Today's Cul de Sac

This Sunday strip started out as a daily, but a sudden late-developing seismic shift turned it into Sunday, BOOM, just like that. I think it turned out OK, what with the looming Alice, but I wish I'd had time to rejigger the panels some more so the third panel was the only large one. I don't do enough panel jiggering, or fool around enough with panel shape and size and order, mostly because I'm easily confused by things like that and I don't want to drag my readers down with me. Also because the jokes in CdS, such as they are, are scattered around the strip so haphazardly that if a reader gets lost amongst the panels he or she might circle for days looking for a punchline.


And here's a bonus mystery panel from the coming Tuesday's strip, just to make things more interesting.

Where I'm Going Tomorrow

My friend David Hagen, the only man I know who's met Hillary Clinton and Mr. T, has a show of his paintings up at the Century 21 Exhibit Space at 1711 Wilson Blvd in Arlington. And tomorrow there's a reception from 6 to 9! Will Hillary and Mr. T attend? Who cares? David'll be there and that's enough for me!

Cartherding

About five years ago I was in the parking lot of a big box store, probably Costco, and I saw the most sophisticated form of cartherding on the planet: guy driving a little electric tractor pushes a line of seeming hundreds of grocery carts gracefully across the lot. As he went by, warning lights flashing and horn beeping, everybody in the lot turned to watch, like he was an unexpected parade float. The fact that I remember this is further proof that the dial on my excitement meter only goes up to about five.


Not that Dill's goes any higher.

What I'm Reading

When I should be drawing. I'm poring over Stay Tooned, despite it's distasteful and off-putting cover (John! I'm kidding! aha-ha-ha!). It's been said that Stay Tooned is edited and published by John Read with the combined energy, charm and talent of ten men, plus two. And it's true! In this issue, I especially enjoyed meeting up again with RJ Matson, who I knew when he was living in DC in the 80s, reading Tom Richmond's excellent advice on drawing, and Benita Epstein's chicken cartoon, which makes me laugh every time I think of it. And I enjoyed everything else, once I got past that cover (and skipped pages 70 to 78; sheer boilerplate*).

I've reread the Stephan Pastis interview by Tom Heintjes six times at least. It's funny, passionate, misanthropic, inspiring and even thrilling. Makes me want to quit my job and be a syndicated cartoonist. And there are at least 800 articles I haven't even gotten to yet. I shouldn't waste so much time drawing so I can catch up on my reading. I'm still only on page 85 of Great Expectations, and I bought the book a year ago next week.

*John! I'm still kidding!

Dill

With the kind assistance of John Heltman, Dill now has his own Facebook page. Which is more than I ever expected for him (Dill, not John).

And Cul de Sac is on Facebook too! Who knew?

Also I'd forgotten this; Dill's last name is Wedekind, which seems like a really cheap joke. But I can't speak for his parents' sense of humor.

Spring Again

Here's one from '04, which as you can see is pretty similar to the one below.

Spring

Another lazy repost. I'll put up a slightly newer one later.

I Have No Explanation for This

But I'd guess "growth spurt". 

St. Patrick's Day SpecPatular, Again

I posted this last year too. Lazy, lazy. But wouldn't this make a fine novelty placemat for your Irish pub?

And here, I'll make this educational, if only tangentially.

In 1963, General Mills vice president John Holahan inventively discovered that Circus Peanuts shavings yielded a tasty enhancement to his breakfast cereal. General Mills formalized the innovation and created Lucky Charms, the first breakfast cereal to contain marshmallow bits (or "marbits"). -Wikipedia

Urquhart

"Otterloop" sounds like it's Dutch, probably, but "Urquhart" I know is Scottish. And it's as much fun to type as it is to say ("Urkut"). It's a mild reference to my favorite movie, Local Hero, and its multitasking hotelier Gordon Urquhart, and also to my own Scottish heritage. Thompson is a sept of the Clan MacTavish, but I've also got Malcolm (and Whitt and Church and Scattergood and other English names) in my familly.

It tickles me to suppose that there was some likelihood of a hyphenated name in the Otterloop household, until they said it out loud and thought better of it. But Madeline Urquhart Otterloop could console herself with the knowledge that one of the coolest castles in Scotland is Urquhart Castle. below, and that it sits on the banks of Loch Ness.

Rough Week

Here's an exclusive first look at a future week of Cul de Sacs in early rough form. Uh-oh, spoiler alert! You can see I'm firing on all eight cylinders with this sequence, and the three Sunday roughs on the right are obviously instant classics. Even the last one, which I can't decipher (I think it says "Farley undied").

Actually, no, I dropped the fourth and fifth strips, labeled "closet", because they're pretty obviously not funny, and substituted two called "cart". So I'm only firing on about six cylinders. But this is what my initial rough for a week looks like, when I tally up the loose ideas stirring around in my head to see if there are enough to fill a week, or even two. 

