There Was An Old Woman

Here's the whole spread and a few close ups, some commentary to come when I think of it. Now go buy the book!

The Dark Side of Alice

Stephan Pastis investigates Alice's dark side, because he's a braver man than I.

Hello, Miami!

Cul de Sac starts running today in the fabled Miami Herald and reporter Lomi Kriel makes note of it. Many of my favorite people to work with at the Washington Post were previously at the Herald, including Tom Shroder, who pushed me not-quite-kicking-and-screaming into Cul de Sac.

Moving Day

The Parkinson Foundation of the National Capital Area, in collaboration with the National Parkinson Foundation, is sponsoring Moving Day,  a day of raising awareness of Parkinson’s disease by going for a pleasant 2.5 mile stroll. They anticipate over 2,000 participants, including people with Parkinson’s, families, friends, health care professionals, private and corporate teams, all ambling along while raising funds in support of the Foundation’s mission. I'll be there with the appropriately named Team Cul de Sac, along with family and friends. You're encouraged to join us, in person or in donation form. Or both! 

An added incentive: there may be doughnuts.

Nursery Rhyme Comics

Coming to a bookstore near you on October 11 courtesy of the fine folks at First Second- Nursery Rhyme Comics, edited by the unstoppable force known to his friends as Chris Duffy. Chris is as close to the platonic ideal of a comics editor as it's possible to be (he knows how to get really good work out of people and he's forgiving about missed deadlines, and he's a nice guy; also, he's a talented cartoonist himself, which makes me worry a little).

Using his editorial superpowers Chris got 50 cartoonists to illustrate 50 nursery rhymes, people like Nick Abadzis; Andrew Arnold; Kate Beaton; Vera Brosgol; Nick Bruel; Scott Campbell; Lilli Carre; Roz Chast; JP Coovert; Jordan Crane; Rebecca Dart; Eleanor Davis; Vanessa Davis; Theo Ellsworth; Matt Forsythe; Jules Feiffer; Bob Flynn; Alexis Frederick-Frost; Ben Hatke; Gilbert Hernandez; Jaime Hernandez; Lucy Knisley; David Macaulay; Mark Martin; Patrick McDonnell; Mike Mignola; Tony Millionaire; Tao Nyeu; George O’Connor; Mo Oh; Eric Orchard; Laura Park; Cyril Pedrosa; Lark Pien; Aaron Renier; Dave Roman; Marc Rosenthal; Stan Sakai; Richard Sala; Mark Siegel; James Sturm; Raina Telgemeier; Craig Thompson; Richard Thompson; Sara Varon; Jen Wang; Drew Weing; Gahan Wilson; Gene Luen Yang; & Stephanie Yue. I'm grateful to be among them.

I got to do "There was an old woman tossed up in a basket..."

There was an old woman tossed up in a basket
Nineteen times as high as the moon;
Where she was going I couldn't but ask it,
For in her hand she carried a broom.

"Old woman, old woman, old woman," quoth I,
"O whither, O whither, O whither, so high?"
"To brush the cobwebs off the sky!"
"Shall I go with thee?" "Aye, by and by."

Here's a sneak preview, with slightly variant text-

Ooh! I'm going to rush out and buy that at a bookstore near me!

National Book Festival

This weekend for two days only the Library of Congress presents the National Book Festival, on the National Mall. Hundreds of authors like Dave Eggers, Tomie dePaola, Rita Dove, Sherman Alexie, Jonathan Yardley and David McCullough will grace the dust-choked midway to demonstrate literary folkways and handicrafts. There'll be out-loud reading, grammar juggling, artisanal autographing and writer's block judging. And I'll be there-

Presentation

• Graphic Novels
  Sunday, September 25
  1:00 pm - 1:45 pm

Book Signing

• Sunday, September 25
  2:30 pm - 3:30 pm

 So come on down for two whole days of literary fun 'n' games!

Last Week's Cul de Sacs, September 5 to 11, 2011

This is all old news, but Oh Well; The Pancake Princess as seen by Peter Otterloop, Jr.

