Last Minute Bits

I'll be away till Monday night, so youall have fun, and please leave a joke, riddle or amusing anecdote in the comments section. Then if you still need entertainment go visit one of the nice links I've arranged for you in the right hand column. And if you feel you need to preorder a Cul de Sac book, please avail yourself of the link also to your right. Those who do will note an interesting addition to the Editorial Review section of the Amazon page; the book's complete foreword by Mr. Bill Watterson. Made me blush so hard I got a nosebleed.

And while I'm away check in at Heroescon just to see if any fresh embarrassing photos show up.

Hello, Charlotte!

This is where I'll be for the next four or five days, at the Westin Hotel in Charlotte NC. Some cool looking building, huh? I understand it unfolds into a giant robot if you push the big red button on the room phone.

I'll be down there attending Heroescon , accompanied by Mike Rhode of
ComicsDC . Okay, I'm more acompanying him, as we're taking his car, and he'll probably do most of the driving. So it's a road trip! I'll let you know how it goes and there'll be photos to show too, because we'll take his camera.

I haven't been down to Charlotte in almost 25 years, though my Mom was born there and I had a number of relatives around town, and we'd visit once a year. My Mom even wrote a book, The Suitcases , about her childhood there and in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. I think Charlotte may have changed some since then.

Late Night Nib Talk: My Favorite Nib, a Repeat

The following is a repeat from October 8th, coincidentally my birthday. I offer it again because first, it deals with important issues that I as a cartoonist face daily; second, because when you google-image search "Hunt Imperial nib" this post shows up first; and third, because I'm going outta town on Thursday and I'm scrambling and this is all I got. But I've updated it some with useful information.


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.

Update: how to give yourself an inadvertant jailhouse tattoo. Here's my method. I draw something in pen & ink and screw it up somehow, and this makes me pointlessly mad. So I take the still ink-loaded nib pen in my right, or drawing, hand, and jam it into the papere towel I keep in my left, or non-drawing, hand. And I do it a little too hard, so that the still ink-loaded nib goes a good quarter inch into my left palm. This leaves a small permanent mark, which could be called an idiot's stigmata. I got mine about 17 years ago and it's still vivid, and whenever there's a lull in the conversation I'll show it off. I know at least two other cartoonists/illustrators who have something similar. Which only proves that cartoonist/illustrators are likely to get pointlessly mad at inanimate objects when they screw up a drawing.

And per a previous comment; I feel that "nib" is short for something, like "nibben" or "nibboleth". Discuss among yourselves. Winner as always will have his/her comment published in a popular blog of my choosing.

First Field Trip Part 5; The Picture With the Shark In It

Despite the fact that the National Gallery has the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in America, the dish-faced Ginevra de'Benci, as well as slew of wonderful Degas (my favorite artist by far), Vermeers (3 1/2, including the perfect Red Hat) and caricature busts by Daumier (the whole Legislative Belly); despite all that, the National Gallery painting that first made an impression on me is the one with the shark in it. It's called Watson and the Shark and it's by John Singleton Copley and it scares the pants off every kid who sees it, in an enjoyable kind of way. Brooke Watson, here depicted getting his foot chewed off, later became a wealthy London merchant and eventually Lord Mayor of London, and he bragged about his shark misadventure incessantly, even featuring a disembodied foot on his coat of arms. His political opponents circulated a snarky rhyme about how much he would've been improved if the shark had gotten his head instead. He sounds insufferable. But he commissioned this painting, beloved by schoolchildren all over DC.

I also remember going to the National Gallery back in the early 60s, when the Mona Lisa came to town. My mom and I stood in line forever, eventually entering a long room hung with deep red velvet curtains, and on the far wall there she was, large as life and twice as natural. I'd remember it even more vividly if Leonardo had somehow worked a shark into his composition.

UPDATE: In an almost unbelievable bit of harmonic convergence, my wife has this drawing of Brooke Watson on the computer desktop. She's doing an Art Ace class today at the elementary school, where a parent volunteer comes in and talks about an artist or arwork and the class does a little project based on it. And today by golly she's doing Watson and the Shark. I didn't know about this till after I'd started posting this series. I see the Hand of Fate in this; or maybe the Foot.

Father's Day

Yep, there ya go.

Final Olberman

Here's the final color Keith Olberman that appears in the New Yorker this week. It's the third sketch put on a lightbox and transferred to Arches 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper, stretched on a board (that's the fun part because I get to dunk it in the kitchen sink) and watercolored (but not over-watercolored). I think it came out fine, though the microphone doesn't stand out enough from his stripey shirt. But if you want to see somebody who knows how to do this more deftly and with more interesting color, go look up John Cuneo and Barry Blitt.
And please rush out now and buy a copy of the New Yorker, and one for your father, too.

