Small things

Here's another teaser quote from that impatiently-awaited, incipient best-seller the Art of Whosis (as  seen on TV!*), But this time I include some actual text, taken from an actual PDF of the actual book, to sweeten the deal! Once again the part of "BW" is played by Bill Watterson while I assay the rôll of "RT" (we did funny accents),

This is what I was trying to get at in the previous post about the specific vs. the general. A comic strip is the ideal medium to bear small ideas (no jokes, please), especially one with little kids in it. I'll show you; here's a strip from the Post Magazine that's not in the Complete Cul de Sac because I forgot about it, even though it's one of my favorites; I gave it to my brother for Christmas. He kindly lent it back for use in the Art book. 

That's taken from a true, well I hate to call it a "story"; it's barely an anecdote. But both of us remembered it, that one inch gap between iron and shirt that made the animatronic maid's efforts so stupidly poignant. Woodie's windows were an important part of Christmastime for us as it was for many in the DC area, so I knew this would resonate back when CdS was a local strip.

Here's perhaps the height, or nadir, of smallness. For a week Dill followed that bug. You can't get much punier. Yet in  the last year of CdS, I tried some microscopic gags, all to make producing  the strip easier.

This is a rough for Stacy Curtis to ink. A week of repeating the same scene led to this-

 

In short, the constant search for Ways to Do Things Faster, the Shortcuts to Fill the Page, make smallness ideal.  Look at one of my favorites-

There's so little movement in it that I used the same rough for 8 panels! Alice is the only movement, and she's just fidgeting around. And the smallness is carried through the dialog; casual chitchat that goes nowhere. I'm almost embarrassed to've constructed a whole strip around this.

But that's my other point; that a comic can be made up out  of the mist desultory, small, nothing  banter imaginable and successfully present a legitimate funny, universal idea. And there's a chance you'll make your deadline.

* THAT PART ABOUT IT BEING ON TV ISN'T TRUE.

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It's the Alice Shirt and it comes in 20 colors.

On the front is Alice mauling Polyfill.

On the back is the title of a forgotten comic strip.

You wear this shirt. Chicks dig it.

Agreed; The Specific is Funnier Than The General

In the last chapter of the forthcoming must-have book of the year, the Art of Some Guy, I bloviate, dilate & expound on comic strips at excruciating length with Bill Watterson, with a few unrelated ventures into global politics, sports and fashion. At one point, there's this exchange;

RT: I remember one of the first interviews I gave to some reporter somewhere. She called and I told her "the particular is always more funny than the general." And she said, "could you be more specific?" (BW and  RT laugh). And I couldn't! I hemmed and hawed for ten minutes! (Laughter).

My point is not that I can hem & haw for ten minutes (my current personal best for hemming & hawing is 24 hours). My point is the Specific is funnier than the General. It's axiomatic, whatever that means, and I still can't think of any specific examples. So let's run some strips to distract you and make you think you've learned something.

Be sure to watch for future helpful & informative tutorials on the comic arts!

The Poodle in the Playground

Here's something so old I'd almost forgotten it. For the Post Magazine of  June 21,1998 I did a piece suggested by my friend Bruce Guthrie, a close student of history, taken from a tourist guidebook to odd places. I even went to the playground so the drawing would be accurate. Strangely, this listing was gone in the next edition. My thanks to Mike Rhode for ferreting this out.

LAST CHANCE TO PANIC

I hate to alarm anybody but there are only ten copies of Richard's Poor Almanac left on the planet. I had 500, bought at firesale rates from a sinking publisher, but now those are gone. Like the passenger pigeon they once darkened the skies, but, alas, no longer. And who is to blame? All the greedy people who're hoarding copies of RPA in false walls, toasters, attics and under floorboards, like in Fahrenheit 451.

But panic no further! Those of you wanting a copy of this understandably scarce book will be happy to hear that now you can snag a copy for a reasonable sum. One More Page Books, my friendly neighborhood bookstore that also stocks the Collected CdS, has a supply of RPAs on hand, all signed by me. Copies are going for $15 (I think) and they'll ship your book right to your door for just $4. Run on over to 2200 N. Westmoreland Street, Suite 101 Arlington, VA,  22213 or call 703-300-9746 or email info@onemorepagebooks.com and tell 'em to send you a copy and quick, or you'll have some kind of Richard's Poor Almanac-related syncope.

