Post Mag Blows Lid Off Cartoonist's Shady Past

Article here, photos here, and my profound thanks to Michael Cavna for omitting the embarrassing stuff and Dustin Fenstermacher for only getting my good side.

An Old Cul de Sac

This was drawn for the Post Magazine in early 2007 then redrawn for syndication later that year (I haven't recycled any old strips in a while, I think because I ran out of good ones). To see the syndicated version, plus some nice words by Tom Spurgeon, see this review.

When I first drew this it was instantly my favorite; it's got drama, comedy and meta-ness, and it makes a point that's self-deprecating enough to be self-loathing. All you could ask for from a comic strip! I was looking at this original the other day and realized something. Recently I've gotten obsessive about the shape of Alice's head. I want it to be perfectly spherical, but it keeps getting lumpier and more oblong. I've always had trouble drawing these characters on model and I stand in awe of those cartoonists who can reproduce shapes and sizes from panel to panel effortlessly. Especially someone like Charles Schulz, who designed one of the subtlest shapes in pop culture- Charlie Brown's head- and replicated it endlessly (though there was some gradual evolution in it, of course). But I realized that Alice's head here is a doughy, unformed lump, and it looks better than any platonic sphere ever could. 

 The above Alice is as close to a Platonic ideal of Alice as I can imagine. The drawing is rough and scratchy and the lines seem to have landed on the paper almost randomly. The watercolor defines things as much as the linework does, one of the main differences in the strips drawn for the Post Mag and for syndication.

Triskedecaphobia

Here's something from the Post Weekend section from 1996 for Friday the Thirteenth. I'm putting it up quick while it's still Friday the Thirteenth. More vital commentary to follow when I get a chance. See also here.

Today's Cul de Sac for May 12, 2011

GoComics is still down for those of us browsing with Safari, so here's today's strip as a public service. Long time readers with their memory still intact will recognize the childish taunt the two rowdies are using as a cheer. And just look at that jungle gym! Giovanni Battista Piranesi would weep to see such perspecstive!

Today's Cul de Sac for May 11, 2011

GoComics.com is doing some upgrading, maintenance and vacuuming up right now and some people, like me, are having trouble getting to the site (Safari users are having the most trouble). So for those of you who can't see it on its home page, here's today's Cul de Sac. Didn't I start posting these every day at some point? I forget. This one's a little violent with all these tiny soccer hooligans but the perspective on the jungle gym is dandy, if you like that kinda thing. As the week goes on the jungle gym seems to get denser and more pointlessly intricate. I must've been obsessing.

Team Cul de Sac Deadline Extended; Grateful Cartoonists Nationwide Heave Great Sigh of Relief

This is a cross post from the Team Cul de Sac Blog. We have extended the deadline for donations to the Team CdS fundraiser until June 17th! This was done for a couple of reasons. Lee Salem, Caty Neis, Richard Thompson and Chris Sparks will be at the Reuben awards in Boston in less than three weeks. Chris will personally be asking cartoonists to contribute to Team Cul de Sac, Caty might be singing and Richard will be juggling (possibly unintentionally). Ooh, this could get ugly!

The following weekend please visit Heroescon in Charlotte NC. Team Cul de Sac will be releasing The Fanzine for the ages put together by Craig Fischer. The contributors are an all-star line-up: Derik Badman, Noah Berlatsky, Alex Boney, David Bordwell, Matthew J. Brady, Scott Bukatman, Johanna Draper Carlson, Isaac Cates, Rob Clough, Corey Creekmur, Andrew Farago, Shaenon Garrity, Dustin Harbin, Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, Gene Kannenberg Jr., Abhay Khosla, Susan Kirtley, Sean Kleefeld, Costa Koutsoutis, Andrew Mansell, Robert Stanley Martin, Chris Mautner, Joe McCulloch, Ana Merino, Chris Pitzer, Mike Rhode, Jim Rugg, Frank Santoro, Chris Schweizer, Caroline Small, Tom Spurgeon, Ben Towle and Matthias Wivel.

The Zine will be a word-packed 40 pages, topped off by a cover by some fledgling artist whose name I forget. Please come by and say hi to Craig, Mike Rhode , Richard and Chris.

Thank you to everyone who's helping out!

Thank you, Happy Deadline Clown!