First Field Trip Part 4; Grate Artworks of Western Civilization

Finally, we get to some Art. I remember going down to the Nat Gal with a little dinky sketchbook and drawing the vent. Drawing in public always makes me antsy for some no-good reason. After this ran in the Post Mag I got a note from a woman who'd been at docent at the Gallery, saying how little kids always noticed the fancy vents and would always stick their hands in them. I know I did when I went down there on field trips as a kid. It's one of the things you do growing up in the Capitol of the Free World.

First Field Trip Part 3; Simultaneously

Here's the third bit, from exactly four years ago yesterday. Notice how young and not-well-drawn everybody looks. Note for those not from DC, there's a merry-go-round on the Mall, right outside the Arts & Industies Building, down from the Smithsonian Castle.

The Reubens, by One Who Saw It (Them)

Here's a lovely piece of writing by Shaenon K. Garrity, who was there.
Thanks to Mike Lynch, who pointed this out first.

First Field Trip Part 2: the Gathering Storm

I'm sure there are laws against filling a minivan with preschoolers and letting their teacher drive them, but I chose to ignore them because I'm such a rebel. As Here Today Gone Tomorrow noted in a previous comment, here we witness the beginnings of Miss Bliss's mental breakdown, the very sowing of the seeds of madness. But it probably started much earlier, as it was once mentioned that Petey attended Blisshaven Preschool too.

Countdown

This is what I was working on last night, a caricature of Keith Oberman for the New Yorker. In the first he's yelling out of his fourth floor Rockefeller Center office (shades of "Network") and in the second he's posing like Edward R. Murrow with a giant microphone. In the end we combined the two sketches and revved up Olberman's pose into something more manic. Then I did a watercolor final, emailed it and went to bed, before dawn even.

Both of these are fast ink sketches on semi-translucent paper, so I can slipsheet them and rework them by semi-tracing. It's my favorite way to work, fast and dirty, and I wish I could always work like this.

First Field Trip

This was the beginning of the first field trip I sent the Blisshaven class on, back in '04. I'll post the next four or five strips in the series over the next few days. It was also the first multi-part story, or "story arc" as those in the know call it, though it pretty much led nowhere. Except to the National Gallery, where the floors are slippery.

The Beach Again

Long as everyone is making beach plans, here's a bit from the Otterloop's first trip to the beach, in '04. I grew up going to the Maryland beaches Rehobeth, Cape May & Bethany Beach, with side trips to Ocean City for some more raucous fun. Actually, way back in the '60s we'd go to Atlantic City, when it was an elegant place with older hotels and the boardwalk had little trams full of old ladies in hats and white gloves. That's about my speed these days, without the white gloves.

But here the Otterloops are visiting Geek's Neck, which seems to be like Ocean City with the volume turned down. I think the Big Fry place is a good idea; if there were a franchise available I'd buy one.

Contractor-Dictator

This illustrated a piece in the Post Magazine last year about a couple who hired a contractor to work on their house. The contractor they hired was a dead-ringer for Joseph Stalin, with an attitude to match. None of the contractors I've seen in our neighborhood have resembled world-class dictators, though one working down the street could pass for Huey Long. And we once hired a plumber who looked so much like Mickey Dolenz that I almost asked him to sing I'm a Believer just to see if it was really him, working under a pseudonym.

Beach Time!

This is from last summer. We've got a beach house lined up in Duck, NC, on the Outer Banks. Usually we have four to six people, but this year it'll be a dozen or more, so we're getting one of those large, Gormenghast-size houses, with all the bedrooms, bells & whistles. Nothing too overbearing or decadent, but it does have a swimming pool. I can't do the beach stuff like I used to, having overdone it some in my youth I'm advised to avoid all that direct sunlight that you often find outdooors. But I like the view, and the food, and the late night games of Spoons, Russian Rummy, Hearts, etc. And finding what humidity-bloated paperback best-sellers come stocked with the house. And what unusual items the kitchen drawer holds, and the annual search for which switch controls the ceiling fan, and renting bikes with my daughters, and finding revolting yet interesting items that've washed up on the beach, and the late-night beach strolls, which are always enlivened by trying to avoid all those tiny, scurrying ghost crabs, and seeing the moon rise. It's all good.

Like I said, this is from last June, when the Almanack celebrated its tenth anniversary. So here we are at the eleventh. I'm not sure what the correct gift is for an Eleventh Anniversary, but I think it's gas. Please leave your gifts of a gallon of gas in the driveway, betweeb the van, the station wagon that doesn't work and the garage. Thank you.

