The blog of Richard Thompson, caricaturist, creator of "Cul de Sac," and winner of the 2011 Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Rough Week


Here's an exclusive first look at a future week of Cul de Sacs in early rough form. Uh-oh, spoiler alert! You can see I'm firing on all eight cylinders with this sequence, and the three Sunday roughs on the right are obviously instant classics. Even the last one, which I can't decipher (I think it says "Farley undied").

Actually, no, I dropped the fourth and fifth strips, labeled "closet", because they're pretty obviously not funny, and substituted two called "cart". So I'm only firing on about six cylinders. But this is what my initial rough for a week looks like, when I tally up the loose ideas stirring around in my head to see if there are enough to fill a week, or even two. 

There's a kind of raw power and beauty to this stage of the process, I think, and it's lost when the extraneous elements are added. You know, the lettering, the drawing, the squared boxes, the point, all the things that editors deem as necessary for a comic strip and that clutter up my time. In the future this will all be so much easier, when they develop that Wacom tablet that you'll wear like a hat, with its instant imaging cranial interface that'll further undermine the existence of print, or paper, or pen & ink, or any kind of instrumentality at all. Then we'll be like the Krell in Forbidden Planet. If "Monsters from the Id" wasn't too close to the title of an existing comic strip I'd go ahead and copyright it right now.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Bugs


My studio is in the basement and I see these things sometimes. This time of year they're revolting little harbingers of Spring

Kim Jong il, Bobblehead

Back when the Almanac was printed wider, and sometimes even in color, I did a few cut-out bobbleheads of newsworthy individuals. And who's more newsworthy than weirdly foreshortened megalomaniac Kim Jong Il? Actually I'm just posting this as a consolation toy for all of you who didn't want to cough up $48 for a tiny rubber Raymond Scott.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Art

I swiped a bit of dialog for today's Cul de Sac (above) from an illustration I dId for Why Things Are at least 14 years ago (below). The small girl in the illustration, who's something of a proto-Alice, is my then-expected older daughter Emma, who turned out to look only slightly like that. What I like best is the drawing Emma's done. I wish I could draw like that all the time. It's probably dangerous to think you're drawing with childlike innocence and immediacy; dangerous only in that you're just kidding yourself. Adult perspective is not so lightly overthrown. But maybe if you think of it as post-expressionism it's okay, and by you of course I mean me. Wouldn't it be fun to draw the whole strip in this style? And by fun I mean for me. Probably less so for you, or for the people who complain about stylistic changes in comic strips.

And, seriously, that's a little better than most four year olds draw, if I do say so myself.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Raymond Scott, Bath Toy


In honor of the centennial of the birth of musical mad scientist Raymond Scott, the toy company Presspop has produced an action figure of the poor unsuspecting man. It's terrifyingly realistic, and includes a CD, a clavivox and a pointing finger to play the clavivox with.


You know Scott's music whether you know it or not. Likely it's permeated your consciousness through its use in old Warner Brother's cartoons via Carl Stalling. And there are a dozen or more CDs of Scott's music, some performed by him and his quintette, others by bands like the Beau Hunks. Scott himself made an appearance in Michael Chabon's Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, at a party where Salvador Dali wore a deep sea diving suit. And now you can have your very own six inch tall Raymond Scott to fill that Raymond Scott-size space on your shelf.


My thanks to Ted Pratt for pointing this out to me.

Today's Poor Almanack


I'm not sure this makes much sense, but it made me laugh when I thought it up (which is often a warning sign). Originally there was as set-back-your-clock joke in there somewhere too, but it got lost in the final. And I'm not sure if "Pecunia Fugit" is correct, because I don't know Latin.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Cul de Sac on YouTube, Updated Slightly


This is pretty cool!

Well, it was pretty cool, but it's gone now. More later.....

Update: it should be up  again next week. I'll let you know.

Comic-Con Magazine


A few months back I did a joint interview with the below-mentioned genius, Stephan Pastis, for Comic-Con Magazine, courtesy of the gracious Gary Sassaman. Well, the whole magazine is online here. You can turn the pages and everything, and little lap cards fall out of your computer screen. You'll instantly notice that Stephan is better-spoken, better-groomed and generally more thoughtful than I am. I think he's taller, too.

March


Here's a repost from last year, only because we're expecting 5 to 8 inches of snow.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

What Stephan Pastis Does While Waiting for his Tuna Sandwich


Stephan Pastis, the genius behind Pearls Before Swine, orders a tuna sandwich for lunch, and amuses himself unconstructively by doing this.

Today's Poor Almanack


Here's a slice of desperate graveyard humor for the imploding newspaper business. If they could only reposition themselves as something more necessary, newspapers might survive. Did you know that you can clean glass with a newspaper and white vinegar?

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Mardi Gras Parade 2009


The First Family makes its way down Wilson Blvd on Fat Tuesday (photo thanks to Jennifer Hart, Arlington), and they're followed by Gov. Palin, below (photo thanks to Bono Mitchell). I appreciate these as I was stuck at home and missed all the fun. My daughter Charlotte represented the family, kindly chaperoned by Mike Rhode and his daughter Claire.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Awaiting the Parade


Sarah and Barack can't wait to meet you at the Mardi Gras Parade, Tuesday at 8 pm, Courthouse to Clarendon on Wilson Blvd in Arlington.

Wouldn't this make a good illustration for a kinda scary children's book?

My thanks to Bono for the photo!

Oscar (R) Repeat


Here, I posted this last year, but too late to do anybody any good.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Today's Poor Almanack


This isn't entirely true. I did see Wall-E. And this may be the clumsiest lettering I've done, at least for this month.

When Worlds Collide, Part Five


Here's the grisly finale to our little story.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

When Worlds Collide, Part Four

I'm proud to have done the first cartoon featuring an assorted jellies caddy. 

Mardi Gras Parade 2009

You may remember the above from last year.

Here's this year's Clarendon Mardi Gras poster. Various diverse hands have been constructing larger than life versions of some Almanac finger puppets to amaze and amuse the crowd.

Barack Obama, left, the magnificent Bono Mitchell, right.

When Worlds Collide, Part Three


Is that thing a tiki head, an Easter Island head or Abraham Lincoln? I just figure it's a pretty off-putting restaurant tchotchke and not at all condusive to fine dining.

You'll note "lowering" was changed to "glowering" in the final version, if you have time for such things.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

When Worlds Collide, Part Two



Since I've got nothing to say and no time to say it, I'll just post the week's Cul de Sacs. Here are Tuesday's and Wednesday's. A commenter on gocomics suggests the P.J. stands for pepperjack, which seems reasonable.