comics – Page 2

Remembering the 1970s

This cartoon ran last week and it got a lot of interest – from people who remember this and from those who think it’s an exaggeration.

Unfortunately, it was a thing – when we were kids, we had orange shag carpet all over the house. Our nextdoor neighbors had red. I can also remember houses having green. Weird.

And kitchens were harvest gold or green – green appliances, etc. We had harvest gold. The odd part is that our house was built from scratch and my parents chose the styles and colors – so that was what was chosen – that was the style.

The house was redone after Hurricane Andrew’s wrath in 1992 and it’s being renovated right now. My two brothers are contractors, and they are handling the job. I’ve seen photos and it seems like they knocked the whole inside of the house down – kitchens, bathrooms, walls, and so much more.

I haven’t been by, because I want to be surprised at the finished product. I’ve seen the work they do, so I know it will be a modern (for today) white kitchen, all open concept, with a large island in the middle, which of course will be old and haggard in 20 years and of course, out of style; but it will be the utmost in fashion today.

The 1970s were a unique decade in terms of cultural, technological, and social change. Some things that were common then are either obsolete, outdated, or have evolved in some way.

Here are a few things from the ’70s that are no longer around or have been replaced along with brightly colored shag carpet:

8-Track Tapes

The 8-track was a popular way to listen to music on the go. They were large, clunky, and prone to malfunction, and they were eventually overtaken by cassettes and later, CDs and digital formats. I read recently that cassettes are making a comeback.

Wood Paneling in Homes

In the ’70s, wood paneling was a dominant feature in homes, especially in living rooms and basements. It was considered stylish at the time, but it quickly fell out of favor, giving way to lighter, more neutral colors and modern finishes.

Bell-Bottom Pants

These pants, which flared out from the knee downward, were a major fashion statement in the ’70s. Though they’ve had minor comebacks, they aren’t the mainstream trend they once were.

Polaroid Instant Cameras

While Polaroid cameras still exist, the instant cameras of the 1970s are far different. Today, we have digital cameras and smartphones with instant printing options that are more advanced, and Polaroid’s original models are now considered nostalgic.

Pong (and Early Arcade Games)

The first commercially successful video game, Pong, was released in the ’70s, and it set the stage for modern video games. But the original hardware and arcade game style have long been replaced by more advanced gaming systems and consoles.

Cigarette Ads on TV

Cigarette advertisements were common everywhere – on billboards, newspapers, magazine ads and so much more, so many ads ran on TV in the ’70s, but by the early 80s, health concerns and government regulations led to a ban on tobacco ads.

VHS Tapes (Early Video Tape Formats)

The VHS was a major home entertainment format, but digital media like DVDs, Blu-rays, and streaming have rendered it nearly obsolete.

Soda in Glass Bottles (Like Coca-Cola in CONTAINERS)

While glass bottles for soda still exist, they’ve largely been replaced by cans and plastic bottles, mainly because they’re easier to manufacture, transport, and store.

The CB Radio Craze

The CB (Citizens Band) radio was a big thing in the ’70s, especially among truckers, and it even sparked a pop culture moment with songs like “Convoy.” I remember one of my cousins had a CB radio in her car and so did her friends. I drove into the city one time with them and they were on the CB discussing the traffic on the upper level of the 59th street bridge in Manhattan with other CB radio enthusiasts who were stuck in traffic as well.

Some of these items are still fondly remembered in pop culture, while others are almost completely forgotten.

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I’ll do it every time

I saw this old comic strip recently, it’s “They’ll Do It Every Time.” It’s from the 1940s.

This reminded me of me because I never wanted to go anywhere – to weddings, parties, communions, whatever, and my mother would always say to me, “You always say you don’t want to go, and then you’re the last one to leave.” And she was right, I did it every time.

I remember a few years back I was at a Chamber of Commerce event and at the end, I was sitting at a table with three other people, and as we were talking the restaurant staff was taking the table cloth off the table, telling us they needed to get ready for the dinner service, so we were basically pushed out.

One of the people with us was a friend named Robert, who is no longer with us, he was a nice guy. As we exited the building, I can remember him looking down at my shoes and saying, “Nice set of wheels!” Which I guess meant he liked the shoes. I had never heard that expression before, but it always stayed with me.

