Pop Culture – Page 12

Gary Larson is forcing my hand

After posting about how much I love single panel comics, I see that The Far Side is coming back. Everyone is making a big deal about changes on the website here: thefarside.com. It’s been updated after years of being dormant.

Could it be reruns or new stuff? Speculation is that it will start up again on January 1, 2020 because it first appeared on January 1, 1980. So will it start up again fresh, will it be reruns or what on January 1, 2020? Of course I think we all hope for new stuff!

Anyway, to that end, how can I compete, how can anyone compete? After Gary Larson left the scene on January 1, 1997 (Gary likes January 1st), there were lots of new single panel comics appearing to try and fill the space left.

Now the Gemini in me has changed course regarding my comic strip/panel. I’m thinking of now starting up a strip, rather than a panel and have a usual sitcom style thing going.

I like the name I trademarked in the past, “Hal and High Water,” and originally it was about living in a world where the whole planet is submerged due to global warming, but now with the major hurricanes we are seeing these past few years and the real threat of global warming, it doesn’t seem like a funny idea to play around with in a comic strip. So I’ll keep the name “Hal and High Water,” and keep Hal and one or two of the other characters and reformat it.

The premise is explained like this on Twitter: “Comic strip. Hal’s wife threw him out. Now he ends up traveling the world in an old rickety boat with his best friend. Adventures await!”

It’s a bit more exciting than that and I see a lot of interesting and fun things happening. I’d like to incorporate my own travels into the strip and use real scenery that I encounter. I’ve been practicing drawing lots of boats lately, I guess that will be a big feature in the strip.

I’m not sure of a start date, but was thinking of January 1, 2020, too. If it’s good enough for Gary Larson . . .

Anyway, I’ll post on a website, not sure where yet, and also daily on Facebook and Instagram. You may not realize, but Instagram is really a great place to read comics, with the feature where you can swipe through the panels, it’s an excellent place to find new comics.

You can follow along now for updates and things like that along with Twitter.

Here are the social media links:

Hal and High Water Twitter: twitter.com/HalAndHighWater
Hal and High Water Instagram: instagram.com/HalAndHighWater
Hal and High Water Facebook: facebook.com/HalAndHighWater

My brush with cartooning greatness

Lee Salem passed away earlier this week. I had conversations with Lee about cartooning and also Jay Kennedy, both heads of the big cartoon syndicates – Lee ran Universal Press Syndicate (now known as Andrew McMeel and GoComics.com) and Jay ran King Features.

In the mid 1990s I had sent them my work and they both liked it and both engaged with me. In other words, I didn’t receive form letters of rejection, which is usually the case, they were both nice enough to reject me personally.

In Lee’s case, he felt that my work was too much like The Far Side, which I believe had just ceased publication around that time. Today there seems to be many panel cartoons in that vein, but I guess right after Gary Larson left the scene, they didn’t want copies cropping up. I didn’t realize I was doing the same thing, but I must have been influenced enough by Gary that I was drawing weird single panel comics.

far-side But look at this famous Far Side comic panel; still hysterical today, just as it was the day it was published. I felt it was a compliment to be compared to him.

I’ve always loved single panel comics. I’m not sure why, but I was always drawn to them more than comic strips. Maybe it’s the concise nature, where you only have the one space to tell your story in the most economic way. I’m really not sure. I still love Hazel and Charles Addams, Out Our Way, They’ll Do It Every Time, Flubs & Fluffs, Dennis the Menace and so many more. But that’s not to say I don’t enjoy comic strips, but I do find myself drawn the less wordy ones, so maybe that’s why I like panels; they’re less wordy.

In Jay’s case, I remember receiving a personally written note from him, I have it somewhere and I’ll share it some time when I find it, but he encouraged me to continue my work and he asked to buy some of the current submissions and for the next few years I was part of “The New Breed,” which featured single panel cartoons by various cartoonists each day.

I would send the syndicate a bunch, maybe 20 or 25 at a time and they would purchase maybe five of them. They would send back the ones they wanted edited (change this word, move that shading, things like that) and I would make the changes and send the comic back and it was published in about 300 daily newspapers a few weeks later. Many who are published today started cartooning for The New Breed feature. It was a way for them to groom cartoonists before the internet.