Vines!

This is all true! At least, the part about carbon dioxide pumping up vines. If you doubt it, swing by my yard some time. Bring a scythe.

A Note to the Graduates

I've never been to a college graduation, but I've been to lots off high school graduation. Well, six maybe. And I can't remember a word from any of the speeches.

This Week's Almanack, Plus an Old One

Here's today's. It's two weeks till summer and the DC area is already under a heat advisory, so I rushed this into print.


And here's one from I think last year. I only vaguely remembered it and didn't find it till after I'd already done the one for today. I can't say the new one's any improvement over the older one. But nothing else is getting any better, so why should I? Plus, it's too hot to work, even if you're working in a basement studio where the temperature never climbs above 70 degrees.

Reminder

HeroesCon is only two weeks away, so I'm confident youall have made your travel arrangements for the trip to Charlotte NC. It's three days jam-packed full to the brim with comics fun, and you'll kick youself to the curb if you miss it! That may be their official slogan.

And on Sunday afternoon all the fun comes to a peak when you get this-

SPOTLIGHT ON RICHARD THOMPSON | Room 219
The first great newspaper comic strip of the 21st Century has arrived, and like Mutts and Calvin & Hobbes before it, Richard Thompson's Cul De Sac has spent its first several months in syndication operating just underneath the pop-cult radar, adding papers steadily, readying to break out into the Next Big Thing. Join Tom Spurgeon for a wide-ranging discussion about art, caricature, and the Otterloop Family with one of the best cartoonists in North America, bar none. It's the panel you'll get to brag about attending in the years ahead, after Thompson conquers the comics world.

Frankly, it sounds like the manifesto of a madman to me and I'll be sitting in the back of the room, near an exit, where it's safe.

Cartoon Appreciation Week

For Cartoon Appreciation Week I'd like to offer a real treat; an Arnold Roth drawing I'll bet youall have never seen. It's from a magazine called Ameryka that was produced by (I think) the USIA during the cold war as a way to spread American culture around in Poland, then behind the Iron Curtain. And this issue was dedicated to American literature, so here's a cartoon map of American literature, drawn by Mr. Arnold Roth himself. Isn't it just a delight to study? To me his work always seems to make a noise, his lines hitting the page like notes in the air, sounding like something free & jazzy, which is fitting as Roth is a jazz saxophonist. And it's late and I'm prone to synesthesia. But look at those skewed New York buildings, and all those undulating, everysized figures, all fitted together as neatly as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle

How many great moments in American literature can you identify? The winner will get his or her name mentioned in the exclusive comments section of one of our luxuriously appointed blog posts. Probably this very one.

The Deadline Cow

Instead of posting that awful deadline clown again, here's a cow. It's a deadKINE, if you're up for a crummy pun, and who isn't on a Wednesday?

This was another Why Things Are illo, and if I recall it ran in tandem with a drawing called something like Why are flies so cute?, the joke being that I had comically mixed up babies and barn flies, those being the subjects for that week. I'm still waiting for the laughter to start on that one. But that's the best cow I've ever drawn, and I've been trying to draw cows for over forty years.

Wha' Happen?

This is today's Almanack, yet another one that somehow devolved into a finger puppet. My first idea was to do an ilustrated version of McClellan's book, each illustrated incident being done in a different style. Dr. Seuss for McClellan, Edward Gorey for Dick Cheney and Don Martin for G.W.Bush. But it sounded better than it looked, and I couldn't get my hands on enough actual bits from the book to work with. Hence, this


And this was an Almanack from about two years ago, showing how prescient I was in predicting McClellan would write a book, though I was all wrong on the book itself. I was also wrong in spelling "McClellan". Fixing this mistake, I clearly recall, made Washington Post's Ace Comics Editor Suzanne Tobin late for dinner. And notice how very much this drawing of McLellan resembles the more recent drawing of McClellan. It's almost eerie.

Why Things Were

Here are some old things to share while I compile my massive & exhaustive report on My Visit to New Orleans. Back in the early '90s ace Wash Post reporter/Renaissance Man Joel Achenbach wrote a weekly column called Why Things Are. He'd been doing it for the Miami Herald, and when he came DC he kept it going. The deal was, he'd answer any question, especially if it was interesting, but the question had to be a Why question. Like, Why do you see stars when you rub your eyes, Why are there no green cars, Why are aliens always bald, Why don't we slosh around more since we're mostly made of water? The only non-Why question I remember him answering was What does the inside of your nose smell like, and I think that was adroitly rephrased into a Why question.

