At the risk of starting my blog on a serious note, I’d like to speak for a moment about ART.

Not Mr. Garfunkel, specifically. Generally.

When I was a kid learning to draw from other people’s comics, I never really knew what the creative process was. I mean, I know what a duck looks like. I know a realistic drawing of a duck can be done by looking at the duck and drawing what you see. But I couldn’t figure out how Chuck Jones got Daffy Duck from a real duck. How many steps were there? Did he first master ducks, then distort the features? I didn’t know.

Further complicating things was a man known only as Pablo Picasso. His drawings (and, okay, some pretty good paintings, too) were so far from “real.” How did he make the connection? I was also wondering, though I wouldn’t have put it to myself that way at the time, how I could look at one of his drawings and immediately understand it as a depiction of a real thing.

An answer came in the form of an old movie of Picasso drawing on a pane of glass. The camera was situated on one side of the glass, looking directly at Picasso. Picasso was looking at the camera. He then went on to draw on the glass. It was perfect! You got to see how he drew, without that annoying “over the shoulder” shot so common when showing cartoonists at the drawing board. And lo and behold, he drew a bull exactly the way he might have on one of his canvasses. He didn’t draw a regular bull, then draw his bull over it and erase the first bull. It was directly from his brain to the page (or, glass).

When drawing something I haven’t drawn before, I still tend to make an attempt at realism first. I’ll draw the gecko as it looks in the photograph. Then I’ll start embellishing. Make the eyes bigger, the fingers more prominent. I’ll streamline things to make the whole picture more cartoony. And of course I have to start imagining the way it moves, to see it from different angles so I don’t end up drawing the same picture over and over. This last part has become much easier as the internet becomes faster and more image-heavy. Instead of having one reference picture, I can find five or ten fairly easily. There are lots of geckos on the internet.

In this way, I think of drawing as a way to get from A to B, but B is an unknown destination. It is terrifying at first (some may say paralyzing), but as you become accustomed to not knowing where you’re headed, you start to like it.

One other thing I got from that movie. Picasso had obviously made a visual language for himself. It wasn’t a formula – that bull looked different every time. But it was a way for him to draw anything and still make it look like he drew it. I think that this is the ultimate goal for a cartoonist. To create a world that is unique yet recognizable, where everything fits together but doesn’t look cut from a mold. That is great cartooning.

I’d like to begin rating my jokes in the same manner as maple syrup. You know, kind of like my own private Ebert & Roeper, except without the thumbs. Does anyone know the standards of maple syrup ratings? Dark, Amber, Light…A, B…I’ve seen them on labels, but have no clue as to what they mean. Plus, I’ve found that almost all real maple syrup tastes pretty darn good, regardless of rating. I won’t get all depressed if I run a weeklong series of Amber jokes.

When I got to thinking about the different type of jokes I tell, I wondered about the ones that are quick to come up with and require little dialogue. They don’t happen often, and they often seem so “light” that I wonder if it’s even worth the time to draw them. Not that they aren’t any good – I personally like comics that are witty but don’t employ endless dialogue (think Mutts). It’s just one of those things I think about, as I sit at my drawing table. “This comic takes a while to draw. The person reading it will likely stare for less than 20 seconds, grunt, and move on.”

Should I really make that person sit another 5 seconds? Should I be making “heavier” jokes if I’m going to invest my time into drawing them up real purty-like? I think, no: comics are funny because they are light. If I wanted to write dialogue-heavy, meticulously reworked jokes, I’d write a 500-page novel and be done with it.

It sounds absurd, but this is the kind of debate I have in my head as I draw comics. “Should I even be doing this? What’s the point?” Then I have to prove to myself why I’m doing comics and not anything else. Fortunately, I manage to persuade myself.

It’s about building up just enough self-esteem to continue on. I love seeing the finished product, printed on newsprint. When I get to that point, I’m always happy.

This post started on one topic but ended on an entirely different one.

Sometimes when I draw a batch of comics (I usually draw 20-30 new strips at a time, after writing for a few weeks) I forget things. One of the more embarrassing things is when I sign a strip twice. I always put my signature somewhere on each strip. For some reason, there are times when I forget whether I’ve signed one or not. The thing that amazes me is, there isn’t that much space to put my signature. So if I’ve already signed it, that means I’ve had to find two suitable places for it. Fortunately, I check my strips many times before sending them out; I can usually catch these mistakes before they become public. But if you happen to see my signature twice, that doesn’t mean I’m especially proud of my accomplishment. It just means I’m forgetful.

