Your President's Day Special Unnecessary Spot Illustrations of the Day

Richard Nixon was the cartoonists' president, so here are ten drawings of him. Most of these are roughs I did for a New Yorker story that ran the year he died.

 He had so many caricaturable parts and tics and postures that any president since has been a let down, almost. The arms in the air victory pose is a good place to start, so here are several of them.

 This was a rough for a children's history book and it illustrated an ingenious rhyme by Carol Diggory Shields.

 Okay, so it gets repetitive, but I like the hands.

 Another NYer rough, this one with a Marley's Ghost angle.

 This one also for the NYer, showing him older and more pensive.

 The rough below is the one the NYer chose, and this is the rough sketch for the rough sketch.

 The final looked almost exactly like this, though I trimmed the nose down some and tilted the drawing to the right (note the horizon line). My favorite of the roughs I sent in for this story is the first one in this post, with his hands clasped.

 Here's a rough for another NYer story, dealing with the reactions of various Republican politicians to Nixon's passing and his legacy. Pete Wilson and Bob Dole choke up at the end of a Nixon movie.

A color piece for US News & World Report. I forget the exact point of the story it illustrated, but the pot full of tapes provides a clue.

Happy Birthday, Kim Jong Il

It's gotten to the point that I have an old blog post that's appropriate for any event, however obscure or unworthy of attention. So all I have to do is figure out a post-generating algorithm, set it on automatic, and this blog'll run itself.

And here Kim Jong Il looks at things.

Be Mine

If I had any brains I'd turn this into a Valentine's Day card. It was drawn to illustrate a Joel Achenbach column in the Post Magazine five or six years ago, though I don't know why. Something about Valentine's Day I guess. I just like the idea that the poor woman has likely been standing there for days waiting for the guy to finish her surprise. That and she's going to be stuck with a giant, chalky pink heart thing when what she wants is chocolate (see previous post).

Some Valentine's Day Candy for You

From a 2009 Poor Almanac. Or maybe it was 2008. 

Seven

Cul de Sac is now seven years old, having launched in the Washington Post Magazine in its 2004 Valentine's Day issue.Above is the first sketch and the drawing used on the Post Mag 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.

This proto-Alice is a little weirder looking than the more recent model. But I like the sketch a lot, and I wish I could draw the strips so loosely. Drawing things in little boxes cramps looseness and forces the lines to behave and stay in place. Especially when they have to share the available space with words which, for reasons of coherence, get more elbow room and the choice spot in each panel.

I do worry about one thing. My wife once suggested that seven is the age of reason. I doubt it is, probably being closer to 60, but there's something awkward about a four year old turning seven

Today's Cul de Sac, February 5 to 13, 2011

Let's see if I can remember what happened this week.

Oomaboogy Wow Wow is the closest I could come to Yo Gabba Gabba, the mildly insane, acid-trip show for young children that my older, high-school-size daughter watches. She also likes the Upside Down Show.

I'm still stuck on Captain Kangaroo and I'll imitate the Banana Man anytime and anywhere whether anyone gets it or not.

I don't know how the Oomaboogy theme goes and I don't think I want to know.

Someone wisely pointed out that this replicates the common horror movie situation where someone is shown alone in a wide shot, then in a close up shot a hand comes out of nowhere to tap them on the shoulder. It's a cheap trick but effective.

I just realized that there's another strip coming up where Petey ends up with a bandaged nose. Sounds like a theme best left unexplored.

Is there any doubt that things would turn out like this?

Petey's not real involved with toys. This started out as a stray thought that Petey would likely only have one plastic army man. What can you do with one plastic army man? Not much, except maybe pretend he's one of those soldiers lost in a jungle who still thinks World War II is going on. I'd already mentioned Mr. Uggins, the Jarred Bear, so I just had to fill out Petey's catalog of toys a little and boom, there's a Sunday strip.

Something I've noticed talking to people who read Cul de Sac: they say, "I really like Alice, but I'm more like Petey." Believe me, I know how you feel.

A History of Valentine's Day Cards, Again

This is from the Post mag, Valentine's Day '03, and it's another lazy repost. And every word of it is true. I was shocked to find out that my editor didn't know that diarist Samuel Pepys' name is pronounced "Peeps", especially as I'd only learned it the day before. I always thought it was Pep-eez, which is actually a stomach antacid.

Chirptoons

 My friends Kevin Rechin and Nick Galifianakis, along with their intern Brent Nieder, have just launched an animations website called Chirptoons. It's very funny.

Your Unnecessary Classic Cul de Sac for Today

This ran on January 2, 2005 and it illustrates a pretty common DC phenomenon: the First Snow Panic of the Year. By now we're safely past it and into the fourth or fifth of the year. One thing I notice in this is a somewhat flatter, scratchier style. And Dill's ears stick out of his hat.

