FRAGMENT: Gyyyyyrrooooshcope!

Early on in this blog (almost five years ago, actually), I mentioned my love for the tantalizing fragments of comic books I sometimes encountered as a child. Since that post, and due to the blessing of having a full-time job that keeps me too busy to do more than fragments, I have often found it entertaining to create individual panels or pages that are intentionally teasing but nebulous in their nature and direction, just for the fun little rabbit trails they lead me down.

The above panel being a case in point.

Who is this mysterious “he” who donated the piece of technology?  And what is the problem plaguing our heroes? And why will a gyroscopic device help? And do we really want to put our trust in a pig-like being who has no idea what a gyroscope even is???

Your guess is as good as mine.

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He wants us out of Afghanistan… AND he can make trains levitate!!!!

So good it makes my brain hurt!

Trade Loeffler’s web comic Zip and Li’l Bit is one of those beautiful treasures that makes my heart race. It is such an incredible, sweet, funny, playful, joyous body of work, and he has so perfectly captured the true essence of comic greats of the past, that I’m tempted to say everyone else should just quit trying. There are three stories so far- Upside Down Me, Sky Kayak, and now Captain’s Quest.

You HAVE to read it! But be warned, it is highly addictive.

Wait. His name WASN’T Trippy?

Remember when you saw your first “Draw Me” ad? Maybe it was in the back of a comic book. Or on a matchbook cover. Or in TV Guide.

You old-timers know what I’m talking about..the ones that promised you an exciting career in cartooning if your rendition of the supplied art was deemed worthy of a scholarship to the prestigious Art Instruction Schools. There was Cubby the bear, a pirate, a cowboy…and, of course, Tippy the Turtle. My main memory of those ads was that, even as a kid, I knew there was no real creativity involved in just copying someone else’s art.

Don’t get me wrong. As a child, I did my fair share of copying other people’s work, and even (gasp!) tracing it on occasion. But I was working on my technique, not my creativity, in those instances, and I knew it. I think that differentiation is lost on a LOT of people.

Anyway, before I get too soap-boxy, I present for your viewing pleasure my take on Tippy. Hope you enjoy it. And if you can draw it exactly as it looks…well….you have too much time on your hands.

And you need therapy.

Gator Ball!

My son is playing his first year of basketball on our church league. Their team name is the Gators, so I whipped up a quick mascot drawing for them.

I chose to do the animal gator, because I figured it was safe to assume that my church wasn’t referring to the 1970s Burt Reynolds movie Gator when they named my son’s team. Then again, you never know……naming them after the movie would explain why they included a fake mustache and sideburns as part of the required uniform.

TOP DOG!

Curiouser and curiouser….

On a whim, I decided to check out my blog stats in regards to the search terms people used that led them to my site. The number one search term, used over FIVE HUNDRED times, was “cartoon dogs”.

Now, don’t get me wrong…I absolutely love dogs, and I think it is abundantly clear how I feel about cartoons, but I never would have guessed that would be such a popular search topic. And, just think, those more than five hundred visitors are probably just the tip of the ice berg. Who knows how many more surfers keyed in “cartoon dogs” but opted not to visit my particular contribution to the subject?

I think I may have stumbled onto a secret cartoon dog cult!

But seriously, if you are one of my readers who came to this post because you were searching for cartoon dogs, I’d love to hear from you. Was it more the cartoon aspect or the dog aspect you were looking for? Are you a big fan of all things cartoonified, or mainly dogs? How ’bout cats? Or are there, as in the non-cartoon world, “dog” people and “cat” people, and never the twain shall meet (without a bunch of snarling and hissing)?

Please help alleviate my curiosity.

If you weren’t what you are, what would you be?

If you could choose any occupation for yourself, regardless of whether or not it would pay the bills….or if you even have a talent for it….what would it be? Maybe you’re a nurse who has secretly always wanted to be a stand-up comic. Or a garbage man who has persistent fantasies of owning a car dealership. Or vice versa.

I am currently an art director/illustrator, so my “fantasy job” isn’t that far removed from my real job. I would be a comic book illustrator.

My only fear is that I would probably offend the devotees of whatever comic book character I got to work on. You see, I have a hard time taking seriously anybody-male or female, real or fictional-who wears tights or ludicrously skimpy clothing. You know the old bit of advice they give people with stage fright? The one about imagining your audience naked so you won’t feel intimidated? Well, not me pal. For me, it’s tights. Tights and capes. And maybe a few ill-advised thongs thrown into the mix, just to really amp up the ridiculous factor.

But anyway, I digress…back to my original question: What would you be? I’d love to hear from you. Tell me what you currently do for a living, and what you wish you could do for a living.

And the next time someone intimidates you, don’t forget to break out the imaginary capes and thongs.

Surly Curmudgeons

Curmudgeons…hate to be around ’em….but I LOVE to doodle ’em.

That can actually be said for a lot of the things I doodle. Possums? They stink to high heaven, but add a certain comic element to a doodle that a plain old cat or dog would be hard pressed to provide. The same goes for dragons and gremlins.

The comic element part, not the stinky part.

However, I’ve never actually sniffed a dragon OR a gremlin. And now that I think of it, I imagine they’re both probably pretty pungent aroma-wise, too.

Then again, a dragon could exude the soft, sweet scent of peach blossoms, and a gremlin could smell like hot buttered bread. Mmmmmm…hot buttered bread. Makes you want to go out and bite a gremlin, don’t it?

The enlarged detail pics are there because I love the texture that colored pencils create, and that can only be fully appreciated when you zoom in. And also, if you stare a long time into the eyes of the curmudgeon on the left, you’ll be overcome by the irresistible urge to send me vast quantities of cash (small denominations, unmarked bills only, please).

Woot like ya mean it, dangit!

Woot…

It’s a little known word derived from the Norse wüt , which means “Hey, Dagmar…come get your stinky goat outta my cabbage patch before I have to go and get all viking on you!”*

It also just struck me as the appropriate sound for a guy with no bones to make as he’s straining with every fiber of his being to point at something.

*getting “viking” on someone is not really as scary as it sounds, depending on who’s doing the viking-ing. It can range from burning and pillaging all the way down to simply forcing someone to listen as you recite a 13-hour long epic poem about a man and a bucket of curdled milk. Or, if the person dealing out the vikingness happens to be a woman of rather zaftig proportions, she may choose to mete out her Nordic vengeance by singing opera.

This latter form, of course, has been banned by the UN and the Geneva Convention as cruel and unusual punishment. 

Ten Thousand??? Hoodathunkit?

I don’t write about politics, sports, technology, religion or celebrities (the biggies, if blog stats are to be believed), yet in just eight months people have chosen to voluntarily expose their brains to my doodlefied view of reality more than ten thousand times.

I know…I know…ten thousand is nothing to the heavy hitters of blogdom. That’s just a regular day’s worth of traffic for them. Or even a slow day. But, hey, it’s still pretty cool considering my blog has the intellectual nutritional value of cardboard.

So, for all my readers, I’d like to say thanks. Unless all the visits have really just been a single chimp in a lab cage somewhere smacking away at a computer keyboard in the hopes of being rewarded with a banana. Or Fig Newtons™.

I’d do it ten thousand times for Fig Newtons.

I LOVE those things!