Personally, I prefer to read my comics on paper. Call me old-fashioned: I also draw my comics on paper. I even paint the backgrounds for my website on paper, which may be a bit odd considering how they are meant to be viewed.

Anyway, my question is, given the choice, for a comic strip such as mine (a three or four panel daily, in black and white), do you prefer to read it on paper or on a screen?

I’m partly asking because I just had a friend email me an article (originally published on real paper, in a newspaper) about comics on cell phones. People subscribe to comic strips and even comic books, then they read them one panel at a time on their phone. I imagine the screen on a cell phone is a smaller than the panel size as printed in newsprint, but maybe that doesn’t matter to people.

I guess the question is partly a matter of convenience: you have a phone, but maybe you don’t subscribe to a paper, or your paper doesn’t get the comics you want. But, personally, squinting at a cell phone screen, trying to read a comic, just doesn’t seem like my idea of a good time. Plus if I’m reading it on a bus, I’ll get car-sick (bus-sick).

Enough from me. What do you think? (imagine me pointing a long finger at you.)

There is a deal among syndicated cartoonists, it seems, that no one cartoonist will slander another cartoonist’s comic strip. I doubt there is a written statement you sign when you get syndicated that says you have to be nice to Bil Keane and The Family Circus. However, there appears to be a tenuous truce among those people hard-working and lucky enough to make a living off drawing funny pictures. I was having a conversation recently when I was trying to explain this “deal.” The people I was explaining it to (my parents) thought it was ludicrous.

Today I want to mention briefly the great, great modern comic strip that is Monty. I’m including today’s strip for those of you not in the habit of reading Monty.
Everything about this is good comics. The funny mouth Monty has in panel 2. The seated woman’s prattle about herself. Her husband’s skinny, skinny legs and the way he’s holding one of her shopping bags. I start to giggle before I even read a word of dialog.

Here’s a little little back-story on Monty. Monty was originally called Robotman. Now, Robotman was an “idea” cooked up by the suits way back in the heyday of corporate cartoons. Robotman was conceived as a cash-in for toys, books, games, and, the most lucrative market of them all: comics. This would have been in a similar vein to the Transformers. You know, a toy that has a Saturday morning cartoon. They had the concept, the licensing deals, and the character design. All they needed was a physical human hand to crank out 365 jokes per year, forever. The man they initially chose for this venture? Bill Watterson.

Watterson, a man not known for his business acumen, turned the syndicate down. He later achieved lukewarm recognition for a short-lived comic strip about a boy with an active imagination. Jim Meddick was chosen (and accepted) the Robotman gig. And the rest is history.

Well, not very well known history. For one reason or another, Robotman failed to achieve the success for which was was conceived (for the conception of Robotman, imagine here four white men in business suits performing a pagan ritual in a skyscraper conference room. Coffee will be served). I grew up in the 80’s and kept pretty good tabs on the new cartoons of the day. You could say I was “childlike,” but you could also shorten that to say I was, in fact, a child. Robotman the marketing machine died a dismal death. Robotman the comic strip, however, kept running. Meddick probably had more creative control over the characters now that their original reason for being was wiped away. He introduced new characters, created bizarre, geek-based storylines, and eventually killed off Robotman. He didn’t literally kill the character; he just wrote him out of the strip.

Jim Meddick wrote Robotman out of Robotman.

Shortly thereafter, he was allowed by the syndicate to change the name of the strip. It should be noted that this was the strip’s third name change. First it was Robotman, then Robotman and Monty, and finally, Monty. Shed of it’s original meaning, Meddick has essentially created his own comic strip while drawing the comic strip itself. I can’t think of another comic where that has happened, exactly. Sure, new characters are born into existing comics all the time. But to morph into something entirely different while being published all along? Fantastic.

I just have to congratulate Jim Meddick on creating a great comic strip out of the shell of a mediocre one.

For more information, just check out this website. It has great information about Monty, as well as a section on Calvin and Hobbes.