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The influence of cartooning

I saw this meme or whatever it is, on Facebook the other day, and I was transported back to being high school age again. It was sort of like when you smell something and that smell instantly transports you back in time? Well this did it for me.

I was working at a department store after school many years ago and I was in the cafeteria with co-workers, there weren’t many of us there, a handful perhaps. I can picture it now – dark lighting, red leather seating, black tables. Right there in the cafeteria, I drew up a little cartoon on a napkin that said something like this meme above – something about the managers getting paid to stand around and do nothing. And I guess it was a picture of a manger with his or her arms folded.

Karen (her real name), one of the supervisors/managers, saw it and asked me to tear it up. I refused. She was really upset over it. I don’t know what happened next, but I don’t think I got in trouble, and I don’t think I tore it up either.

I was maybe 17 or 18 and Nancy, the boss, was maybe 25. It’s so funny to think about it now, we were kids. On that day, at that moment, it gave me the knowledge of how important and influential cartooning was. I’m sometimes a packrat but I don’t think I saved that cartoon. Wish I had. To think, this napkin drawing, which was never published and probably ended up crumpled up somewhere, had such a huge effect.

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Wallace the Brave

*Click on the images for larger version.*

Almost five years ago, I interviewed Will Henry, the cartoonist who does the comic strip Wallace the Brave. The comic strip was new at the time, but I saw something I loved about it and reached out to Will for the interview. Today Wallace the Brave is syndicated in newspapers around the country and it’s just as charming as ever.

Wallace the Brave is reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes, yet it’s unique.

PBS did a short interview here. with Will recently, right out in his muse – the Rhode Island waterfront (and his liquor store, where it all started)

I often ask people I interview, which comic strip they would like to crawl into and visit for the day. Wallace’s world in Rhode Island is where I think I would like to visit.

You can read Wallace the Brave online daily at GoComics.com here.

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The changing, and shrinking, comics

I saw in The Daily Cartoonist today, that cartoonist Jim Keefe, cartoonist for Sally Forth, who previous was the writer and artist of Flash Gordon, wrote in his blog a few years ago, about the size, or rather, lack of size of the printed comic strips today.

A few years back I showed this example here, the comics in the Miami Herald – smaller than postage stamps!

I think this is the time I realized that my dream of being a published newspaper cartoonist was not my dream anymore.

I know people read the newspaper comics, but not many. I haven’t read the actual newspaper comics for years, and by years, I mean a decade or more. I think I gave up with The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County left the comics pages. Today I read them online, where you can pick and choose your favorites and sort of make up your own comics page at GoComics.com and Comics Kingdom and other sites like Webtoons.

I think one of the best places these days to publish and to read comics is Instagram. You can follow the comics you like, flip through them one panel at a time and they easily come up in your daily feed, you don’t have to look for them. I publish there Monday thru Friday.

I’m enjoying reading old “Our Boarding House” comic panels featuring Major Hoople, from the 1920s and ’30s, on Facebook. A couple of groups post one Major Hoople panel a day, it has a lot of devoted fans.

In the past I always felt that I had to be published in the newspapers – it was why comic strips were created – to be in the newspapers. Just like movies – created to be seen on the big silver screen. But today big features show up on streaming services and most comics show up online or on social media.

And with both of these situations, you can control what you see, when you see it and how you see it. You can watch a movie on your 3 inch phone or 65 inch tv – same with the comics and those tiny, postage sized comics can be easily blown on on any screen for easing viewing.

By not being confined to daily newspaper publication, you can vary your schedule, you can change the size of the panels – make them longer, shorter, etc. Not be edited, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it, and probably the best part – publish instantly without a four to eight week lag time. I can’t imagine these days completing a comic strip or panel and then waiting eight weeks to see it in print.

Of course, publishing online rather than with a syndicate in newspapers has one major drawback – no money – you don’t get a salary. But times are changing. NFT’s seem to be something interesting to look at these days along with other money-making ideas for artists and cartoonists.

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With one foot in the past, just how long will it last?

The last few months I’ve been driving a different direction than usual and I pass a school that I dealt with for many years. I used to print school newspapers (well, I was a print broker, and handled printing the newspapers) and I drive by one of the schools I had as a client for 20 years. They were the longest running school client I had.

Now each day as I drive by, the 1980s and 1990s flood into my mind, mostly the 1980s – and I go back in time. I can picture myself in the office, speaking to the ladies there, picking up the job, delivering the completed newspapers – for 20 years! The ’80s flash by in my mind.

The other morning I saw a report on Tears for Fears, who to me, was the sound of the 1980s. The report was about them getting back together and going on tour this summer with a new album. So of course I dug around for one of my favorite albums, “Songs From the Big Chair,” which I couldn’t find, so I download my favorites from that album.

