadvertant jailhouse tattoo.

The Big L