Visit to Tai Shan

This ran in the Post Magazine in January 2006 when Tai Shan mania gripped DC in a relentless hug. I'd developed an antipathy to pandas for no good reason and about the time the National Zoo was paying the Chinese through the nose to rent a coupla pandas I did a poem in the Almanac trash talking the lumbering brutes. I can't find that drawing, but part of it went "Pandas are boring, tedious and blah, Great big two-tone fuzzy cures for insomnia." It didn't do any good: the Zoo is at it again.

Farewell to Maurice Sendak

 

Peter Dunlap-Shohl drew this wonderful piece on the death of Maurice Sendak last week, ingeniously mashing up the Seventh Seal and the Wild Things. I especially like the casually tossed-away cane at far left. I was going to link to a documentary by director Spike Jonez where he visits Sendak at his home but it's been taken off the web. I will link to a great tribute by Philip Nel at the Comics Journal. Phil's been working on a massive biography of Ruth Kraus and Crockett Johnson and he knows his children's literature.

Two Brand New Old Cul de Sacs

Both of which have something to do with motherhood.

The above is from May 16, 2004. I didn't like Madeline's job that much. It seemed too sitcommy.

Marcus has always had a difficult relationship with his mom. This appeared August 19, 2005.

The Complete Collection of Mother's Day Poor Almanacs

Assembled by looking up old posts and copying & pasting.

 

Savings Galore

If you're buying the Mighty Alice on Amazon, why not save all kinds of money and get Children at Play for the low low price of only $5.20! Quick, while supplies last!

More Restaurant Closings

And more reasons to enjoy a home cooked meal.

Reminder

Hey! It's almost May 8th, the official release date of The Mighty Alice!

This Week's Cul de Sacs, April 30 to May 6, 2012

Here are the roughs I sent to Stacy Curtis for this week of strips. Besides inking Cul de Sac, Stacy's got a full plate of children's book work, some of which involves traveling for school visits. This means he has to do the inking in a hotel room, not the most ideal situation for us sensitive art types whose psyches demand a familiar work environment to maintain creative flow.

So I thought a repeating Petey might make things easier all around. And as Petey tends to freeze up under mild duress all it needed was a stinkbug to provide just that.

 

Having decided on repeating Peteys-

 

it was an easy jump to overdoing it-

 

and piling the Peteys on.

 

If one flustered Petey is funny then an infinite number of them'd be a riot-

I hope. These are representative of the batch of roughs I foist on Stacy every week. Note how they get gradually sloppier as I lose track of the progress of the meager story arc. In fact I had no idea how to end it, so I told Stacy I would do the climactic Saturday strip, which features enough second panel exposition by Alice to frighten off anyone who dislikes text-heavy balloons.

So it all worked out well enough.

I did the Sunday about a month ago. It's photoshopped out of a dozen bits and pieces but, ssshh, don't tell anybody. Alice and Dill have had several Drawing Fights; victory has been disputed in all of them.

It's National Cartoonists Day Again 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 (or her) 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.
• I'll bet he needs a haircut pretty bad.
• 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.
• Are you handy with a pen? Ink some cartoons for him!
• 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.

More Restaurant Closings

This might be the first one I did, c.1999.

Restaurant Closings

Like many newspapers, the Washington Post runs a column listing various health code violations for the week. Each entry describes the circumstances leading to a closure of a food establishment by the investigating health department. Here's a sample of a recent column:

Hollywood Bistro
1800 G St. NW
Closed Friday for operating without a certified food manager.
Lucky Corner Market
5433 Georgia Ave. NW
Closed April 19 for operating without a license, gross unsanitary conditions and operating without a certified food manager. Reopened April 23.
Mid-City Deli
1418 14th St. NW
Closed Friday for failure to minimize vermin, circumstances that might endanger public health and improper food holding temperatures.

It's buried in the Local Living type section along with another column equally enjoyable, the Animal Watch, listing those run ins with animals, wild and domesticated, that've required the intervention of a vested authority. (Its probably-untoppable apex was reached years ago with a report about a squirrel found racing around inside a single-family residence. Two policemen showed up after the homeowner called 911 and quickly isolated the rodent in the living room curtains, but the squirrel broke free and dove into a grand piano. One officer, thinking quickly, played a few bars of something by Toad the Wet Sprocket and the squirrel shot out of the piano and disappeared out the front door.)

These columns appeal to me for all kinds of reasons: the poker faced style, the easily graspable nature of the incidents and, in the case of the health code violations, the fact that restaurants are  fun to draw. When I was doing the Poor Almanac (1997-2009) and was looking for an idea (always) I could usually scare up enough jokes to fill out the cartoon without the desperation being too apparent. Because restaurants are not only fun to draw; they're inherently funny.

Here's one of only 4 or 5 in color, from c. 2000. Lugubrio's is based on a place near Dupont Circle where the lights were so low the waiters were disembodied voices and you ate by feel, often off another's plate.

Note the local cuisine reference, another sore point in DC as it has so few recognizable traits to call its own.

Today's Cul de Sac in Rough Form, April 30 2012

A word of warning: Petey doesn't move a muscle all week. I find it makes things easier to draw if they're static and repetitive (and I hope Stacy agrees). I'm telling you this up front in case you're hoping for big action sequences or derring-do so you're not disappointed.