There's a kind of raw power and beauty to this stage of the process, I think, and it's lost when the extraneous elements are added. You know, the lettering, the drawing, the squared boxes, the point, all the things that editors deem as necessary for a comic strip and that clutter up my time. In the future this will all be so much easier, when they develop that Wacom tablet that you'll wear like a hat, with its instant imaging cranial interface that'll further undermine the existence of print, or paper, or pen & ink, or any kind of instrumentality at all. Then we'll be like the Krell in Forbidden Planet. If "Monsters from the Id" wasn't too close to the title of an existing comic strip I'd go ahead and copyright it right now.

Bugs

My studio is in the basement and I see these things sometimes. This time of year they're revolting little harbingers of Spring

Kim Jong il, Bobblehead

Back when the Almanac was printed wider, and sometimes even in color, I did a few cut-out bobbleheads of newsworthy individuals. And who's more newsworthy than weirdly foreshortened megalomaniac Kim Jong Il? Actually I'm just posting this as a consolation toy for all of you who didn't want to cough up $48 for a tiny rubber Raymond Scott.

Art

I swiped a bit of dialog for today's Cul de Sac (above) from an illustration I dId for Why Things Are at least 14 years ago (below). The small girl in the illustration, who's something of a proto-Alice, is my then-expected older daughter Emma, who turned out to look only slightly like that. What I like best is the drawing Emma's done. I wish I could draw like that all the time. It's probably dangerous to think you're drawing with childlike innocence and immediacy; dangerous only in that you're just kidding yourself. Adult perspective is not so lightly overthrown. But maybe if you think of it as post-expressionism it's okay, and by you of course I mean me. Wouldn't it be fun to draw the whole strip in this style? And by fun I mean for me. Probably less so for you, or for the people who complain about stylistic changes in comic strips.

And, seriously, that's a little better than most four year olds draw, if I do say so myself.

Raymond Scott, Bath Toy

In honor of the centennial of the birth of musical mad scientist Raymond Scott, the toy company Presspop has produced an action figure of the poor unsuspecting man. It's terrifyingly realistic, and includes a CD, a clavivox and a pointing finger to play the clavivox with.

You know Scott's music whether you know it or not. Likely it's permeated your consciousness through its use in old Warner Brother's cartoons via Carl Stalling. And there are a dozen or more CDs of Scott's music, some performed by him and his quintette, others by bands like the Beau Hunks. Scott himself made an appearance in Michael Chabon's Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, at a party where Salvador Dali wore a deep sea diving suit. And now you can have your very own six inch tall Raymond Scott to fill that Raymond Scott-size space on your shelf.

My thanks to Ted Pratt for pointing this out to me.

Today's Poor Almanack

I'm not sure this makes much sense, but it made me laugh when I thought it up (which is often a warning sign). Originally there was as set-back-your-clock joke in there somewhere too, but it got lost in the final. And I'm not sure if "Pecunia Fugit" is correct, because I don't know Latin.

Cul de Sac on YouTube, Updated Slightly

This is pretty cool!

Well, it was pretty cool, but it's gone now. More later.....

Update: it should be up  again next week. I'll let you know.

Comic-Con Magazine

A few months back I did a joint interview with the below-mentioned genius, Stephan Pastis, for Comic-Con Magazine, courtesy of the gracious Gary Sassaman. Well, the whole magazine is online here. You can turn the pages and everything, and little lap cards fall out of your computer screen. You'll instantly notice that Stephan is better-spoken, better-groomed and generally more thoughtful than I am. I think he's taller, too.

March

Here's a repost from last year, only because we're expecting 5 to 8 inches of snow.

What Stephan Pastis Does While Waiting for his Tuna Sandwich

Stephan Pastis, the genius behind Pearls Before Swine, orders a tuna sandwich for lunch, and amuses himself unconstructively by doing this.

Today's Poor Almanack

Here's a slice of desperate graveyard humor for the imploding newspaper business. If they could only reposition themselves as something more necessary, newspapers might survive. Did you know that you can clean glass with a newspaper and white vinegar?

Mardi Gras Parade 2009

The First Family makes its way down Wilson Blvd on Fat Tuesday (photo thanks to Jennifer Hart, Arlington), and they're followed by Gov. Palin, below (photo thanks to Bono Mitchell). I appreciate these as I was stuck at home and missed all the fun. My daughter Charlotte represented the family, kindly chaperoned by Mike Rhode and his daughter Claire.

Awaiting the Parade

Sarah and Barack can't wait to meet you at the Mardi Gras Parade, Tuesday at 8 pm, Courthouse to Clarendon on Wilson Blvd in Arlington.

Wouldn't this make a good illustration for a kinda scary children's book?

My thanks to Bono for the photo!

Oscar (R) Repeat

Here, I posted this last year, but too late to do anybody any good.

Today's Poor Almanack

This isn't entirely true. I did see Wall-E. And this may be the clumsiest lettering I've done, at least for this month.

When Worlds Collide, Part Five

Here's the grisly finale to our little story.