“They’ll Do It Every Time,” the comic panel is one of the ones I enjoyed as a kid. I was surprised to read recently that it ran new until 2008; it started in 1929.

I also liked “Hazel,” and “Our Boarding House” and so many single panel cartoons, which is why I probably do my Tomversation single panel cartoon today.

I see also old “Our Boarding House” cartoons posted daily on Facebook and I often watch the old Hazel tv show reruns.

While the cartoon above is not single panel, most of the time “They’ll Do It Every Time” was single panel.

I like the fact that single panel cartoons have to happen in that one panel. Of course, “The Far Side” was the best when I was growing up. I loved seeing that in the newspaper every day.

While I don’t have to be limited to a single panel or a single size since I’m publishing online and I could fill up a whole page with multi-panels if I wanted, I do enjoy having the one size – 5″ x 5″ where I have to fit it all in.

Once in awhile I do break it up, as I did with this one last week, but it’s very rarely that that happens. I like to keep it in the one panel.

There are many single panel cartoons that I don’t like, simply because I don’t enjoy them, so it’s not that every single one is enjoyable to me. But the format is what attracts me to it.

New Tomversation tees are available at the Etsy shop. They come in four colors, many sizes. Only available in the U.S. at the moment. With free shipping on every order. Here’s the link to the shop.

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Snagged my NYCC tix

I got my tickets for New York Comic Con (NYCC) yesterday.

It’s a whole process. I no longer get press passes after 15 years of that, so I have to purchase the tickets now and wait in line, online, like everyone else.

You have to be fan verified, and get a time and date to get on and buy the tickets. Mine was 10 am Sunday morning, the first thing, the first group, but of course if you get online at that very moment, there is a long wait to get your access to the tickets. My wait was 20 minutes, not that bad.

Who are these people that are always there, first in line? In person, you see them in tents, camping outside venues for a week to buy something like an Nintendo Switch or concert tickets.

By the way, NYCC is Oct. 9-12, and the tickets sell out fast.

For so many years, I wrote for the Huffington Post and other publications and I received press passes, which made me feel important, but best of all, I didn’t have to wait in any lines and I had access to everything for all four days.

To be honest, I think I outgrew the whole thing, but since I’m a cartoonist, I feel it’s my duty to go, but it seems that Comic Cons have gone from being comic oriented, to movies, games and tv, which make up the bulk of it all.

One of my cousins works for a company that sells original cartoon art. His company has a booth at the cons and last year when I finally found his booth, he was telling me how the actual comics are all confined to a small area now, almost being forced out of their namesake event. I can’t even find the cartoon syndicates now. I’m not sure they show up anymore.

The best part of course is the cosplay, you know, people dressed up as their favorite tv and movie characters. But I do like to mix and mingle with other cartoonists and organizations. I could have sat and worked the National Cartoonists Society booth, but I declined. I’m not sure why, that way I would have free access and get to meet many of my peers. Maybe next year.

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House Hunters

Ever notice on House Hunters that every time people see a nice balcony, overlooking a beautiful scene as they are house hunting, they say, it’s a perfect place to have coffee in the morning.

And of course, every spare room or small room, would make a great office.

I wonder how many people use the room for an office and how many people have coffee on the balcony.

I have a beautiful wrap around balcony where I live. I’ve been here for over 20 years and I don’t think I have ever once had coffee out there. I do use one spare room as an office, I’m typing this in the office right now.

I have another spare room that looks like an attic – it’s full of stuff.

My balcony faces the bay – it’s literally feet from Biscayne Bay and it’s beautiful. Whenever people would come here and see it for the first time, they would invariably say, “If I lived here, I would be out on the balcony all the time.”

I tell them, “I’m usually in my bedroom watching tv.” And they laugh, but it’s true. I guess the grass is always greener.

I was doing this thing where I was taking pictures of clouds and making images out of them. I was showing someone the balcony and said, “Here is where I take the cloud pictures. But I take them through the window, I don’t go out on the balcony to do it.”

The height of laziness.

I do appreciate the balcony and the view though. I look outside every day, it’s the first thing I do in the morning. I never get tired of it. I’m just not out there having coffee, or wine, or whatever. Maybe I should.

