Memories of the Ohio State University Cartoon Festival 2010 in Stream of Consciousness Form Part 1

Thursday.
Driving to Columbus from Arlington with Mike Rhode doing all the actual driving. Using only the incremental step-by-step Google Maps directions which means we have only a vague notion of where we really are. I swear it's always foggy on this one stretch of I-68. We pull off onto a smaller road because the directions tell us to. Everything's uphill, all the way there.  Seeing a lot of the mountains of scenic southwestern Pennsylvania. Oops, tires need rebalancing. Stop at McDonald's. Pass General Braddock's Memorial marker; Mike guesses French & Indian War. A lot of towns that look like model railroad towns enlarged to livable size, some where the nicest building around is the local funeral home. Yay, West Virginia, closely followed by Yay, Ohio! And eventually Yay, Columbus, my wife's hometown! Skip through town and head right to the OSU campus Hey, there's the indomitable Chris Sparks exiting the OSU parking garage! Got to the tail end of Michael Tisserand's Herriman lecture, where he showed a photo he took of the actual Coconino County sheriff's office, bland little building with no Offisa Pupp. First of many visions of Jenny Robb (OSU Assistant Professor and Associate Curator of the Cartoon Library) ever on the wing, keeping things moving. In the registration line at the Cartoon Library Brian Walker tells me about his upcoming Garry Trudeau art book from Yale press. Time to start cleaning off the studio shelves again to make room for new stuff. Missed the Krazy Kat Kake but enjoyed the other food at the Cartoon Library reception, chatted with Columbus homeboys Nate Beeler (now of DC), who grew up romping in the wilds of the Cartoon Library and teething on Caniffs,  and Jeff Stahler, who's worked on every Festival. Met the accomplished & charming Prof. Tom Inge finally but too briefly. And here's elfin mandarin RCHarvey! All right, now we're cookin' with gas! John Read got me the last glass of wine (the birthdate stamped on some bottles of beer made them contemporaneous with the previous Festival). Established festival-long habit of standing in the exact spot most necessary for traffic flow. Goggled at the Herriman originals with Rina Piccolo & Hilary Price while getting that self conscious feeling you get when you stare at Art from inches away in public but it's Okay because it's Funny Art. Back to the hotel for check in and start bumping into people I knew or soon would. Dinner at large yet quiet sports bar across the street with Mike, Craig Fisher, Charles and Michele Hatfield, Harry Katz, Martha Kennedy and David Berona, several of whom had spoken during  the academic portion of the Festival on Thursday. We talk mostly about kittens on a Roomba. Or is that the name of a fancy drink? Memory slightly blurry. Back to the hotel, Jenny Robb flies past with Matt Groening, brief pleasantries (didn't ask him to sign anything, which seems to be his full time occupation), then up to bar on the second level of the atrium lobby, and memory gets blurrier mostly because it's late and also because, hey, there's Tom Gammill! I swear it's always foggy on the second floor bar.

Other Bargain Galore!

The second Cul de Sac book, Children at Play is also on sale at Amazon!

Bargain Galore!

The first Cul de Sac book is now on sale at Amazon! For the billions of you still without one who're on a budget.

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.

Where I Am

At the OSU Cartoon Festival. Posting may be spotty.

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 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, 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

All I want today is homemade cherry pie and a mention on Tom Spurgeon's list.

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.

120 Years Ago Today

October 2nd is the birthday of Groucho Marx, born Julius Henry Marx in 1890. In celebration, I propose a national Walk Like Groucho Day, to be held on this date annually. Everybody walks like Groucho, or we line 'em up against the wall and Pop goes the weasel!

How do you walk like Groucho? You just squat and scuttle, taking long strides, not as extreme as a duck-walk and not as athletic as a Silly Walk. If you can wear a tail coat that flaps behind you so much the better. I've included this chart which illustrates Newton's 2nd Law of Motion (Force = Mass x acceleration), and shows ground reaction forces measured in various strides and different types of footwear. Please note the looping blue line labeled "Groucho". I'm sure this'll help you a whole lot. The chart was taken from Dr. Chris Kirtley's site Clinical Gait Analysis http://www.univie.ac.at/cga/. (You can't propose a day of national celebration without some kind of scientific & academic support.)

Old Stuff by Request

This is the Cul de Sac that ran in the Washington Post Magazine on September 2, 2007, the second to last one I did for the Post before syndication. I'm posting it at the request of Haywood Wigglesworth, who sent a kind email saying that this one was a family favorite and hoping that it'd show up in one of the future collections. Unfortunately, it likely won't be included as it's a pretty DC-centric strip and those will either not be reprinted or will be saved for the special 50 year all-inclusive reprintatathalon that might already be available for pre-order on some parallel world Amazon. So I hope this will do till then.

For those not living in the DC area, Theodore Roosevelt Island is an island in the Potomac that's both a wilderness preserve and a memorial to Teddy R., with a 17 foot statue of the man himself waving at you as if to say, "Get off my island!"

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