And my job was, I got to illustrate Joel's column. It was a dream job; they never cared what I did, so long as it was spelled right and wasn't salacious, and the subject matter was so far-ranging and the column's tone was so sprightly that the only work was in keeping up with Joel. Gene Weingarten edited the column, and it was after working with him on Why Things Are that he suggested I try a weekly cartoon.

These are some old Why illustrations I found in a drawer yesterday while looking for an old drawingof Scott McClellan.


Why didn't the Black Death kill everybody off?


Why does everybody drive so fast?


Why are Beavis & Butthead funny?


Why does food spoil? Or something like that, all the other ones had a note on it except this one. It might've been Why does the Seven Eleven sell those revolting hot dogs? For which there is no answer.

Strangled by Deadlines AGAIN

I've looked like this since getting back from New Orleans. My brother says time is measured differently in N.O., so maybe it's some kind of time-travel-continuum loss and when I returned to the real world I lost more than the five days I spent there. More later. But no real photos of the Reubens; I forgot to take a camera, then bought a disposable camera, then most of the time forgot about it, too. This is why I draw I guess, though I didn't draw much of anything while I was there either.

Home Again

Here I am at the Reubens in New Orleans. That's me, with a beer (just like always, ha ha!) in between Mark Tattuli and Mike Mikula at Broussard's Restaurant on Sunday night. And yes, that's about as clear as things were this weekend. Ha ha! No shiny divisional award plaque for me, but lots of happy, blurry memories.

More to come when I can remember it.

(photo courtesy of Tom Richmond, who doesn't know about this)

Exciting Chat Online Thing

On Friday at 1 pm several cartoonists attending the NCD deal will have a live online chat courtesy of the Washington Post, and I'll be one of them. Please, no hard questions or recipe requests.

See You Next Week

I'll be out of town till next Tuesday (see previous post). See you all then, and I'll have vacation photos to share! Oh boy!

Till then, please leave a funny joke, riddle or anecdote in the comments.

This Weekend

This coming weekend is the National Cartoonists Society's annual Reuben Award Convention Thing, and guess who gets to go? Well, lots of people, but one of them is me. It's in New Orleans this time, at the Ritz Carlton in the French Quarter no less (see photo above). I've never been to New Orleans, so I'm really looking forward to it. To get there I'll board the Crescent Express, an Amtrak train that takes about 26 hours to reach the City That Care Forgot (so called by Mark Twain). I'm taking a book, or maybe a whole bookcase.

I'm attending this year's Reubens because I'm up for an award. Every year the NCS bestows a Reuben Award, named after Rube Goldberg, on the Cartoonist of the Year. I'm not up for that, I'm up for one of the division awards, the division being "Newspaper Strips". Here's the full list of divisions and nominees, and here's the list of those up for Cartoonist of the Year. I'm up against Paul Gilligan of Pooch Cafe and Jim Meddick of Monty, both strips I like a lot. It'll be an interesting and a fun trip, even for a stick-in-the-mud antisocial guy like me who never leaves the house much except by astral projection.


Above is a photo of an actual Reuben Award, as designed by Rube Goldberg (it looks like it comes with a set of dinner plates, too). Originally it was to be a lamp, but it was converted into a trophy. Kind of a pity because it'd be a great lamp, especially if there was one on either side of a very ugly sofa.

So I won't have much to say here for a while, though a bit later I'll add the story of the only other time I went to a Reubens thing, back in '96, and how my rental tuxedo pants didn't fit.


Above is a photo I found on Google Images under "Crescent Express", which worries me. I don't think I can sit on that thing for 26 hours.

Ice Cream Sunday

This is the original, slightly different, version of today's Cul de Sac. It's 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, 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.

Old & Outdated Poetry

Here are two poems from back around 1999. Neither of them has a reason to exist any more (in French that's raison d'etre), but I still like them, and what better place to put outdated poetry than a blog?

The Lit'rate Snob comes from when the Wash Post bundled all their Sunday color stuff in the same bag; it came separately, with the comics wrapped around the whole thing. Inside were the color ads, the TV section, the Magazine, and Book World. And every once in a while a letter to the editor would appear in the Post complaining about having to wade through all the other color stuff to get to Book World, like the letter writer couldn't bear to touch the comics on his or her way to the book reviews. So I drew this thing. See? It's hard-hitting material like this, and my willingness to go after issues that no one else will touch, that got me my Pulitzer.


This one comes from our misguided fear that when the year changed over to 2000 all our computers & electronics would be confused and everything would collapse. Ha ha! We were such dummies! But I knew better!


Hope you enjoyed them. Someday I'll post my 250 page epic graphic poem about the rescue of all those dentistry students in Granada.

Newt!

