Today's Cul de Sac from Yesterday, October 17 2010

I might be remembering this wrong, but Lynda Barry (America's National Treasure and, in Ernie Pook's Comeek, the cartoonist who most understands childhood) said something once about the dreamy mood kids get into when sitting at the breakfast table reading the back of a cereal box. Why some forward looking cereal manufacturer hasn't published a great comic artist on their box I'll never know, except that there aren't any forward looking cereal manufacturers.

Today's Cul de Sac, October 12 2010

They've wished on the first leaf of Fall before, with similarly disappointing results. I'll bet it happens again too, when I'm stuck for a new idea. The first robin of Spring?

Today's Cul de Sac, October 10 2010

This Sunday was done while I was in the thick of doing some Grandma dailies last month, so I was in a kind of Grandma mood. My neighborhood has sections like this, where some grandma-sized houses have been replaced by mini-mansions, sometimes at a rate of 1 to 3. And sometimes leaving behind a lone grandma house nestled in like a squirrel among elephants. 

When I was a kid one of my favorite picture books was about a grandma whose small house stood in the path of a planned superhighway. What I remember of it most vividly was a flock of construction machinery looming over her tiny house, poised to superhighwayize the place. It had a happy ending of course; the highway bifurcated to avoid her house and the last picture was of her waving to the endless clog of traffic like it was a friendly neighbor. I don't remember the name of the book and I've forgotten the vagaries of the plot, but that last bit I'm pretty sure is accurate. I do remember that the part of the book that most appealed to me then was the road-building machinery. I used to think that stuff was great and I still do, and I'll rubberneck like an idiot at big yellow heavy contraptions that flatten out roads and hoist bridge pieces into place. Everybody else in the car might roll their eyes, but get your fun wherever you can find it I always say.

Today's Cul de Sac, October 9 2010

Thanks to this blog being on Pacific time I can still call this "Today's" Cul de Sac. I've got nothing to say, except to point out what a marvel of research and scholarship this strip is. It presents facts available nowhere else, search as hard as you will. If you need a Wikipedia citation look no further.

And here's the link to SavePangolins.Org in handy clickable form.

Today's Cul de Sac, October 8 2010

That's a nod toward Batman/Bruce Wayne there in that second panel. If circumstances had been a little different Michael Keaton might have one day donned the pangolin costume. 

Today's Cul de Sac, October 7 2010

What can I say? This one wrote itself. Though Petey only wore a box on his head once, in Halloween 2008. 

Today's Cul de Sac, October 6 2010

I really should find some explanation for Sofie, but I haven't thought of one yet. Though I am guessing she's a part-time student at Blisshaven Preschool, as that would explain her infrequent attendance. When I started doing the strip I assumed everything needed to be thought through and justified. But nope, most of it's just slapped together, with hopes that the logic behind it will emerge with time. I'd hate to call it faith-based, but there ya go.

Meanwhile, look at the funny face Beni's making!

Today's Cul de Sac, October 5 2010

Here's a cheap and easy way to draw a comic strip: use an old strip and slightly change the words so the joke part seems different! Keep this under your hat, because if other cartoonists find out about it or the syndicate learns of this, well, things could get ugly fast.

The above strip is semi-identical to one that ran on October 10, 2009, which is less than a year ago, so the gag isn't even cold in the grave yet and here I am exhuming it for another moldy run-through.

Really what happened was kind of funny- Haha, I laugh just typing about it! I liked that old strip and I wanted to draw it again, or at least the second panel of it, so I justified it by making it a flashback. Last year at this time I was having some issues with drawing, meaning in this case that the strip was more assembled than drawn, a photoshop Frankenstein's monster patched together of bits and pieces of drawing and lettering. So I wanted to try it again in hopes of getting it right this time. Though, I dunno, the crosshatching on the cannon is a little clumsy both times, so any improvement is pretty minimal. But I loved putting Dill in the cannon and I might do it again before another year's gone by. Maybe I can get a Christmas strip out of it.

Today's Cul de Sac, October 4 2010

Ah, a cheap yet somewhat satisfying exploding lunch bag joke. Just what the readership of the Scranton PA Times-Tribune need as an introduction to this laff-filled comic strip, making its bow in the spot left empty by Cathy's graceful exit.

today's Cul de Sac, October 3 2010

Petey hasn't tried to chew his arm off in way too long. Somebody's got to pick up the slack.

Once again things end up in Petey's room. I must be getting lazy. The real lazy part of this is that I did one rough for the five sofa panels and just varied the poses. Which is also the part of the strip I'm happiest with, the small gestures, body language and minimalist acting that gives intensity to Alice's building frustration. And makes it funnier, I hope. The dialog is pretty much a transcription of a conversation I have about three times a week, and with about as much resolution.

