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Today's Cul de Sac, July 5 2011

Alice has a small history of putting together guidebooks (badgers), but this was mostly an excuse to use a music staff nib to draw something. In this case, water. These nibs aren't hard to find (Barnes & Noble has some in their stationery section) but they're of kind of limited value, unless you want to draw something five times at once. Or line a music staff, if people do that anymore. The nib looks like this-

and it can be a bugger to get all five nibs firing simultaneously. Usually getting just one to behave is all I ask.

Today's Cul de Sac

And while there's time, here's today's strip. Hey, look at that crosshatching, huh? Somebody must have time on his hands to monkey around with that stuff. Though it looks like he hasn't had a new idea in two years.

Fourth of July

Quick, while it's still the Fourth of July, here's an old Cul de Sac from July 2, 2006.

 

 

Today's Cul de Sac for the Last Week or So

We seem to have lost track of what's going on for the last month or two (and this isn't even today's Cul de Sac). Let's partially rectify this by cramming a week's-plus of daily strips into one belated post.

I've got to admit that when I drew this I wasn't too sure what would happen next, or how it would end.

When in doubt on this strip, it usually helps to add Dill.

But here Dill is not of much help.

In fact, he's no help whatsoever. Though his demented wasp bit was fun to draw. it's always good to drop in a little showstopper like this during the week. And lets throw in some more characters.

As some may recall, Alice got a bit of a crush on Andre when they first met last summer

So she's ready to be impressed. And Dill's not ready for anything.

I gave a talk at Heroescon in early June and I mentioned something I figured out about Petey, Andre and Loris during their cartoon camp last summer. Petey's a comic by Chris Ware, Andre's a comic by Jack Kirby and Loris is manga. I had a hard time here not expanding on Andre's warning, like "Great will be my wrath! So says Andre!" and stuff like that. Fortunately I ran out of room.

And Petey comes to a conclusion just in time to miss the whole epic adventure.

Ice Cream on Sunday Again

As today's strip is a repeat, this post is too.

This is the original, slightly different, version of today's Cul de Sac (you'll note I changed Britons to Picts in today's strip for increased historical accuracy). This is drawn from life, as we have a Baskin & Robbins about three blocks from the house, and I've never been able to eat an ice cream cone neatly. I can recall eating an ice cream cone once when I was about six and having my usual trouble with it, and hearing my aunt say to my mom, "How'd he get it in his socks?" It's a skill I've passed on in varying degrees to both my daughters.


Another thing I've always had trouble with is drawing food. When I try to draw it, I end up with a mass of lumps colored brown or green, with red specks. But I do like this drawing of an ice cream cone, drawn for the Diabetes Association about 20 years ago. I like the lumpiness of the background and the textures in the ice cream (pistachio?). I wouldn't care to eat that cone, as I'd probably drop it and kill myself, but also because I'm just not a huge ice cream fan. Usually about halfway through eating it I get bored with it and give it to somebody else. Now pie, that I'll fight you for.

Happy Birthday, Chris Sparks

This is a desk at Andrews & McMeel in Kansas City MO,  and mostly obscured behind that pile of packages is Caty Neis, who works at that desk. Caty's editing the Team Cul de Sac book, a project launched by my friend Chris Sparks, whose birthday is today.

I met Chris mostly by accident at the Charlotte Heroescon in 2008, when he kinda blundered into a room where Tom Spurgeon and I were giving a talk. For scheduling reasons, the rooms had been switched around among the various panels and discussions on the top floor of the Charlotte Convention Center, and our talk was moved into a larger room so all 7 of the attendees could have their own section of 40 chairs or so to sprawl out in. Chris came in a few minutes into the talk, looked around and asked me What do you do? I must have given the right answer because we became good friends, practically family, and when he heard about my Parkinson's deal he decided to take on a project with a goal that'd make a difference.

I've met some interesting and excellent people in the last four or five years and that's the part of this side of the comics business I've enjoyed the most. Few have blundered into my life so gracefully as Chris, and I'm glad he did.

At the Reubens from left to right, me, Caty Neis, John McMeel, Chris Sparks.

Today's Cul de Sac, June 19 2011

For those who can't see it on GoComics, here's today's strip. Kids looking at clouds is one of those little comic strip conventions that pops up now and then because clouds are funny, at least when they look like something else. And people daydreaming out loud is always funny.

