Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury cartoonist, talks with Rachel Maddow about his early recognition of Trump as a political contender. He was almost psychic in his comics of 1987 and 1999.
But before that, there’s a funny scene from The Simpsons about the election.
I bought a few pieces of original comic art on Ebay today. I got an original Mutt and Jeff Sunday strip from July 16, 1961, by Al Smith and 10 Winnie Winkle originals by Frank Bolle, from February 1987. Frank drew Winnie two-up – meaning, two strips per page. The pages are 11.5″ x 16.5″
I bought these two sets outright but I bid on an original Bringing Up Father strip from February 21, 1945. I lost out on that one. I thought I had it and as is the case on ebay, someone swooped in at the last second and outbid me. That would have been a nice piece to have.
It’s pen and ink with slight blue pencil and Benday shading causing some staining as seen in scans below.
About 10 years ago, I bought this image of Dick Tracy drawn by Chester Gould and this shoe drawing by Andy Warhol. I don’t have any proof that these are real, but I believe they are. Warhol drew shoe ads for I Magnin, the department store, before the soup cans and before he became ANDY WARHOL.
A couple of years ago, I bought some Flintstone’s cells. I bought four of them, different images, signed by co-creator, Joe Barbera. But they are not cells from actual tv shows or movies so not sure of the value. I’ve tried to resell them over the years with no luck, but I actually like them so I don’t mind keeping them.
I think I may have found a new favorite place in New York City; in Brooklyn, to be exact.
I was wandering around the other day and I checked Google Maps on my iPhone and as I was navigating my way around, I noticed that the New York Transit Museum was highlighted on the map. I was right around the corner, so I walked over. The funny thing is that I couldn’t find the entrance to the museum until I realized that it’s the actual subway stop at the Court Street station. You literally walk down the subway steps and there is the museum. It’s two floors below street level.
On the first level there are lots of items from the past including turnstiles from almost every decade, there are old buses that are deconstructed and you can sit in them and get the feel of driving them.
The purpose of the museum is to “interpret and preserve the history, sociology and technology of land-based public transportation systems in New York City.” There are small replicas of stations from the past and rebuilt trolley models and the best part of all is down below. One platform below the main platform is a trip into the past. Old train cars from the past are right there on the tracks. The old cars are in almost perfect condition. There are cars from 1915 and 1925 and 1938 and so on. There are cars from the 1960s and the red cars you’ll remember from the 7 Line.
Vintage ads are all still in the cars, so you really feel as if you are going back in time when you enter the cars, ghosts of the past fill your mind, just seeing the worn seats and turnstiles makes you wonder and think of all the people who have used the mass transit so many years ago.
When I picture the past, I usually think of sepia tones, but the bright colors of the old cars are amazing.
The older the trains, the more comfortable they seemed to be. There were ceiling fans before air conditioning was introduced and as the years moved on, the trains became less luxurious and more plastic.
The older subway cars reminded me of the old trains you see on westerns, you know, the trains used for long distance travel across the country.
The New York Transit Museum is located at the corner of Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn and accessible by over 20 bus and subway lines. The entrance to the Museum is down two flights of stairs. A second wheelchair accessible entrance is located on the corner of Schermerhorn and Court Streets.
Hours
Tuesday-Friday: 10am – 4pm
Saturday & Sunday: 11am – 5pm
Closed Mondays and major holidays
Admission
Adults $7
Children (2-17) $5
Seniors 62+ $5, free on Wednesdays
Museum Members free
Children under the age of 17 must be accompanied by an adult.
10 With Tom
10 questions in 10 minutes
I got the chance to ask Stephan Pastis, creator of the comic strip, Pearls Before Swine, my Ten With Tom questions last July. I do the Ten With Tom feature once in awhile for the Huffington Post. Stephan has one of the most popular comic strips around, his tipping point was when Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, noticed his work and mentioned it in a blog post. The rest is history. His online readership went through the roof overnight.
He won the 2015 Reuben Award for best newspaper comic strip. I’m trying to follow in his footsteps with my comics, so it truly was an honor doing Ten With Tom with Stephan.
Do people mistake you for Seth Macfarlane?
I’ve heard that before, but the one I hear more is Robert Downey, Jr. I even had a restaurant owner in Dublin, Ireland tell me what an honor it was to have Robert Downey, Jr. in her restaurant. I told her that I appreciated it, but that I didn’t like to be disturbed while dining.
Why do you create your comics 7 months in advance, why so far ahead?
I’m anal retentive. I need to relax.
Are you recognized on the street?
Almost never. Except as Robert Downey Jr. in Dublin.
What are a few of your favorite classic newspaper comics from your childhood?
Far Side
Calvin and Hobbes
Peanuts
Bloom County
Flintstones or Scooby Do?
Scooby. There’s always someone trying to scare away prospective house buyers by filling it with fake ghosts and/or monsters. Knowing that the ghost thing is a sham, I could probably get a great deal on real estate.
Which comic strip would you like to crawl into and spend the day?
Krazy Kat. Lots of peyote and throwing bricks at others.
Dick Tracy or Little Orphan Annie?
It wouldn’t be Annie. Her lack of pupils would be disturbing, particularly if you fell in love. You could never look into her eyes.
What section of the printed daily newspaper today should be eliminated to add more comics?
Many of the comics.
Without looking, what color is Olive Oyl’s dress?
Top half of her is red. Bottom half of her is black. Both halves are probably stained by spinach.
Do you think you’ll ever go digital in creating Pearls Before Swine? Why?
