Today's Cul de Sac, October 11 2010

OK, who doesn't want to see comics about Italian Renaissance clowns? Nothing'll perk up a cartoon like commedia dell'arte! I'm thinking I've pretty much cornered the obscure reference niche, scaly mammal/archaic theater division, in newspaper comic strips.

Today's Cul de Sac, September 29 2010

This whole week is really an exercise in drawing Dill in the same pose (or almost the same pose; he is crawling pretty vigorously). You'll note Dill's small flash of semi-sarcasm in the last panel, likely brought on by the momentary insight into social behavior that following a bug for three days can inspire.

Today's Cul de Sac, September 28 2010

Ah, the tension builds.

A note: for those of you hoping Dill's bug turns out to be a bed bug or stink bug, all I can say is Probably Not. We don't deal in possibly controversial subjects torn from today's headlines, thank you very much. We'll leave that to Hi & Lois. Actually, the sudden newsworthiness of bugs hadn't struck me until I read this strip today and I kicked myself for not jumping on that whole bed and/or stink bug bandwagon, just as a public service of course.

Today's Cul de Sac, September 23 2010 and Yesterday's Cul de Sac, September 22 2010

These two strips belong together so I thought I'd post them together, and also I didn't get around to posting yesterday. The whole point of Big Shirley is to be large and implacably unthreatening. She's hard to draw too, as she keeps turning into a cat or a pig or a hedgehog if I get too enthusiastic with the pen. 

And please note that I drew her twice; no photoshopping a panel in from a previous strip. That's something I'd never do unless it was really, really convenient. Although I did have trouble drawing that first Big Shirley. I put her in deep shade and the whole panel became an amorphous blob of crosshatching. 

The lesson here is: next time Grandma gets a canary.

Today's Cul de Sac, September 21 2010

I kept monkeying with this trying to make it funnier. The dialog got shifted from panel to panel and simplified so that it would read as a joke-like artifact, if not an actual joke. That's one problem with doing a strip where the actual jokes are hard to identify; humor is so ineffable that I don't know when it's been reached and I keep monkeying with it. I do know that mayonnaise is funny, so a lot of it's even funnier (Titanic Mayonnaise- Haw!). And I know that "ineffable" sounds like a borderline expletive, so I'll try to slip it into a future strip with Ernesto in it.

Since that paragraph was thin and unproductive, here's an except from an upcoming Cul de Sac, where I sell out with some product placement.

Today's Actual Cul de Sac September 19 2010

At last, a post that's about a strip that's actually the strip in today's newspaper (where available)! And that's the problem; I hadn't realized when I drew this (at a table at the beach) that it would run on the annually tiresome Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrrrgh! So it's an unintentional tie-in, which throws the randomness of Dill's dream a little off. I just meant to make it silly and fun to draw, the latter of special importance because I didn't have my lightbox crutch to lean on. Really,  you get so used to using a particular set of tools that it's almost paralyzing when you have to rough it a little bit. 

Dill's dreams have been featured a few times, usually in a Sunday strip where there's more elbow room for his unconscious.  Here's one from a year or so ago, and it's more of a nightmare.

Coming up- we try to bring ourselves up-to-date with the daily strips.

Today's Cul de Sac, No, Sorry! This One's from September 12 2010

Somebody has some catching up to do, and as usual it's me. But seriously, what more need be said about Ernesto? Except that he may possibly exist in a parallel dimension that he may some day rule, and not exactly as a  philosopher king. Ernesto Lacuna is the closest I've come to one of those Marvel multiverse things that allows an author to devise plots at will, no matter how silly or untethered, without consequence. From what I've read about Stephen Hawking's new book on the way the universe basically works, this is the way the universe works, so anything goes.

Next- all those missed days from last week. But not consecutively because I'm not into that whole linear thing any more.

Another Crummy Commercial

Those nice people at SPX have kindly offered a nomadic band of cartoonists, including me, the use of a table to sign things, sell things, and sit at when our feet get tired. Below are the times when I get my turn, subject to change.

Saturday 3:30PM-5:30PM
Sunday 12:30PM - 1:30 PM
Sunday 4PM-5:30PM

I'll have books, T-shirts and original art available, and a bag of greasy carry-out food tucked surreptitiously under the table. So please come on by! Bring your tired feet and get our special 2% tired feet discount!