When Worlds Collide, Part Four

I'm proud to have done the first cartoon featuring an assorted jellies caddy. 

Mardi Gras Parade 2009

You may remember the above from last year.

Here's this year's Clarendon Mardi Gras poster. Various diverse hands have been constructing larger than life versions of some Almanac finger puppets to amaze and amuse the crowd.

Barack Obama, left, the magnificent Bono Mitchell, right.

When Worlds Collide, Part Three

Is that thing a tiki head, an Easter Island head or Abraham Lincoln? I just figure it's a pretty off-putting restaurant tchotchke and not at all condusive to fine dining.

You'll note "lowering" was changed to "glowering" in the final version, if you have time for such things.

When Worlds Collide, Part Two

Since I've got nothing to say and no time to say it, I'll just post the week's Cul de Sacs. Here are Tuesday's and Wednesday's. A commenter on gocomics suggests the P.J. stands for pepperjack, which seems reasonable.

When Worlds Collide

This week the Otterloops go to P.J.Piehole's Family Restaurant, which I stole from the Poor Almanac. It's my futile attempt to better integrate my personality.

A Valentine's Day Public Service.

And some advice; if you're on a deadline and in a hurry, draw candy. It's quick 'n' easy!

Fridge Funnies

I did this in March '04. It kinda wrote itself, and seemed to make sense. In some interview years ago Maurice Sendak said that in Dickens' books everything is alive; the chair is alive and the table is alive and the fire in the grate is alive, etc. This takes that idea to ridiculous extremes, I hope.

So a coupla years later I did another fridge cartoon. It got a little convoluted, though I like the final balloon. And I like the implication that the photograph is several rungs above the comic strip on the social ladder, and that the comic strip is a little wiseguy in a derby. I'd planned on doing some more chatty fridge-clutter cartoons; they're like those old animated cartoons from the 30s where all the books on the shelves would open up and the characters would spill out and do funny stuff.  But they're hard to draw and to think up and I'm lazy. For some reason I have no trouble drawing most of your major appliances. Stoves, washers and dryers present no difficulties. But refrigerators defeat me.

Five

As Alan Gardner kindly pointed out, today is Cul de Sac's 5th birthday. Which has me worried, as Alice is only four, so I've somehow screwed up the math again. Above is the first sketch and the drawing used on the Post Magazine cover the week it debuted. Originally it was going to be on the plastic bag holding the paper too, but that didn't happen. Which is a relief, as it might've scared away Post readers and depressed sales.

I like the sketch a lot, and I wish I could draw the strips so loosely, but somehow drawing things in little boxes cramps looseness and forces the lines to behave.

Oont

I stole Oont from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Don't nobody tell!

Gutzon

I'm confident that this is the only instance of a comic strip using Gutzon Borglum for a cheap laff.

Today's Poor Almanack

Here's what's filling up space in the Post Style section today.

The Blowhard's Reading Corner

Comics aficianado, scholar & journalist extraordinaire Chris Mautner asked me for a list of the books on my bedside table, which I'm assumably reading, for the weekly What Are You Reading over at Robot6. 

These are the books on my bedside table, though some are by my drawing board, because I sometimes read when I’m in the middle of a deadline. I left off some of the books my daughters have left there so nobody'll think I'm reading Twilight, Horse Adventures or Captain Underpants (which, ok, I've read four times).

• The Art Forger’s Handbook by Eric Hebborn. Hebborn was a Cockney art forger and master of various art techniques who died under mysterious circumstances in 1996, and an entertaining writer. I figure this is a good skill to fall back on in case this whole cartoon thing heads south.
  

• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I’ve never read much Dickens and I started this a year ago and I’m enjoying it very slowly.
  

• Ojingogo by Matt Forsythe. I just keep picking this up and looking through it over and over. It’s like a great silent animated fantasy you can hold in your hand.
  

• The Comic Worlds of Peter Arno, William Steig, Charles Addams and Saul Steinberg, by Iain Topliss. Topliss is an Australian academic and his prose can get a little dense, but he’s got a sharp eye and a sense of humor.
  

• Harvey Pekar: Conversations, edited by Mike Rhode. I’ve never read enough Pekar either, but I get a great introduction to the man in the 25 years of interviews Mike’s gathered here.
  

• Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. I reread this every few years, like I’m doing now, because it’s the greatest comic novel every written, along with A Confederacy of Dunces.

• Diaries: The Python Years by Michael Palin. Oh, this is fun to read! John Cleese says that Palin never shuts up, just yaps all the time. You can pick this up, read a few day’s worth of entries, and put it down a much happier man.

• Ordinary Victories, Parts 1 & 2 by Manu Larcenet. I wish I could draw comic realism as well as Larcenet, and tell a story so interestingly.
  

• The Complete Peanuts Volume 10 by Charles Shulz. Lucy gets mad at Schroeder and throws his piano to the kite-eating tree!!

• You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When it Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day by Mo Willems. I wish I could do this too, but I’m glad Mo Willems did.