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I get cartoon ideas from tv commercials

I keep hearing a commercial for someplace having a Red Dot Sale. It’s a bad commercial because I don’t remember what the company is that’s running the commercial, and I must have seen it 100 times.

But every time I hear it, I think of this – people buying red dots and walking out of the store with them. So I came up with this cartoon regarding that. It was published today at TomFalco.com.

I mostly think of red tag sales and if K-mart was still a thing, they had a Blue Light Special. I remember that from hearing it so much, but I do vaguely remember experiencing it as a kid a few times. I think the store had some sort of noise or siren and blue lights started flashing in the ceiling. I think.

Another commercial, that I don’t know what they are advertising is the “dry scoop” one. At the beginning this guy says, “Always dry scoop before you run!” Like it’s an order.

I came up with this cartoon thinking of that phrase. Then he says, “Listen to me; the hot dog diet got me shredded!” I love the sound of his voice. It’s commanding. And cartoon worthy.

I found the commercial here. Low and behold, it’s for One-A-Day vitamins. But honestly until I looked for this video, I didn’t know what the product was.

I learned in school years ago that the product is the thing when making ads or commercials. These two lose in the product remembrance department, but are great for cartoon ideas.

This cartoon, from an old advertisement is very popular still. It was published a few years ago, it’s a parody of the Progressive Insurance ad where the guy has blue hair and the insurance guy, Dr. Rick, says, “We all see it. We all see it.”

People remember it and to this day still buy cups and things with this cartoon on it and they also buy the actual cartoon at Cartoon Stock. Here’s the commercial.

Speaking of ads. Here is a new one below – Hotels. com – hope you use them when you are looking for travel arrangements. I get a commission on every sale – that’s sale, not click. You need to actually buy something from them for me to get a commission.

I use Hotels.com and have for years. I get lots of points and it pays for hotel nights which I use often.

Anyway, end of commercial. See what I did there?

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House Hunters makes great cartoons

Today’s Tomversation cartoon is about House Hunters. I’ve done quite a few House Hunter related cartoons over the years. They almost write themselves.

For years I’ve seen people on almost every episode say they are going to use the spare room for an office. And they say they love the balcony and they are going to have coffee on it every day.

I have both. My spare room is used as an attic – it’s full of junk. And I have a very large wrap around balcony and I don’t think after all these years I have ever once had coffee out on the balcony. I should, but i don’t.

Over 450 House Hunter episodes are filmed every year! And there are 15 camera crews out filming at the same time.

I don’t think I have ever seen a rerun, now that I think about it.

I love the House Hunters International the best. I like seeing how people live in foreign countries.

My father and I used to crack up at some of the prices being so low, yet people were complaining if they went a bit over price.

Someone would look at a 5 bedroom house in Atlanta, with a pool, a game room, a basement, attic, brand new chef’s kitchen, etc. etc. on five acres and complain because their budget was $90,000 and the realtor said the price was $93,000. Those episodes cracked us up.

Also of course, someone has a budget of $490,000 and the first house they are shown is $699,000. And by the time they get to the third house, they are within budget and I always wonder, why didn’t you show them that house first, but then of course they would not have a tv show.

Spoiler alert: I’ve heard that the people on the show have already bought the house and they are then accepted to be on the show. They sort of mock what they did while house hunting and go to the various houses they had looked at previously before buying the final house.

Other than that, I’ve read it is all unscripted.

Ollie and Jacomo are back!

So I decided YES! on Ollie and Jacomo, they are starting their adventures tomorrow, Monday!

My Tomversation cartoon is on hiatus and Ollie and Jacomo are doing their thing now. You can find links below each cartoon for social media sites, if you’d like to follow them daily on Facebook or Instagram and there is also a subscription link, where you can have them in your email inbox daily. Or you can just go to the website and see what they are up to there daily.

We last left them off at the Paris Olympics this past summer, now they are home in Coconut Cove. Today they are dealing with the time change due to Daylight Saving Time, like so many of us.

I was explaining in the last post how I read about a guy pretending to be a cat on Reddit for years and people loved it, they behaved as if he was a real talking cat. I thought that would make a good comic strip, although there is Garfield and Heathcliff, Top Cat and Felix. But I remembered I had animal friends – Ollie and Jacomo, and decided to bring them back.