I'd drawn myself into a corner with the preschool play as I had no clue about it beyond the title and suddenly it was curtain  time. There's a whole genre of plays written solely for kids to perform as school plays and I've seen enough of them to've developed a severe facial tick. So I knew what to expect. But I needed what Petey might call a distancing mechanism to disguise my ignorance of the actual plot; in this case, Petey's POV was a great disguise. A technical note: the texture in Sofie's hat is a litho crayon, which I can't use without making a mess. Petey's neater than me.

A few alert readers pointed out the Kevin Bacon joke.  It was entirely accidental but I take full credit for it.

Miss Bliss's music cur look is my favorite thing from this week (apart from the Kevin Bacon joke).

Also the third panel, which refers to a strip from July 26. This rewards alert readers and flummoxes everybody else (great way to run a comic strip).

The happy ending.

The meta ending.

And the completely unrelated Sunday. Coming next: Adventures in a Perambulator.

SPX

I sure hope every one of you is going to the Small Press Expo this weekend in Bethesda MD (even if it is more like South Rockville). I mean, look at this line up-

Petey Sits In, or, Most Of This Week's Cul de Sac

And not in a small chair, fortunately. The dream of all who draw a daily comic strip is to have somebody else please take it off their hands for as long as humanly possible.

Happily, Petey became available at just the right moment. We were on an abbreviated vacation in Duck NC when some of these strips were drawn, which means I didn't have any of the elaborate technical apparatus normally available when I work. I've grown reliant on a lightbox, a tilty art table, 5,000 pens, a stereo, 3,000 CDs, a messy floor, etc, and downsizing to a dining room table in a beach house that also has a nice & distracting view is difficult. So I let Petey do the drawing for a week of so.

I've been making this stuff up as I go along, more or less from week to week, with only a vague idea of what happens next. It took me a while to realize that Emilio Spinnerack's assignment to draw a comic from real life would mesh nicely with Alice's play, which I hadn't really thought through. All I knew was that the play should be incoherent, as though each player was the author and star. So I get to kill two birds with one stone, or fill two weeks with one joke. Regarding Monday's strip, I don't like drawing in public much either.

Drawing in a "child-like" style is tremendously fun in many ways. I've thought about shifting Cul de Sac's art more toward a style I'd call Little Kid Expressionism for a while. By Little Kid Expressionism I mean the characters' anatomy would be clumsified, the perspective would tilt, adults would loom larger, etc and the whole thing would be easier to draw. I can see this but I can't describe it. So this is a way of sneaking up on it a bit. And if anyone complains I can blame it on Petey.

Though I do worry about the lettering being legible. I'd used Petey's handwriting a few times so it seemed a good idea to keep it going for continuity's sake. Petey is at heart a perverse traditionalist, especially fond if unnecessary traditions, and I figured he'd like cursive, probably fancy Spencerian lettering, just for its difficulty. It makes a nicely absurd mismatch with the art too.

(I forgot to include the above strip in the original post) All I can add is that drawing a ceiling always a good move.

A cameo by Kevin's dad and mayne his mom.I'm guessing the whole Kevin family is annoyinng.

The Onion's A.V. Club Newspaper Comics Primer

Noel Murray writes a good, easily-digestible primer of America's Most Beloved Art Form That's About to Evaporate. And somehow uses the words "grace" and "dignity" in a paragraph about Cul de Sac.

Stripped

Dave Kellett, who's a smart and articulate guy as well as the cartoonist behind Sheldon and Drive, has been working with cinematographer Fred Schroeder to film a documentary on the modern state of the comic strip for a couple of years now (and probably thinking about it most his life). Suddenly he's got a trailer put together and a Kickstarter site up for it. For donations of $35 K he'll come to your house and powerwash your deck. More reasonable donations also accepted.

Remembering Elvis Again

This continues a tradition of running this ancient pre-Almanac on the anniversary of his passing, though I usually forget to.

The Collection

 Chris Sparks has filmed a video tour of the Team Cul de Sac art collection, which is housed in the plush conference room of Andrews & McMeel.

Tom Spurgeon

Tom Spurgeon writes entertaining, wise and funny posts every day that covers every inch of the wide world of comics. Today, though, he writes at length about something very personal and scary. Here too he's wise and funny and even gently profound in an essay that deals with mortality, his comic collection, the working life and, somehow, the Green Lantern movie.