These charts once appeared on Amazon's RPA page. I have no idea what they mean.

"BABY BLUES" Artist Comes Unglued- A Blog Exclusive

We have photographic proof that the well-known adult cartoonist Rick Kirkman has had an "episode" which has left him a virtual four-year-old. He is seen dancing around on a manhole cover holding some unidentified colorful  objects, possibly an explosive device. The landscape appears to be volcanic, leading experts to speculate he may have fallen, or been  pushed,  into  a caldera while playing tea party or maybe it was bath time.

Whatever, lock your doors.

Creating Character

 IN HEROIC MODE, ANDRE STRIKES KIRBY-ESQUE POSES.

Character is a mystery. Someone said that the shallowest human being is infinitely more complex than even the best-written creation, so what's the use? I always scared myself off trying a comic strip because it seemed too difficult and incomprehensible. How could I build a water-tight character that'd walk off the page and respond in ways that'd surprise me? Then I'd see Walt Kelly do it with ease, and I'd want to punch him.

I think part of the trick is to start small and to work with opposites; Alice & Petey worked as foils because they were total opposites. I called them the Irresistible Force and the Immovable Object. Also, they liked each other, or at least tolerated each other; early on, they were more argumentative and it wasn't funny. Stand outside your own work when it seems to get too thick and it clogs up, y'know?

Petey Otterloop may have been my Magnum Opus in character design, as some would say, but he's really  a list of opposites with enough of me thrown in to make him hold together. He's the anti-Bart Simpson, the mirror image of cool. I even chose the name Petey because it 's got a finger-snappin', G-droppin' quality that's so alien... What can I say? irony's good for a laff.. 

No, where I think I got it right is in Petey's cohorts from Cartoon Camp; Loris Slothrop & especially Andre Chang (the connection to Andre the Giant didn't occur to me). Loris is kinda one-joke: she's fast and full of energy. But Andre has depth. They were designed out of necessity; Petey needed a milieu, he was surrounded by nothing but little kids and he needed somebody his own size to pick on him. I had to think-what would a friend of Petey's look like or be like? The same but the opposite. Large where Petey is small and loud where Petey'd be quiet.

I am absurdly proud of Andre. 

HEROESCON 2014

I drew this logo for the blog in 2008, a simpler time, before economic malaise, before newspapers were being sold to internet jackanapes, before my kids heard of X-box 360s, before Deep Brain Stimulation, before Cherrydale Rehab Facility, before Parkinson's or before anything bad had even been thought of,  and logos could proudly flaunt their black-and-whiteness because the designer was lazy.

So here's to Heroescon 2014, and all the heroes gathered in Charlotte this weekend. Wish I were there.

 

Illustration Art

David Apatoff is a confusing guy;  one moment he's dressed like an undertaker and analyzing whether the accounting practices of a multinational organization satisfied the control requirements of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,  then suddenly he's posting some silly cartoon thing on his blog, Illustration Art.

for the Class of 2014

I've never been to a college graduation, but I've been to lots of high school graduations. This is one of my favorite old Almanacs and it's now up on GoComics. I thought of the BC joke first, although Galactus' mortarboard  makes me laugh harder.

That Wyeth Guy

They're having a show at the National Gallery of some of Andrew Wyeth's calendar-ready brown paintings, so I went down for a quick spin through it with some friends. The gift shop was very tasteful. My friend Nick likes Wyeth a lot, and one of the visiting firemen with us was okay with him, though he preferred Jamie, the cute one. I've always had problems with most Wyeths, except N.C. So I drew this, but didn't know what to do with it, about 20 years ago. I still like it.

The Tenth Pie

Phil Nel, bon vivant, globe-trotter, author, visionary topiarist, comics fan, writes about Cul de Sac in his blog, Nine Kinds of Pie.

Did Somebody Ask for This?

I thought someone wanted one. Well, here it is anyway, the

Silly Cosmology Mug

Exclusive to the Otterloop Store

Only $14.95!

YOU ASKED FOR IT!

Well, Mike Peterson asked for it, anyway. It's the

PINHEAD MUG

Available only at the 

OTTERLOOP STORE

for only $14.95!

"Helps me remember why I drink coffee."