Hope to see you over there – OllieAndJacomo.com – they are waiting for you!

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Guy Pretends to Be a Cat

I read a thing on Reddit where this lady wants to divorce her husband because she found out he is secretly roll playing as a cat on Reddit! I think she is joking about the divorce, but she is quite surprised to find this fact out about being a cat after him doing it for three years!

She says, “He’s popular. Like top posts, awards, thousands of followers. People genuinely think he’s a cat. He has INTERNET FRIENDS that think they’re talking to some sassy British shorthair named Mr. Whiskers. He gets into fights with other cat accounts about territory and kibble brands.”

She doesn’t like it but I love this whole thing! I want to know his handle so I can follow him. It sounds like he has a great imagination, and I want to follow that.

It first reminded me of a voice over thing – like he is being the cat from behind the scenes for a cartoon – you know, being a cartoon cat. Then I thought of it as cosplaying, like people do at ComicCons.

Then I thought it would be funny to draw a cat cartoon, making him say funny things in a daily comic panel. And it reminded me that I already have cartoon animals – Ollie And Jacomo, who I haven’t visited in a while – since the summer Olympics, I believe. So I may bring them back for a bit. You know, take a break from my Tomversation comic panel and spend time with Ollie and Jacomo.

I’ll think it over this week. Stay tooned.

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Confusion at the supermarket

This cartoon idea came to me last week when we were at the arts festival.

For years they had the same artists in the same spots. I was friends with one of the organizers and I said to him, “Why don’t you move the artists around? They are always in the same spaces?”

He said, “We do that so their regular fans/customers can find them.”

Which I thought wasn’t a good idea since if people had to walk around the festival to find their favorite artist, they would get to see everything, not just make a beeline to their favorite.

So this year, there were new organizers and finally, they moved the artists around which made the whole thing feel fresh.

But as we were talking about it, one of my friends mentioned how we were all irritated when the supermarket’s changed the aisles around, and that’s how I got the idea for this cartoon.

Now that I think about it, it’s been awhile since anything has been changed at my Publix or Winn-Dixie. Hope I didn’t put this idea into the Universe.

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Why I love single panel cartoons

I was watching this video by artist Mika Song about comic panels. She had a lot of good things to say about the panel. A lot of it was about restrictions. Which I like.

Even though I can do anything with my Tomversation cartoon, since it is distributed online, and there are no parameters, I enjoy the parameters. The image can be made larger, longer, a multi-panel strip and be changed from day to day, where in the newspapers, I would be limited to the same daily allotted space, I enjoy the single panel imitations and the same daily allotted space.

I’ve always been drawn to single panel comics. Oh sure, I read all the comic strips growing up, but I enjoyed the single panel stuff – Hazel, The Addams Family, Ziggy, The Far Side, Our Boarding House, Dennis the Menace, Marmaduke, etc. I liked having the whole story told in one box, usually with one short sentence or text.

It’s interesting setting up the story because I have to figure out how to fit the characters and the text to make sense in the small 5″ x 5″ space.

In recent years I’ve done away with the speech balloon, although I do use it once in awhile, but I like have the letters just floating above and having one single drawn line showing who is speaking. I’m not sure where I got that from, but I know it’s from cartoons I’ve seen in the past.

I also went digital some years back. I use a Surface Pro, to draw, which I love. It has a keyboard so I can use it as a laptop computer when I’m traveling. It’s compact and easy to use and has everything I need.

I’ve done comic strips in the past and I have a few that I have done but am not publishing, but I don’t enjoy drawing the same characters over and over, not just in each pane for that day’s strip, but every day of the week. I like that I can have animals talking one day and ancient Egyptians the next.

Many single panel cartoons have the same characters. I enjoy reading the old Our Boarding House panels, where they tell a continuing story day after day, in a single panel, with the same characters. But for my own work, I enjoy using different characters each day.

Above there are six samples of my comic panel, Tomversation. You can see how I use speech and thought balloons and how sometimes I mix the two. Somethings they are not full balloons, but just part, indicating a border to separate the text from the art.

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