No. Too lazy to learn. Plus, it doesn’t seem like something Robert Downey Jr. would do.
Thank you Stephan!
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On the same day that Richard Thompson passed away, Jack Davis also passed. You may not know the name but if you read Mad magazine you have seen his work and his art graced TV Guide for many years. Just looking at the covers from TV Guide brings back my childhood. These images were seared in my head at the time and just looking at them brings back so many memories. He was the master of crowd scenes.
Here are a few. For so many more, check out Drew Friedman’s blog here.
Richard Thompson is best known for his Cul de Sac comic strip. The strip started running in newspapers in 2007 and ended in 2012 due to his Parkinson’s Disease, which he was diagnosed with in 2009. Cruel irony for a fantastic cartoonist.
More here.
Here’s an enjoyable video called “The Art of Richard Thompson.”
The Art of Richard Thompson from GVI on Vimeo.
This is a rerun of the cartoon I did for when Hillary won Iowa. I just changed the text. 🙂
Saw this on Twitter, I think it was taken by Jason Kvinna, a comic book artist.
It reminds me of a story I did for the Huffington Post called “A Cause to Pause,” where I shared some uplifting messages I saw at a construction site once in New York City.
I like Jason’s work, I may try to interview him (with his permission, of course, well, how can I do it without his permission, actually) for a new series I’m contemplating for the Huffingon Post. I’m thinking of starting this interview series called “Tea with Tom” or something like that, where I interview up and coming artists similar to Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee show, only we’ll get tea and it won’t be comedians, it will be artists and we won’t film it, it will be published online and possibly print.
But the questions will be silly and not even pertain to their art or art at all.
I have some people in mind for this already.
Maybe “Ten With Tom” for the title, it could mean ten minutes or 10 questions.
Miami Art Week during Art Basel can be daunting, hell, just the fact that I have to leave the Grove is a chore in itself. It’s a lot to digest – the noise, the art, the people, it’s a non-stop week that is a lot for the senses. Most of the art begins to look the same after a bit, there is a lot of pop art and a lot of classic, there are sculptures as well as collages and paintings and they all get jumbled together, but this year, one art style and one artist stuck out to me. Literally. That’s Max Zorn, Tape Artist, shown here.
Max’s work appears to be photographs, but the whole image is made from brown masking tape on acrylic glass sheets with light behind it! As I passed by his booth at the Spectrum Art Fair, I noticed that there was tape on one of the images he was working on, I couldn’t figure out what was going on at first, I thought he was putting tape on various areas of a photograph, then it dawned on me that the whole image was made from masking tape!
Max got the idea one night when he put tape on top of a street light, he then stared playing with the tape and as he added more layers, it changed coloring, getting darker as he added tape on top of tape. And his Tape Art was born from that.
“The European tape is different than American tape and I find it interesting and challenging at first when I change tapes in the different countries. The thickness is different,” said Max, who lives in Amsterdam and shows his work around the world.
Max will be at the Spectrum Art Show all weekend, until December 6, which is at 1700 NE 2nd Avenue (new location this year, along with the Red Dot Fair). There is parking across the street, it’s easy to get to and park.
A gallery of Max’s art can be seen here at his website.
I just got off the L train. I met my cousins in Ridgewood, Queens, and took the L from Union Square to Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues. Ridgewood is the new up and coming neighborhood in New York. There was SoHo, then the Lower East Side, the Meat Packing District and Williamsburg and now it’s Ridgewood. The L train is the train into Hipsterland, but not so long ago, it was the link between Manhattan and a working class Brooklyn.
As I took the train this time and usually when I take the L train, I think of days past, days before my time, and I think of the ghosts of the subway and the Brooklyn neighborhoods that we pass through. Bedford, Graham Avenue, Lorimar Street, Montrose Avenue and so on. They are names from my past, you see my father and his sister and their mother (my grandmother) and a lot of our relatives lived here so many years ago. I picture them in Brooklyn 1945 and thinking of them on this same subway line. The trains of course, were different and they called it the BMT, (Brooklyn Manhattan Transfer), my aunt told me Saturday – they changed it later to the LL, rather than L, to differentiate it from the EL, which was the elevated train. But it was the same route, the same stops and even the same tiles on the wall that spell out the stations. Those same exact tiles were seen and perhaps touched by my father and grandmother 70 and 80 years ago.
I had an old aunt, who in the 1980s, told me about the first day the line opened in 1905 and how that first week the rides were free to the public; they were a nickle after that. She told me of her first hand experience, remembering it vividly, she must have been seven years old at the time. I read a book once called “When Brooklyn Was the World.” That’s the time period I think of as I ride the L train today. To me the train is “The footprint of a lost world,” a quote I got from Anthony Bourdain.
Now as I ride the line I see hipsters who have taken over the neighborhood. There they are with their ipods and iphones and skateboards and beards and manbuns and fedoras; acting all cool and as if they have discovered something new. Do they ever think about the people who were there before them? Probably not.
It’s the same with all the train lines in the city, there is so much history, but visiting Graham Avenue and Lorimar Street and Bedford, as a child and hearing so many stories of my father’s childhood, it makes me think of all those ghosts of times past. My mother grew up near Coney Island, so those train lines have meaning too, but I don’t take them as often as I take the L train. I think of my father taking the train to Ebbets Field, or my grandmother taking him to the doctor’s office or visiting relatives, in a time that was much simpler.
People have come and gone, but the subway lines are still running, on the same routes on the same tracks, among all those ghosts of happy times past.
Here is an old film of the 1905 subway in New York. It isn’t the L line, but you can get the idea of the time period.
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