I regret not continuing with them after a couple of years. I had started a business and that took off and I guess I became too busy to continue with the comics on a regular basis. A less than smart decision on my part at the time, although I’ve lived a very good life thanks to my business.

I’m ready to start publishing again. I’m preparing comics for daily publication, I keep going back and forth between a strip and my single panel Tomversation comic, which I tend to love more.

Some of my favorite comics strips

ipso-facto1

Some of my favorite comics these days are Ipso Facto by Mike Wallster. It’s about one of the last remaining video stores in the country called Eddie’s Video Paradise. I love the drawing style and it’s funny.

Mike has started posting again after a long absence and in color now. I hope he keeps up the schedule, I enjoy seeing it.

ipso-facto2 ipso-facto3

I also like War and Peas by Elizabeth Pich and Jonathan Kunz. I also love the drawing style, it draws you in. It seems simple at first, but it’s actually quite intricate.

war-and-peas1 war-and-peas2

Also, a bit new is Macanudo by Liniers. It’s a bit weird and sometimes hard to understand, but that’s what makes it great. Even greater is the drawing. I’ve never seen it printed in newspapers, I’ve just seen it online. I’m not sure seeing it printed in newspapers would do it justice. Is the quality diminished, you know, I mean does the line work show up well? Does the color pop out like it does online?

The one comic shown here is word for word taken from the first Peanuts strip ever. Word for word. And it works!

macanudo1 macanudo2 macanudo3

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I want my ‘Big Brother’

So CBS tv is throwing a tantrum and they are upset with ATT Uverse, my cable company. And to that end, CBS took itself off of ATT Uverse, so we can’t get CBS shows now.

This normally wouldn’t be a big deal because I realized I don’t watch much CBS. Currently only two shows – Big Brother and CBS Sunday Morning. I mostly watch reality tv on cable channels now and a lot of PBS.

I watched the Big Brother episodes the next day on the CBS app on my phone but realized that a few years back I bought a little tv that I can watch with the old fashioned antenna, like this one here. I had forgotten about it. What’s funny is that I didn’t have tv for a few weeks after Hurricane Irma two years ago and I never thought of the antenna tv, I just did without tv for a few weeks, at night I watched YouTube videos on my cell phone.

The little tv was in the closet the whole time and it never dawned on me. But when it comes to Big Brother, it was all hands on deck, I needed a solution, and I remembered the little antenna tv. Hurricanes, no. Big Brother, yes!

I hope it works. I haven’t tried it out for years.

Manhattanhenge

So tonight was Manhattenhenge in NYC. Over the years I would just notice it as I walked down the street or stepped outside a bar or something, there wasn’t really a fuss over it. But now, it’s all over the news, they tell you what streets to go to and the best places to see it so tonight, I found myself among hundreds, if not 1000 people on the corner of 34th Street and Park Avenue.

The best part was the people. We would get into the street when the light turned red and look for it, counting the minutes down and when the light changed green, we ran back to the sidewalks, so that traffic could pass. And then repeat that same thing every time the light changed.

As the sun began to take it’s place in the center of the street, between the buildings, everyone just ran into the middle of the street and no car could get by, it was a standstill. Cars beeped their horns, but what were they going to do, run over 1000 people?

Soon a cop showed up in a little car, I thought that was the end of that. But you know what he did? He stopped the traffic. He just stopped all vehicled where they were, it just stopped in all directions and people took over the intersetion and we took our fill of pictures!

So here’s what I got on my iphone – Manhattanhenge July 2019.

Sticking up for printed newspapers

newspapers1

A guy posted this old photo of people reading the newspapers on a subway in NYC on a Facebook page I follow. He commented on how people used to read the papers daily and mentions that he hasn’t read a paper in years. I mean years, like since the 1990s, he says.

If he felt some sort of way to post the photo, why not support the newspapers once in awhile and buy printed copy? He makes it seem like something from the past that can’t be attained anymore, when all he has to do is go out and buy one – a fresh one, printed today with today’s news and features!

newspapers2

Other people were mentioning that they hadn’t read a printed paper in years. And I don’t know why, but it really got me pissed. I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut these days so I didn’t comment or reply to any of them but I felt like telling them all off. They all sound like people of certain age, one guy was mentioning reading the New York Journal-American for God’s sake, I think that went out in 1966, so doesn’t he feel sort of an obligation or curiosity to at least pick up a paper now and then?