Today's Cul de Sac, August 14 2011

Ernesto has been barricading himself in a carrel fort in a remote corner of the library for several summers now though this is the first time he's felt compelled to explain why he'd need to. This Sunday strip is the remnant of a string of dailies featuring Ernesto's latest decline and fall. This time he was caught by the Future Adults of America appropriating a box of doughnuts meant for fund-raising and subsequently kicked out. I think he started a competing group but I forget what it was called.

The origami jumping frog is a real thing, even if Ernesto possibly isn't. I like them so much I included one in the first published drawing of Alice (below), though they don't really look much like that. My wife can make them. She used to carry origami paper in her purse and would sometimes make things at an odd time, like when waiting for food in a restaurant. Then we'd all try to make the frogs  jump into someone else's drink glass.

National Book Festival

The Library of Congress has graciously invited me to participate in the National Book Festival, to be held this September 24th and 25th on the National Mall. I'll be joining hundreds of authors like Dave Eggers, Tomie dePaola, Rita Dove, Sherman Alexie, Jonathan Yardley and David McCullough at the dust-choked midway of gaudy tents and stands lining the Mall. There'll be diversions and games of skill galore, like Whack-A-Motif, Dunk an Unreliable Narrator, Guess-Your-Weltanschauung and Skee Ball plus greasy food on a stick, so come on down for two whole days of literary fun!

Seriously, I'm tickled!

Corey Pandolph Steps Up When Thompson Flubs It

The ever-reliable madcap polymath Corey Pandolph generously invites a few CdS characters into The Elderberries for a whole week.

This Week's Cul de Sac, August 1 Through 7, 2011

Here's a whole, solid, brand-new week of Cul de Sacs along with some unnecessary commentary. Last summer Cartoon Camp was taught by Dan Spinnerack (below)

 But this year I wanted someone new, though it might upset some, like Pete(y).

I think I redrew him a dozen times trying to find the right guy.

In his earliest, larval stage he resembled the cartoonist Seth (below) if he was played by an anemic Johnny Depp. I didn't think the public was ready for that quite yet.

Casting the right guy for a part in a comic strip is important. It can be fun, if the right guy shows up, but if he doesn't you have to keep looking till you find him. I wanted someone who looked like he could possibly be related to Dan Spinnerack. Beyond that I wasn't sure. One role that I've always been proud of casting was the bit part of the Fed-UPS driver who gave Mr.Danders a lift back in 2006 -

I keep hoping to work with him again, but the opportunity hasn't presented itself.

After redrawing him a dozen times I eventually I found his face, got him dressed and named him. Six months of touring historic cartoon sites would barely scratch the surface of the Buckeye State's offerings (Ohio license plates bear the motto "Incubator of Cartoonists").

I like the idea of a daily diary comic. Those who do it well make lively, interesting comics out of unexpected choices and juxtapositions of the quotidian. I'm not sure that makes sense; just go read everything by Dustin Harbin and you'll be the richer for it. 

Really I just wanted the kids to have something different to do at Cartoon Camp this year and this seemed like a good direction to wander off on. Andre, Pete and Loris should each respond to it in some amusing way, I hope.

Although Pete might get too tightly focused on the boring, dull and uneventful part and produce a sluggish comic. This can drag a comic strip down and scare away readers, as I'm slowly realizing.

I've never heard windshield wipers say "Wipey". Those on my first car, an '82 Sunbird, went HIRNK-HORNK, but that sounds too much like an oboe onomatopoeia and I don't want to confuse people.

The next week of Cul de Sac is all repeats I'm sorry to say.

Hey, Kids! Unrelated Cicada Comics

I'm happy to hear that 13-year Cicadas are popping up in the South and Midwest, because coincidentally I just scanned some old Poor Almanacs. They all date from 2004, when the most recent infestation of the 17-year variety erupted in the East.

 And here's an early CdS with a cicada theme. it was redone for syndication and reused a month or so ago.  Who knew cicadas were such comedy goldmines? I hope they come back more often!