Today's Cul de Sac, October 2 2010

And here's the wrap up to the great bug excursion. Petey's room is a good place to end things, I don't know if it's the dead-end quality of Petey's preferred lifestyle or that Petey just presents a good sounding board for Alice's rants. It's probably just that I like to draw Petey in his black shirt on that plaid bedspread. And I like to letter Petey's sardonic advice that always goes unheard.

Today's Cul de Sac, October 1 2010

Uh huh, a shaggy bug crossing the street story. 

More TK. And if you have trouble reading this please let me know

Today's Cul de Sac, September 30 2010

I hope everyone is braced for this to devolve into a shaggy bug story, because that possibility is sure looming large. More TK.

Today's Cul de Sac, September 27 2010

Thus we begin an epic chase that will lead to a conclusion so staggering you'll wonder how your threshold for amazement got so low.

Today's Cul de Sac, September 26 2010

This is a subject I've been meaning to address for some time- the grocery store gumball machine array. Again, I thought it'd be fun to draw the ranks of gumball machines (and I wish I'd've overdone it a little more in the second panel) but also because those things can loom large in a child's mind. I remember trips to the grocery store when I was a kid where all the grocery shopping was just an irritating prelude to the moment when I got to put a nickel or a dime in a gumball machine. Though not really a gumball machine, as I was more often after some plastic novelty army man or gewgaw. And, of course, I was usually disappointed. 

Today's Cul de Sac, September 25 2010 and Yesterday's Cul de Sac, September 24 2010

Minivans are not as fun to draw as cars. On various questionnaires I've seen, when cartoonists are asked what they most dislike to draw, the answer is often "cars", which I have to disagree with; I kind of enjoy drawing them up to a point. But minivans are too bland and amorphous in shape, just kind of rounded rhomboids with wheels. (The other subjects often cited as no fun to draw are "crowds", "machinery" and "horses' back legs" and I'll agree with all of those.)

On the other hand, it'd be fun to draw the strip in a Petey's Diorama style, and I might give that a shot. What would an autobio comic from Petey look like anyway?

A poster on GoComics asked where Petey gets all the shoeboxes for his dioramas. Strangely enough I had a small subplot about Grandma unloading a pile of shoeboxes on Mrs. Otterloop, enough to fill the back of the van, but I dropped it. Maybe I shouldn't've as it made for a nice bit of elaboration. God knows where Grandma got all the boxes; from a lifetime of buying shoes, I guess. And of course, she's a hoarder.

Today's Cul de Sac, September 20 2010

As I was saying, Grandma is pretty much Alice all grown up and then some. Below is her first appearance, in a Post Magazine Cul de Sac from November 20, 2005, exactly four years and ten months ago. Anyone who's read the strip around Thanksgiving will recognize the various situations set forth as I've cannibalized them enough times to feed a couple dozen cannibals, if they ate comic strip gags. Wait, what?

I'll admit that Grandma is physically based on my own Grandma, though mine was much more lovable and fond of staying up all night reading, playing with her two large dogs and at least once making a large tray of deviled eggs. Which she did not then throw at traffic.

Today's Cul de Sac, From September 7 To 11, 2010

Here's a quick tour of Your Week Before Last in Cul de Sac:

The usual complement of puppet theater puppets seems fairly standardized. You get your king, queen, wizard, maybe a lion or witch or a clown. Which seems kind of limiting to the modern youth of today.

Another cheap jibe at clowns, who exist only to make us happy and not to give us the creeps.

I have, of course, extensive plans for Mr. Headfinger in future Cul de Sacs, most of them rather gruesome.

This is the Friday strip, which is by the vague rules governing daily comic strip arcs the point at which the plot reaches its peak of tension, assuming that nobody reads newspapers on Saturday. 

Which is a shame, as no one got to see this act of fickleness and betrayal. But, hey! Pangolins! All right!

Today's Cul de Sac, September 6 2010

The whole point of this was to draw something big and looming and monumental, which is hard to do in a puny little comic strip. And of course, medieval war machines are always fun to draw, even for us lapsed Quakers. Here's another looming war machine, from a Washington Post Book World illo for a book about Hans Blix, circa 2004.

Today's Cul de Sac, September 5 2010

Finally, we're up to date. This was fun to do- the silly big box store, the overblown copywriting and such, but I wish I'd staged the final action differently. It might've worked better if Alice had stepped onto the napmat and plunged immediately up to her neck in it, and in the final panel Mom had addressed Alice (whose head was only visible), saying something like, "Let's keep looking, this napmat is too fancy." No big deal, except this is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. It's a form of George Lucas syndrome.

Oh well. The whole thread count joke was stolen from an old Poor Almanack, this one a parody of Christmas catalogs. I append the whole cartoon below, so you'll get the full effect and so I can make this post longer with minimum effort.