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.
5 comments:
Nice cover. You're obviously stealing this idea from the character in my comic strip who picks his teeth with his shoelaces ... but I'm sure you, your wife and daughter have all gotten your stories straight and rehearsed what to say if the matter goes to court, so I guess I'll let it slide this time. Besides, I'm working on a new storyline involving a lovably pretentious classroom gerbil that I think will net me millions in licensing deals, so it's not like I'm gonna need the money.
Now, now, we all know there are only five ideas in the world and four of them are copyrighted by Disney.
Anyway, I stole the classroom guinea pig from one of the Oz books that featured a wogglebug who livedi in the corner of a classroom and became over-educated. But wogglebugs are imaginary so the whole idea's patently ridiculous.
Yes, well, the idea for my shoelace-tooth-picking character was derived from a passage from Proust's A REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST. Anyone with a deep understanding of that work will no doubt recall the passage and appreciate the sophisticated wit behind what I've done.
Yeah? Well I got the hair teeth-flossing from the Bible. It's in the Old Testament under the part about Personal Hygiene Dos and Don'ts. That's where all the best funny ideas come from.
I've always wondered if Alice draws on stuff from your kids - there's an authenticity to her that's always lead me to think so. It must be fun to have a well and good reason to encourage their idiosyncrasies.
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