Frog Mortality

Today Mark Heath's Spot the Frog makes his last apperance in the newspapers, and the world becomes a sadder place. For the last few weeks Spot went meta when the tiny, mostly-amphibious cast discovered a pair of 3-D glasses and, looking through them, began to discern a larger world beyond the confines of their panels. It was an elegant, funny and darkly philosophical way to end a fine strip, and it's one I'll miss.
An updated note: comics.com is now running the earliest strips from their archive. After you look at the last Spot, jump to the first ones and watch Spot jump five full years into the past.

Happy Fourth of July

Especially if you missed Canada Day. I hear last Monday was National Self-Absorption Day, but I didn't notice it because I was too busy (insert self-absorbed joke of you own devising here).

This is the Otterloop family celebrating the 4th in 2004, and if you've been reading this week's daily strips you'll see they did it much the same way this year. Our old neighborhood in Gaithersburg had the small-child-on-a-bike parade, with all the attending parents and a fire truck that hung around until a local fireworks accident would call it to duty. And some guy on stilts would always show up wearing an Uncle Sam hat. I never saw him any other time, so he was probably a ringer brought in from outside the neighborhood to enliven the parade.

This year we're going down to the Mall in DC for the first time in years to watch the fireworks and visit the Folk Life Festival. And probably visit at least one museum too when it starts to rain.

Nature! Run!

I just did a sketch for a Cul de Sac about Petey being attacked by a flower, and this Almanac came to mind. Please pass this along to any kids you know, just in case.

Gas Pump Etiquette

I hope everyone finds this helpful in these uncertain times.This Almanac was from a year or more ago, so things've been distressing at the pump for a while. Like I have to tell you that. But I do wonder about the employee who changes the prices on the gas station sign. Does he do it late, under cover of darkness? It can't be a happy task and it's likely dangerous if done too publicly.
The enjoyable part of this cartoon is that I like drawing cars, or at least what pass for cars in the cartoons I draw. Editorial cartoonist Mike Lester, who can draw anything, passed along an insight into drawing cartoons from Arnold Roth; he draws not a car but his idea of a car, and so never has to go looking at reference photos or any of that nonsense. That's where the freedom of a cartoonist lies, in creating his or her anti-platonic ideal, and that's why I secretly pity those who draw realistically, because they're stuck with reality. I used to try that and it's too hard.

Car Trip!

Like most people trapped in a car for an extended period, we listen to books on CD during our car trips. We've done all of Harry Potter, the Hobbit, some Jane Austen (my wife's favorite), some Terry Pratchett (the Wee Free Men was especially good) and a hilarious series for girls from England called the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson. And we'll sometimes toss in a musical, most often Monty Python & the Holy Grail, the Producers, Sweeny Todd and Candide (if my daughters become antisocial misfits it may be traceable to these). In years gone by we went through lots of Sesame Street and Disney and an inscrutable series called "Dinosaur Mysteries", over and over and over.
When I was a kid we were lucky if we could get a station on the car radio that lasted for more than ten miles.

Lightning Bugs

As Cul de Sac has been featuring lightning bugs this week this old Almanac seemed timely. And as you can see, lightning bugs are pretty controversial, perhaps the most controversial bioluminescent insect around these days. Like, are they called "lightning bugs" or "fireflies", and is that a matter of regional nomenclature or what? My email correspondent cartoonist Teresa Dowlatshahi first raised this question and I don't know the answer. Around the part of Maryland, DC & Virginia that I've lived in it's always been "lightning bugs", which sounds more impressively oxymoronic though less poetic than "fireflies". To settle which is correct I've started another pointless poll on the right of this page. Though considering that the last poll, about putting CdS in the daily Wash Post, was barely launched before the Post did just that makes me think that maybe these polls are more powerful than I'd assumed.

Some Charlotte Family History

If you were to turn 180 degrees from the multiple-Charlotte sign in the photo posted below, you would see this. It's the greenspace with the outdoor performance of Romeo and Juliet, behind which is a fountain with three large sculpted fish. The red brick building behind the fountain is part of St. Peter's Catholic Church. In the 1930s that building was the Catholic Home, an orphanage, and for a time my Mom and her two sisters lived there, in the dormitory in the attic.


If you were to step slightly back now, and to your right, you'd see this. It's the Westin Hotel next to the Convention Center, where I stayed. The gabled roof below it is the old Catholic Home. My Mom's life had enough drama and coincidence to fill a novel by Dickens, but it also had a good deal of comedy in it. I think she'd be tickled to know I visited her old neighborhood 70 years later and stayed in a fancy hotel, and saw some Shakespeare right outside her old window.

Home Again

I'm back from Charlotte, North Carolina, Center of the Known World and Home to the Friendliest Comics Convention Hosts in the Known Universe. The sign above was one of several in a charming literary-themed park near the hotel where we wandered on Saturday evening. My daughter's name is Charlotte, so I took this photo to show her how widespread her influence is.

There was a free outdoor performance of Romeo & Juliet on the greenspace in the center of the park, and at the park's edge, on College Street in front of the Convention Center, there was a parade of fancy cars from the car show that had shared the Center with HeroesCon. If you stood in the right spot you could watch and enjoy both, though comprehend neither.

We got home yesterday to a sudden storm with a vivid double rainbow, and the news that Cul de Sac is now in the Wash Post every day, in the spot where the late & lamented Single and Looking once stood.

More TK once I catch up on stuff.

Greetings from Charlotte NC

This is being posted from Prof. Craig Fischer's hotel computer in Charlotte NC, the Queen City of the South. Not much to say, except thank you to the dozen or so people who showed up to hear me bloviate at the panel on Friday. I'd do a shout out by name, but I might miss somebody and I'd feel bad. HeroesCon has been a hoot, and the people running it are excellent hosts. More TK, as they say in newspaperese.

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.