To me “Shout,” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” and “Head Over Heels” scream 1980s – the best decade for music and just about everything!

I’ve been listening to this in my car and yesterday, as I drove by the school with the song on, I went back in time – like a time machine. I was back in time. It was surreal.

There are so many great songs from the 1980s, but for some reason, these three songs from Tears for Fears bring me back to that era and shout, no pun intended, 1980s.

I had it blasting so loud in the car, that I couldn’t hear a truck driver yelling at me and calling me names because I passed him on the road. I was in stuck 1985 anyway, out of his realm.

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Winter Arts Festival time

We did our local arts festival yesterday and will go back again today. When I say did, I don’t mean we showed our art, I mean we walked around, ate, drank, kibitzed and enjoyed the show. For one thing, the town is mobbed with people and it’s impossible to get in and out so it’s best to just stay put and enjoy the event.

It is getting a bit out of hand with the $25 entry fee and $15 gyros and $18 taco dishes, but it is what it is.

This weekend every year is the busiest weekend of the year in Miami. There are a few arts festivals, the boat show and some other things. They say it’s impossible to find a hotel room or rent a car – they’re all booked for the weekend.

Oddly enough, it was cold all winter, where I love, but yesterday and I guess today, when a bunch of us go back, it will be very hot.

I ran into my nephew’s friend, he told me that he and his wife got in for free. He said to the people at the gate that they forgot to stamp him when he left and then he rubbed the wet stamp on his wife’s hand after they stamped him – sort of like we used to do at the clubs. So he saved 50 bucks.

I used to be part of this as a sponsor when I did the daily news around here so I would get lots of tickets to give out free. But not anymore, I’m now a peon like everyone else (which I love being by the way), but people didn’t know and I got so many texts and calls from friends and family asking me for tickets. Even the UPS guy was hounding me for tickets. How he got my phone number I’ll never know.

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My dad’s brother

I was visiting my dad in the hospital (nothing major) and a nurse came into the room to see him. She asked if I was his brother!

Should I be insulted? But when I think of it, he looks younger than his age, so maybe it was a compliment to him. I’ll take it that way.

It reminds me of when people ask women if they are pregnant, or when are they due, and they aren’t even pregnant!

‘Petwords’

I had to reset my internet user name and password. For some reason, it just disappeared from the list, I couldn’t sign on or get internet – so a lady on the phone at the ISP reset it all for me.

She asked me for a new user name and password. I gave her a silly word for the password and felt embarrassed, so I told her it was my cat’s name. I don’t have a cat. Or a dog for that matter.

And that made me think of this cartoon. So many people use their pets’ names for their passwords.

A lot of people liked the cartoon and shared it, so I guess it hit a nerve.

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Pillaging through the past

My fascination of ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece and all sorts of archaeology goes way back. I studied it in college as part of Art History. My textbooks, which I still have, are in my living room and I glance at them every once in awhile. Guided tours of ancient Egyptian sites are part of my bucket list.

I do a lot of cartoons based on ancient times, I enjoy doing those.

And now that I think of it, if asked, what I would do if I wasn’t doing what I do now, I might say, “I’d like to be an archaeologist , digging around in Egyptian deserts. But not now, I think.

**A MEME THAT POPPED UP THE OTHER DAY.**

I was shocked into reality the other day while watching a tv show on Egyptian and Greece archeology. They were digging up ancient Greek tombs and relating them to Egypt at that time and one of the archeologists said something like, “We’re lucky to find this one in tact. The tomb raiders did not find this tomb, but we did through sonar (or radar, he said something like that.” And I was stunned. Why is a modern archeologist, digging up ancient tombs any better than ancient, or even current tomb raiders.

The main difference is that tomb raiders are taking gold and silver and precious items. Archaeologists are taking bodies; actual bodies. Why is this any better?

One lady archeologist, I can’t remember her name, has a life quest to find Cleopatra’s tomb. And do what with it when she finds it? Display her remains to the world? Another has a quest to find Alexander the Great’s and Cleopatra’s ancient Alexandria under present day Alexandria, I guess that’s ok, as they are looking for cities, not entombed bodies.

I can understand digging up and finding ancient cities, but I’m having second thoughts about digging up entombed, embalmed bodies.

So I have to think on it now. Is desecrating an ancient body permissible in the name of science? Is it ok to dig it up, pillage, analyze it and show it off in museums? I’m wondering. I’m sure I will still do ancient Egypt related cartoons, because in my cartoons the people are alive and in their time in their settings.

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Sharing Cher; Thank you for being a friend

There is a special dedicated to Betty White on Monday night – 10 pm eastern time on NBC. This is Cher who taped this as part of the special. Cher is singing on the Golden Girls soundstage.

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