Happy Cartoonists Day Again, Again

You may be wondering, "How can I best celebrate this festive day?" You might consider:

• Finding a cartoonist near you and mowing his lawn, at least the front lawn (especially the hard part with the hill).
• While you're at it trim his shrubs, so the mailman can find his front door again.
• Does his house need vacuuming? Well, what are you waiting for?
• Who left all these dishes in the sink?
• The cats; somebody feed the cats.
• You could take him to lunch at the Mexican place down the street, where they're having some no doubt cartoonist-related celebration.
• For God's sake laugh at his cartoons. If they appear in a newspaper, buy extra copies (or multiple subscriptions, even) and laugh at them too.
• Is he not posting anything new on his stupid blog and it's driving you crazy? You should send him a cheerful card stuffed with cash to inspire him.

Note: if the cartoonist near you is a lady, please substitute "her" for "his". The original of the cartoon reproduced above is in the collection of the fabulous Mr. Jef Mallett, so this is a scan of the Almanac book page. And it's the same one I ran last year, and the year before, if it looks familiar.

May the Fourth Again

Today, for those of you who care about such stuff, is May the Fourth Be With You Day. Back in 1977 I went to see Star Wars (the first, real, one) on its opening night at the Uptown Theater with a bunch of friends, which establishes my geek cred if there was any doubt. All the shows were sold out, there was a line around the block, and we ended up seeing the added-on midnight show, and some of us appeared in a photo in the Wash Post the next morning of all the geeks in line to see a movie. Somehow we all knew it was an event and the line was the place to be. The Uptown is still the best theater in DC; it's got a huge screen and a balcony and the blockbusters open there. I've stood on that sidewalk out on Connecticut Avenue for dozens of movies since and nowadays I drag my daughters along, or vice versa.

The above cartoon is one of a few Star Wars Poor Almanacs I drew, the others having now been lost. One was about the Star Wars exhibit at the Air & Space Museum back in the mid-90s and the only bit of it I remember is something about them discovering a colony of midgets still living in the giant rubber Jabba the Hutt. There was another, unfinished cartoon about the new characters in some of the prequel movies; one was a robot that was just a dangling boom microphone named Oopsie Boomshot, ha ha.

Each of the subsequent movies in the SW franchise were, for me, another big step down from the fun of the original. When the last one came out I was ready to throw something big and wet at the screen. The above was drawn before I saw it, but I'd already figured it wasn't going to be much fun. George Lucas will likely spend the rest of his career tinkering with his Star Wars oeuvre, reworking CGI effects and monkeying with the explosions and stuff. And I'll likely keep recycling old blog posts, sometimes adding a little bit here and there. Like this one.

Obsolete Cartoon

From late 2001-

Happy Easter Part 3

This is the result of rigorous research. You could base a school report on this cartoon. See also here.

Happy Easter Part 2

The further adventures of Hopsy Bunsy & Peeps McCracken. I did another one of these with one of Stephan Pastis's crocs emerging from the egg, but I gave that one to Stephan Pastis.

Happy Easter

This makes slightly more sense if you know that the Almanac was printed next to Doonesbury in the Post. I did several like this and if I can find them they'll be posted too.

Sneak Peek into the Future

 As long as I've goy you all here, this is a  panel from a Sunday strip for next month. I swiped from an old drawing, below, hat I did because trees are fun to draw. Monday is Arbor Day, at least in Virginia, so this may help prepare you for it, if you live in Virginia.

Team Cul de Sac Has Some Nice Friends

Team Cul de Sac, the Parkinson's research fundraising project started by the indefatigable Chris Sparks, has received some inspired contributions by artists and cartoonists. The recent donation pictured above is particularly eye-catching. It comes from Mr. Bill Watterson, who's got a dab hand with a paintbrush and whose beloved Calvin & Hobbes stands as the platonic ideal of the comic strip, or as close to as such a thing is possible. I once saw a comment on a comics thread from someone saying that he'd dreamed about hiking in the Cascades and coming across a church newsletter stuck in some bushes that featured new Calvin & Hobbes strips that were being published nowhere else. That strikes me as eerie and charming and a good measure of the depth to which C&H has permeated the popular imagination.

So I was floored when I got a call yesterday from Chris saying that Caty Neis, who's shepherding the Team book project at Andrews & McMeel, had gotten a painting from Bill. An oil painting of Petey Otterloop of all people. After studying it pretty closely for the last consecutive 12 hours or so I can say that he's done Petey as much justice as possible. Adding another dimension to a 2D character is a tricky business and Petey's awkward enough in dealing with the two he's normally confined to.