Happy Early Bloomsday!

This is an old and lost Poor Almanac from 2004 that was scanned off a newspaper and sent to me by Steve Dutky, who hoped I could find the original. I couldn't, so here's Steve's scan cropped down a little. It's the best I could do and feel free to replace "the Clinton book" with something more timely. So Happy Bloomsday!

My Favorite Part of HeroesCon

These are cookies commissioned and provided by Kathy Parham, ingenious wife of the illustrious Craig Fischer. After dinner on Friday night Craig said they had a surprise dessert planned and took us up to their hotel room then sprang these masterpieces, made by Leila Jackson of Sweet Creatures Bakeshop, on us. I got Mr. Otterloop.

Craig was the moving force behind Favorites, a fanzine that consists of essays written by comics critics, artists and bloggers about their most cherished comic strips, comic books and graphic novels. It debuted at HeroesCon and sells for $5, every penny of which goes to Parkinson's research. Some fine family, those Fischers.

Something to Make You Happy

I know it makes me happy. By the wonderful Karl Kesel. Who'll also be in Charlotte.

Reuben Report

It's all a happy blur. More to come when things are clearer. Right now go see Dave Kellett's journal strip.

Hello Again, Charlotte

This weekend I'll be going down to Charlotte NC with my pal and comics enabler Mike Rhode to Heroescon, well known as the friendliest comics convention on the face of planet Earth. I'll bring some books and sit at a table and look hopeful and needy, which is what you do at a convention if you're selling stuff, and woe to any passerby who makes eye contact. But I'll also be on two panels on Saturday.

10:30 AM
Richard Thompson: A Celebration
Room 209 
Is Cul-De Sac the best comic strip being published today? Perhaps, but one thing is for certain, it is the best drawn and the funniest. Okay, that’s two things. Please join Mike Rhode and some fellow strip creators as we sit down and examine the art of Mr. Thompson. In addition to discussing craft and daily deadlines, we will see if Richard can provide any insight as to whether poor Petey will make it through the entire soccer season without having a psychotic breakdown. Ahhh, total Bliss (haven).

12:00 PM

Approaches to Humor
Room 209 
Sure the convention is HeroesCon, but let’s never forget the funny side of the comic book world. Join The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald as she sits down with three of the very best cartoonists in the business. They are able to me us smile and even laugh out loud: Richard Thompson (Cul De Sac), Roger Langridge (The Muppets, Fred the Clown) and Evan Dorkin (Milk & Cheese, Yo Gabba Gabba!) are three of the wizards who put the comic in comic.

Given the touchiness of the subject matter and the volatility of the personalities involved, either one of these could turn into a chair-throwing brawl. Plan to it there but please note where the exits are, just in case.

This Thing

The NCS handed me this last night for which I'm grateful in countless ways, not the least being that I didn't fall over. A longer post to come.

Where I'll Be

This weekend is the annual National Cartoonists Society Reuben Awards and I get to go. And I get to take my family along to subject them to all the fun. As in past years I'm taking the train from DC, this time to Boston, disembarking at South Station, which is only a few blocks from this hotel.

It's the fabulous Fairmont Copley Plaza, an ornate ocean liner of a hotel that floats on Copley Square in Back Bay. In its famous Oak Bar you can buy a special engagement martini priced at $12,500! There's a resident dog named Copley that guests may rent for walkies! There's a lobby with big plush chairs where you can sit and look directly at someone else in a similar chair! Each room features beds with a pillow arrangement so complex and hard to disassemble that most guests give up and sleep on the floor! Okay, not all of that's true, but this is the venue that the NCS has chosen for its annual bash.

We'll be staying next door at the Westin, which is also a nice place, and much taller.

More TK.

The Experts Speak

Over at the Team Cul de Sac Blog Craig Fischer unveilss the cover Favorites, a zine of essays written by comics critics, artists and bloggers about their most cherished comic strips, comic books and graphic novels. 

The style is familiar.

Joyboys of Radio

Michael Cavna and I will be on NPR tomorrow at 11:00 AM.  The show's called Tell Me More and I don't know what we're going to say but it promises to be laffs galore. They'll have a sound effects guy to jazz things up when the conversation stalls.

Basically True

As far as it goes. This was drawn for the Post Magazine, and Mike Cavna's fine piece of journalism.

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.