Newt Gingrich seems to be on the resurgence. I guess it's because the Republican Party is suddenly a great, yawning chasm and he's rushing in to fill it. There, that's my political insight for the month, or year even, and god knows it's probably wrong. I'm just waiting for the movie, when they put a white wig on Jack Black and tell him to ham it up.
I did this for USNews back when, around the time Speaker of the House Gingrich, the Home-Grown American Political Genius gathered his forces and shut down the government in a budget fight with Clinton. Or more likely it's from somewhat later, when Gingrich was out as Speaker and suddenly had some time on his hands to go camping and roast wienies.
Whatever, he's fun to draw, with that enormous, tetradodecahedral head and that teeny, obnoxious mouth.

Folksong Day! (was yesterday)

According to the alert historians at the Janus Museum , May 14th is National Folksong Day. Since it's never to late too celebrate anything, here are a few folksongs to learn and share with your friends, especially if you own a guitar and have no real talent for music.

I used to ride the Metro a lot, especially when I lived up in Gaithersburg at the end of the Red Line, which means that I used to doze off on the Metro a lot. I never missed my stop because of dozing, though I had a number of near-misses. One night after I exited the midnight train at the Shady Grove station (the last on the Red Line), I was walking along the platform, watching the now-empty train sliding past into the trainyard beyond, and in one car sat a very startled woman who looked sure that she'd be spending a long night on an orange Metro bench. I doubt she did; the conductors usually walked the length of the train before pulling into the yard and someone would find her at some point. But all I could think as she slid past was, glad that's not me. I thought about waving to her but didn't, and I'm glad, as it probably wouldn't have cheered her up any.

Ciao, Linus!

Linus is an esteemed Italian comics magazine that publishes Italian cartoonists & writers as well as international strips & features. This is the cover of the newest issue, in which Alice Otterloop makes her debutto. And, oh boy, my friend Max Olla of Balloons Blog has sent me some copies so I can enjoy the comic antics of the Otterloops in the language of Dante, especially if they go to Hell. I can't wait to see the magazine, though I'm warned that the Italian mail can be slow. If I start now, maybe I'll have mastered Italian by the time they get here and I'll understand all the jokes.

My Personal Commitment to Recycling, or, How to Tell a Joke Three and a Half Times

The above is last Sunday's Cul de Sac. This is an idea I had about 18 years ago. At the time, the Post's Sunday Outlook section was interested in maybe running a cartoon by me every week, and I came up with about a dozen roughs to show them what I had in mind.

This is the sketch of the sofa-man I did for the Outlook editor. The stuff I turned in was okay, nothing special, some better than others. For various reasons we never pursued the weekly cartoon deal. But I still liked this idea, so when I turned in some roughs to Gene Weingarten when we were talking abou maybe running a cartoon by me every week in Sunday Style, I resurrected this one.
Then, when the cartoon that eventually became Richard's Poor Almanac launched, I finally used the sofa-man sketch, but I stretched it out to two weeks. The cartoons below ran in mid-1997. For those not from the DC area, Wendy Rieger is a local newscaster who's cute.


Some day I'll use the sofa-man idea again, maybe in a graphic novel, something Kafka-esque. Instead of a big bug Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into an ugly sofa, and he gets left on the curb where he's picked up by a guy scrounging for furniture for a group house in College Park, Maryland. Hijinks ensue and he finds true love at the end with a fainting couch. See? This stuff writes itself.

More for the Moms Out There

Contrary to the previous post, Mother's Day was founded 100 years ago by Anna Jarvis, whose single-minded efforts to recognize the accomplishments of mothers led to the Day's recognition as a national holiday in 1914. Her single-minded efforts also led her to become embittered by the holiday's commercializatiton at the hands of greeting card companies, candy manufacturers, flower distributers, etc, to the point where she spent most of her life and family fortune fighting those who'd tainted her holiday. She never married or had children.
I learned all this last year when I illustrated a short piece on Jarvis in Smithsonian Magazine.

Mother's Day

This is all true, every word, I swear.

Join, or Die

According to Mike Rhode's ComicsDC blog , yesterday was the anniversary of the first appearance of Ben Franklin's 1754 "Join, or Die" cartoon in the Pennsylvania Gazette. This image is regarded as the first American political cartoon, and there's an interesting Wikipedia page about it.
For Franklin's 300th birthday a few years back, I drew this. Franklin has always seemed like the most approachable of the Founding Fathers; he's a foxy grandpa, witty courtier, twinkly-eyed roue', home-grown Leonardo, and philosopher who wouldn't be king all rolled into one gouty package. And a pretty good cartoonist. If only he'd pursued it, what couldn't he have accomplished?