Thanks to Bill from the bottom of my heart. And thanks also to Alex, Jim, Jerry, Bill L, Crow, Stephan, Steve, Ron, Matt, Canaan, Jim D, Shannon, Pab, Matt, Mo, Mark, Lynn, Peter, David and everybody else who's contributing. I appreciate it more than I can say.

Today's Cul de Sac for April 17, 2011

They really have these things, musical toothbrushes, only not quite as advanced as the one pictured. I use a small toothbrush to clean pen nibs and the one I've been using is called a Firefly toothbrush. You squeeze the handle and it lights up and blinks for one minute, so you know just how long to brush your teeth. These things might be aimed at children or at people who use them to clean pen nibs, I'm not sure which.

Lazy Tax Joke Repost

I hate to say it, but here it is that time of year, April being the cruelest month and all. You know that if it says "From the IRS" it must be real, too.

Your Unnecessary Spot Illustration of the Day, Nobel Edition

Reading from left to right in the row of framed caricatures is Kenzaburo Oe, Toni Morisson, Seamus Heaney and Wislawa Szymborska, all of whom won the Nobel Prize for literature. This was drawn about ten years ago for a New Yorker piece on the backstage hijinks at the Nobels, here depicted as a brawling mass of distinguished gentlemen. Evidently the actual process of determining who wins the Nobel for literature, so dignified on the outside, is inside like a that Three Stooges short where a well-mannered dinner party devolves into a pie fight. It was a joy to draw that brawling mass, though it probably took me a while to lay it out so that it made visual sense (drawing crowd scenes or even groups of more than three people is not one of my favorite things). But this tangle of people came out well enough that I reused one of them, the airborne berserker on the right, when I drew something on Senate hijinks for the New Yorker a few years later.

The caricatures of the Nobel laureates are Okay though I wish I'd pushed them a little further, but the rioting Nobel committee still makes me happy.

Today's Cul de Sac for April 10, 2011

This is still the way I do math, fractions especially, a talent I've passed on to both my children. Whatever a drawing fight is I'm glad I thought of it (though others may have preceded me in inventing it). The actual fun in this, of course, is Andre's kinetic energy contrasted with Petey's stasis. They get along well as friends because their basic tastes are alike and their temperaments are not too mutually exclusive. But I think after spending extended time in each other's company they're kinda relieved to go their separate ways and be alone again.

More Damned Cherry Blossoms

The DC Cherry Blossom Festival continues today with the big parade. It's not the greatest weather for it, being cool, grey and dampish, and the blossoms are long past their peak. So here are some half-hearted reposts of cherry blossom cartoons. The cherry blossom trees around the Tidal Basin, the major players in the Festival, are not really this pink. They're white with a pinkish cast. I point this out so no one's too disappointed, in case anyone's using this as a visitor's guide.

The last one still makes me laugh. Coming up next: something fresher.

Your Guide to DC Children's TV Show

I was looking for something about DC kids' TV shows and found this post from 2008 and decided to put it up again. This may be one more sign of this blogs creeping senescence; soon every post will be about how great something was that happened on the blog two years ago.

Though I was born in Baltimore, I grew up in and around DC. And one of the things that struck me as a child about the Capital of the Free World was the number and complexity of local TV kid's shows. These are the ones I remember best, though I'm sure I'm leaving some off the list (hello, Pick Temple).

The local TV newsman/broadcasting-personality who puts on a silly costume and stands in front of a cardboard set to introduce ancient cartoons and Three Stooges shorts is something kids today just don't have access to and I think they're the poorer for it. These shows were central to our daily routine and the local stations put a lot of love and work into them. Well, some. When you only have six or so channels available on your TV then each one has a more distinict personality, and these shows were a large part of it.

When I was about seven I got to be on Ranger Hal (I was wearing a kilt; long story) and, instantly if briefly, my status in the neighborhood shot up. I remember one kid asking me if I got to meet Felix the Cat, whose cartoons were a fixture on Ranger Hal, and I had to let him down gently as to Felix the Cat's incorporeality. I don't think he believed me.

And I think appearing on these shows probably did the TV newsman/broadcasting-persornality a lot of good too. If someone like say, I don't know, Bill O'Reilly had a half-dozen seasons in a clown wig and giant bowtie back early in his career he might be more grounded today.