I had posted this great video about the NYC newspaper strike of 1945 here in the blog awhile back; I watched it again the other day on my tv- it was so enjoyable on the big screen.

I’ve spoken before about dumping the daily newspaper, but I can’t do it. I tried going just digital, but for some reason, I need to hold it in my hands and read it that way every day, even though I’ve gotten 99% of the news and features on the internet the day or night before.

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Artist quotes

These are quotes by famous artists. I like to read them every once in awhile.

art-quotes

Wookiee of the year

wookiee-of-the-year

RIP Peter Mayhew

Darrin Bell, pumping out comics and winning the Pulitzer in the process

10 With Tom
10 questions in 10 minutes

I recently wrote a story on Joseph Pulitzer, and then my next story, interestingly enough, is on a brand new Pulitzer Prize winner.

darrin-bell Earlier this week, cartoonist Darrin Bell (left) won the Pulitzer Prize for his political cartoons, he also does a daily comics strip called Candorville, which incorporates another comics strip which he produced for many years, called Rudy Park.

TOM: Congrats on winning the Pulitzer prize! How did you find out?

DARRIN: Thank you. My editor at the Washington Post Writers Group called me at my home in California and told me. They flew me out to DC a couple days later so I could be in the Post newsroom during the announcement.

TOM: You do (or did) three comics – two comic strips and an editorial cartoon. I see you combined the two comic strips – Candorville and Rudy Park. How did that come about?

DARRIN: My syndicate realized Candorville and Rudy Park didn’t share any clients, and since I’d already done several crossovers between the two series, they suggested I combine them.

TOM: I also heard you draw story boards for films and tv?

DARRIN: I got a call out of the blue back in 2012 asking me if I knew how to draw storyboards. Coincidentally I’d taken a class in storyboarding just for fun a few months earlier, so I said sure, and ended up storyboarding a sci-fi pilot for Anthony Zuiker (CSI). I added my name and portfolio to a bunch of job sites, and then answered inquiries. I only accept jobs when I’m far enough ahead on my work, or if they’re flexible with their deadlines.

TOM: What is your schedule like when you were doing two strips along with the political cartoons and story boards? Did you work on Rudy Park one day and then the next Candorville, etc?

darrin-bell-political — A recent Darrin Bell political cartoon. Image courtesy King Features Syndicate

DARRIN: Rudy Monday’s, Candorville Tuesdays and Wednesday mornings, editorial cartoons Wednesday afternoon and the rest of the week, New Yorker submissions whenever I was awake enough after putting the kids to bed.

TOM: Do you work digitally or old school pen and ink?

DARRIN: Digitally. It’s the only possible way to get that much work done. When I worked with paper and ink, I would spend an entire weekday just cleaning cartoons up, scanning them in and getting them ready to color. An entire day.

TOM: What is your studio or work place like?

DARRIN: Quiet office space with red brick walls and ornate windows, one block from a river.

TOM: Favorite scifi tv show or movie?

DARRIN: Babylon 5, a show that chronicles the struggle against new authoritarian governments on earth and throughout the galaxy. The show’s far more relevant now than it was in the Nineties, when it first aired.

TOM: As for comics, which ones influenced you growing up?

DARRIN: X-Men and Spider-Man, mostly.

candorville — Candorville by Darrin Bell, courtesy GoComics.com

TOM: Other than those, which comic strip would you like to crawl into, current or past, and spend the day?

DARRIN: Buck Rogers. Or the Star Trek comic strip from the 80s.

TOM: If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?

DARRIN: I’d stop whatever cataclysm destroyed ancient civilizations all around the world 13,000 years ago (probably causing all the great flood myths and destroying Atlantis). That worldwide destruction forced the survivors to start all over, almost as if an advanced civilization was returned to the Stone Age. We’d be 13,000 years more advanced than we are now. There’s a good chance we’d also be 13,000 years wiser.

TOM: Thanks, Darrin, and congratulations again on the Pulitzer!

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