Today's Cul de Sac, April 29 2012

Alice communes with Nature, in condensed, easily accessible form. Every kid needs a shrub to hide in. I've had several and I was intimately familiar with every inch of dirt it covered (though not familiar enough that I avoided sitting on a slug during a night game of hide and seek).

Here's Alice's first venture into Nature. As always, I thought today's would be easy to draw, but no. Scribbly masses of leaves keep not looking like leaves but only like scribbles unless I fuss with them, and then they look too fussy.

Today's Cul de Sac in Rough Form, April 28 2012

This is the rough of today's strip I sent to Stacy Curtis for inking. I draw the roughs on Canson Marker Layout, a semi-translucent paper, using various sizes of Micron pens. Then I email it to Stacy, who prints it out to his preferred size and slaps it on a lightbox, then inks it on bristol with one of his grungiest, unwashed and most-favorite pens while I take a nap. I did a little photoshop fussing around with the middle panel. It originally had hundreds of tiny zombie toads, and I realized it's an unnecessary cruelty to inflict crowds on my inker, so I simplified it. Some.

And that's how a comic strip collaboration is run these days.

Ernesto

This is a clip job of previous posts and is meant to shed some light on a character who is a little hard to explain.

Below is the first appearance of Ernesto Lacuna, in the Post Magazine. I brought the stranger-than-Petey little boy back a few times, and I gave him the strange attribute that Petey thinks he may be imaginary. His name is a reference to Lacuna, a gap or missing section in a manuscript, text or piece of music, and an obscure musical pun on the name of Cuban composer Ernesto Lacuona (boy, this gets a laff every time, but you'll recognize this). You'll notice he plays the oboe and Petey's got a trombone; this was later reversed. Please excuse the awkward formatting.

Ernesto is one of my favorite characters to write for. He's something of a Bond villain in embryo, as is evident from his remark below about the extinct volcano, and he's enigmatic enough that I can write dialog that doesn't always make sense as long as it's vaguely threatening.

But Ernesto's also unimpressive enough that he's hard to take seriously. He's based on several kids I knew who wanted to grow up in a hurry under the mistaken impression that adults have all the power. Ernesto belongs to a group called Future Adults of America whose purpose is to gradually take over the world so that they'll be running it by the time they're in their forties, and he keeps trying to get Petey to attend FAA meetings. Which, from Ernesto's description, is mostly an excuse to issue position papers and to eat doughnuts. Disliking organized activities and food with holes in it, Petey has declined so far. Maybe he should go sometime, as it'd be fun to draw. This is the kind of idea I love, as I can revisit it, explore it further and get a lot out of it. And nothing's better than that when you're dealing with a daily strip.

During the Summer months, Ernesto barricades himself in a carrel fort in a remote corner of the library. This Sunday strip above is the remnant of a string of dailies featuring one of Ernesto's periodic decline-and-falls. 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.

Ernesto's actuality is best left unexamined, I think.

Maybe he's a wormholian who can slide between realities (I knew kids like this).

Or maybe he's a projection of the zeitgeist. Whatever, he's good for laffs when used sparingly. Some readers find him annoying, though he was a favorite of one of my best editors. Below is my favorite Ernesto appearance (available in the first CdS book or in the Golden Treasury).

Cul de Sac Yesterday and Today, April 21& 22 2012

So I inked these two strips all by myself, which is kind of novel these days.

Either he's gotten a new haircut or I've forgotten how Andre Chang's head is shaped. He's been gradually increasing in size since he was first sighted in the strip 20 months or so ago. Someone told me he's really one of Sendak's Wild Things and there's no stopping him from getting larger and hairier, but that's life.

From August, 2010,when Alice first met Andre. Below, another Dill's Dream Sunday, meaning another excuse to draw something I wouldn't otherwise draw.

Poor Almanac That's Slightly On Topic

As long as we're talking about art auctions, here's an Almanac from 2006, when perfume magnate Ronald Lauder paid about $135 million for a painting by Gustav Klimt. Entitled "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer Wearing the Wallpaper", it was described by Lauder as "our Mona Lisa". Some thought it was maybe not the best buy for $135 million (even though it's got bits of real gold in it).

Anyway, I did this list of mnemonic devices to help others from making the same mistake. These are not to be used by those bidding in tee Team Cul de Sac auction, of course.

Auction Preview

Take a look at this line up! Wouldn't any of them look nice over your sofa or fireplace?

Boing Boing

A few weeks ago I talked to Glenn Fleishman, the well-respected writer on technology who's also been a sound-board operator, typesetter, graphic designer, curriculum developer, course manager, catalog manager, programmer, editor, conference planner, speaker, book-information expert, columnist, reporter and radio guest.

I don't know anything about any of that stuff, so we talked about cartoons, another of Glenn's passions as anyone who follows his lively Twitter feed knows. The wonderful site Boing Boing, home of Tom the Dancing Bug, posted the results of our chat here.

The Auction

Here, for the first time anywhere (unless Chris sparks has beaten me to it), is the official ad that Heritage Auctions has put together for the Team Cul de Sac auction.