Today brought us Berkeley Breathed’s final Opus comic strip. Will Opus the penguin be gone forever? Who knows, but at least he’s in a happy place.
However, does Mr. Breathed know that a little-known, unsyndicated cartoonist beat him to the punch a few years ago?When I ended my comic strip The Family Monster in 2006, I went in a very similar direction.
I also used the expression “good-night Opus” in my blog post earlier this week, a reference to the beloved children’s book Goodnight Moon.
If anyone is paying attention, the unsyndicated cartoonist came up with this idea two years ago, followed belatedly by the world famous syndicated cartoonist.
I expect some royalties, Berkeley.
Going through The Family Monster Archive, I discovered that this panel could pretty much stand on its own.
I don’t think of myself as a single-panel cartoonist. This is as close as it gets.
Here’s another storyline from my old strip, The Family Monster. I’m having fun looking through these. Sometimes they even surprise me by being good. Take this story, where pirates crash in the desert and need Dee, Monster, Dirch and Eggman to help them get going again.
If you look closely, you can see my old web address. And look! It still exists!
You’ve all heard of Un-birthdays, right? It’s the date six months away from your real, actual birthday. Some people, weirdos mainly, use it as an excuse to celebrate what would be an otherwise boring and forgettable day. Two days ago was the Un-Birthday of April Fool’s Day. What I’m not going to do is play a trick on you. What I am going to do is show you the memorable (and always fun to create) April Fool’s comics that I’ve run over the years.
As many of you know, I drew a comic strip before Welcome to Falling Rock National Park called The Family Monster. In 2004, my then-girlfriend Isis filled in for me on this installment:
Much inspired by Sex and the City (a feminist literary journal, I’m told), this episode set the tone for future April Fool’s Day comics.
The next year, my friend (and underground pop sensation) Andy K produced this masterpiece.
I hadn’t realized it until this was made, but my four main characters fit the archetypes of the four Beatles. Who would’ve thought I had unconsciously re-created my favorite band in comic form? Well, probably everybody who knows me.
2006 marked my brother’s debut as a cartoonist.
He decided to go meta and introduce me as a character in the strip. I asked my collaborators to make April Fool’s Day strips mention the oddness of the occasion, to let the reader know that, beyond the different drawing style, something was afoot. My brother took this concept to its very limit.
A few years later, I was drawing Falling Rock. My friend and partner blogger Nate stepped in. He really knocked it out of the park. Featuring Nixon as a disembodied head was a stroke of genius, to be sure, and it made me wish I could have included it during the strip’s regular run.
I flaked out in 2009 and didn’t find anybody in time, so I drew this April Fool’s comic myself. Since I don’t often draw one long panel, I did that. And since I love those Easter Island heads (moai), I drew them.
My most recent April Fool’s Day entry was done by my friend Ian. Since his dad started an ad agency, and since his dad told all his kids to never go into the advertising business, we naturally came up with this:
Modeled after old newspaper ads, and featuring the name of an old building downtown, it was nice to see how my characters would fare if I ever get the chance to sell out. Believe me, I can’t wait to sell out. I hear snake oil is big business.
Happy Un-April Fool’s Day, everybody! I’ve already had some requests for 2011’s episode, so stay tuned…
Today marks a special day, not just for Falling Rock but for my cartooning career. While drawing Atticus & Glen for my college paper, I created what has become one of my favorite characters of all time. His name was Professor Globulus.
Globulus looked like Jabba the Hutt. He was a combination of all the worst characteristics of college professors, including the (to my knowledge) totally fictitious trait of eating students.
I liked him so much, I brought him back frequently during Atticus & Glen’s four year run. He even became the villain of my 17-page Atticus & Glen comic book, published at the end of my senior year.
When I ended Atticus & Glen I figured I’d leave all those characters in Ohio. Dee followed me west, however, and became the starring character in The Family Monster. Since it was a comic strip about monsters, I couldn’t well leave Globulus out. He made two appearances, one as a bureaucrat…
And the second as a lowly ranger for an interestingly-named park.
When I began Falling Rock, I knew Globulus would show up eventually, but I couldn’t throw him in unceremoniously. No, a character of his sliminess needed a good reason to reappear in my work. It took almost six years, but I found the perfect place for Globulus: Park Superintendent.
Over the next week, you’ll see Globulus in his most recent incarnation. He’s still troubling Dee. I doubt he’ll ever really leave her alone.
Sambora influenced my work in many ways. In October 2004 she made a brief but memorable visit to The Family Monster.