Team Cul de Sac

This is your weekly reminder that Team Cul de Sac would love for all you professional cartoonists, illustrators, animators or drawers to create an original drawing that mocks, celebrates or vaguely refers to any or all of the Cul de Sac characters. Why? To raise funds for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's research, of course!. Chris Sparks, the man responsible for Team Cul de Sac, would love to hear from you and so would I! And for those of you wishing to donate to Team Cul de Sac and who are not cartoonists, please see here.

Today's Cul de Sac, January 31 to February 5, 2011

How quickly the week slips by when you're having so much fun.

To begin, here's Timmy Fretwork's first appearance from an October '04 Post Magazine, which I redrew three years later for the syndicated strip. Mr. Fretwork is based on about five real people.

Ha! Kids say the most awkward things! And they keep on doing it once they're adults.

 They're also impressed by all the wrong things, and ditto.

 I like the sootis so much I'm going to refer to them every chance I get. At least until some major studio latches onto them for a crowd-pleasing 3-D movie.

 I'd've liked to've heard that Snowpile song. I imagine it would've gone something like, "Snowpile, snowpile, Watch it grow, Snowpile, snowpile, Lots of snow!" Sung to Freight Train, of course.

 The hand sanitizer thing was pulled from real life, except for the part about it being arisanal and mole-scented.

This opens up all kinds of possibilities, maybe. There've been a few instances of Ernesto interacting with people other than Petey, which seems to point to his being a mass hallucination. Because no way can he be real.

Groundhog Day, Again

One of the lazier features of this blog is the annual repost, but in this case I can pretend it's an homage to the film Groundhog Day, where maddening temporal repetition was the whole point.

Your Unnecessary Spot Illustration of the Day

I was looking for a caricature I did ten or so years ago of Mubarak but I couldn't find it, which is annoying because I've been tripping over the thing all that time, which might've actually been more like 20 years or even 30.

So here's this Blue Screen of Death, which I think was drawn for a Joel Achenbach column in the Post Magazine maybe five or six years ago. The thing I like is the stuffed toy on Death's computer with the x-ed out eyes.

Today's Cul de Sac, January 27 to 30, 2011

Now, where were we?

Snow jokes, right. This might've been a little sharper if I hadn't shown the airborne snow in the second panel, leaving Dill's and Alice's reactions to indicate what was happening, But I like the idea of a snow blower trebuchet and I think it has a viable place in people's garages.

I redrew this a coupla times trying to make Alice as animated as possible and maybe one more time would've done it, but maybe not. Somebody, maybe S.J;.Perelman, said something to the effect that he reworked his prose to hit the perfect balance between the incoherent and the lapidary, and I know what he means. Or I did after I looked up "lapidary." And it was probably Mark Twain who said it anyway.

Ew.

This started out as a parody of shampooese: the weird hybrid language used on hair care products. I was going to have a conversation entirely in shampooese but I couldn't figure out how to carry it off and have it make sense. So I used the old plot-counterplot trick and wrapped it up with Petey plotting out a chapter of Toad Zombies. And yes, having a small child washing her own hair with a possibly volatile combination of products is a Bad Idea That Should Not Be Attempted in the Home.

Today's Cul de Sac, January 24 to 26, 2011

As we're getting a bit of snow here these seem almost timely, in a timeless comic strip way.

 Sure, blame the weatherman. Alice is talking about this, of course.

 Oh boy, crosshatching! It might've gotten a little dark for a snow cloud in that second panel. Hence the phrase, "Please help! I've crosshatched myself into a corner!"

I started to add a sound effect as the snow hit the ground in the third panel, but I remembered a Peanuts strip that had a flake hitting the ground making a loud and inappropriate noise, which was the gag, and I decided not to. And now I forget what that onomatopoeia was. "Plink?" "Blam?"

Cheerleader

The new logo for Team Cul de Sac, at least until I can draw something better. Rough sketch below.

And for those of you wishing to donate to Team Cul de Sac and who are not cartoonists, please see here.

Today's Cul de Sac, January 23, 2011

This is dedicated with great affection to my friends in comics scholarship (hi Craig, Charles & Isaac!) and to my friend Mike Rhode, who often and rightly points out that this is the golden age of comics reprints (if you've got the shelf space).

Are we living in the Golden Age of Comics Scholarship? Please discuss.

Today's Cul de Sac, January 17 to 22, 2011

The week that was in Cul de Sac.

The idea for this one made me happy, though I thought the execution was a little meh. Distracted attention seems like a ripe subject for a cartoon, especially as it applies to preschoolers.

Note the use of the pointing finger in the first panel, a gesture that some cartoonist has labeled The Dumbfinger. It's a lazy thing to draw and a gesture nobody ever makes, at least in this context. But I like the black & white, stop & start panels.

Wirf!

I'm starting to think Alice is not so much a dog person.

You'll note that Alice offers to chew off Petey's arm, not hers.

The theatre review was a lot of fun to write and I had to leave out a bit of it. I'm assured that the spelling "theatre" is preferred by theatre folk.