Otterloopiana

These are two pages of caracter drawings I did for Universal Press (I'm stuck on the old name) for the strip's sales kit in 2007. Syndicate salesman send these brochures, with samples, descriptions, etc., to propspective newspapers. The cover of the first book, This Exit, is from the cover of the sales kit.

I was real happy with the way these characters turned out, especially Ms. Otterloop, who I always had trouble drawing, as she's rather formless. I even fooled myself into thinking I'd figured out how to draw them.

The Pinhead Ballet

From about 1980-1990 there were several portfolio pieces I worked and reworked, as I was 1. anxious to show my best possible stuff to the fantastical and somewhat imaginary audience of art directors, all of whom were hypercritical geniuses, and 2. put it off as long as I could. Among the pieces, which also include a cartoon slapstick version of Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun (don't ask) and illustrations for Voltaire's Candide, was a thing I called the Pinhead Ballet.

 

It began as most tthings do- a random little sketch, on a page of the same.

I recognized the sketch's potential and imagined it as one in a series, probably the last one. It was even titled "the Tragic Outcome" or something.. The trouble was none of the other sketches were as nasty as the first.

That one went through all kinds of stylistic permutations. Finally, in about 1990 I tried it as a painting, 

A really ugly painting, like you'd find in an elderly relative's scary basement; painted by unknown hands and it hasn't aged well either. When it was finished I put a 2-step varnish on that would give it a fake  cracquelleur (fun stuff), put it in a frame and hung it on the wall.  Then Caitlin Mcgurk took it off the wall, out of the frame and put it in a case in Columbus, Ohio.

Pretty Picture

Of a fat man eating our planet (who does he think he is, Galactus?), done for I forget. This post and others are part of my self-defeating plan to publish everything from the Art of Richard Thompson and drive down sales.

Bee!

This came out real well, as I was aiming for a smooth, yet subtly gradation in the background, and a big, scary bee in the fore. Of course, this is from 1990, so how can I remember what I was aiming for?

HOI-YO TOHO!

To make up for the last post, and to lessen the intensity somewhat, here's this from the Post Health section.

Two Centuries and One Year of Rigid Vogner*

Richard  Wagner was the first composer whose work I had a real infatuation with. I was in 11th grade and the history teacher, Mr. Honey, was introducing us to early 20th century European history. He dimmed the lights and turned on the record player in the back of the classroom and picked out some mood music, as he often did, and- Wait, you know what's coming next, right?

Well, suffice it to say that the details of the early stirrings of national feeling in post-World War I Germany were for me lost in the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin. Immediately after the class I hit the school library and checked out an LP called something like "Best of Wagner", with excerpts from his operas. Including both of the Lohengrin preludes, Die Meistersinger Prelude, and the Overture to Tannhauser, which became my particular favorite and was the first thing I ever picked out and memorized on my brother's piano. Well, the first page, anyway; right afterward it gets too hard.

The opening theme is then repeated with a galloping accompaniment that made my hair walk around on my head. It's a tune that gets heavy play in the Chuck Jones classic "What's Opera,  Doc?" Pompous, vain and dictatorial, Wagner was a peach to draw, with a wardrobe straight out of a upholsterer's nightmare. Then there're his opinions, expressed loudly and at length, on politics, art, race, everything, each more hateful than the last. And yet, when the Ring begins in the E-flat darkness of a riverbed, when Wotan says farewell to his favorite daughter forever, when Eva launches the great quintet on Johannestag in medieval Nurnberg, all is forgiven, at least for the moment.  

So you know I'm going to try drawing this guy, for my own amusement if no one else's. His face is quite distinctive and caricatures easily, especially when topped off by one of the theatrical hats he affected.      

I had an ingenious technical idea: I'd paint the final in oils, but I'd use two colors that would fight each other. I'd use lead white and bitumen; lead white because it's fast- drying, permanent and thick, and bitumen because it was popular in the 19th Century, never fully dries, and therefore almost destroyed the 19th Century art it was used in.  Over time, the painting would slowly fall apart, becoming dramatically uglier as the layers of paint, of equal permanence, shifted and cracked.

However, I got bored with the whole project. The painting was dull and didn't, as I secretly hoped, explode, but the sketches of Wagner were good. Here are a few.        

Besides, I get fed up with Wagner and his shenanigans, easily. I prefer Brahms. They had a good deal of mutual dislike, tempered by mutual respect. I'll bet Brahms would win if they ever had a rasslin' match though.