Heads Up!

Starting on Monday my strip will be moving from Comics Sherpa to the GoComics site which is thrilling news. I'm quite sad to be leaving Sherpa however since it has served me well while I got my footing. Now, exactly 276 strips later I'll be rubbing shoulders with Garfield, Bloom County, Doonesbury, Calvin, Hobbes and the rest of the Universal Press Syndicate stable. I created an extra strip to run exclusively on Sherpa during the transition (don't hold your breath) plus some spot illustrations for the announcement (see above).

Gee Mr. Wilson

Apparently Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys used to do this to get in the mood for writing surf music while he was working on the 1967 album "Smile". He had his piano placed in a sandbox and played it barefoot. Allegedly he also had all the musicians in his studio wear little fireman's helmets as well just to prove that he was a mad genius.

Accordion Crimes

This is another strip based upon a real life happening. I recently purchased the aforementioned instrument and while it doesn't have the mink lining (just plain silk) it is made of a disturbing number of ex-breathing parts. Okay, maybe oysters don't actually breathe. It is a 1940s Deco-style Italian accordion. Although I can squeeze out a tune or two but I'm no virtuoso.

iRabbit

Anyone who reads my strip will notice that I'm not a big fan of cellphones. However, I was just loaned a new G1 Andriod Googlephone which has proven to be mildly distracting. I haven't figured out how to activate the phone part of it yet but it's interesting being able to access information in unlikely places.

Dingbat the Cactus

This year I'm doing Sunday format strips once a week (on Sundays most likely). Here's the first one. The timing and layouts are very different from the restrictions of the daily strip so it's been quite a challenge to get into the right creative zone. I added a second mini-strip underneath for no apparent reason. Back in the golden era of comics when cartoonists had a lot more space this was quite a common occurrence, often used to introduce or try out new strips. George Herriman started Krazy Kat as a mini-strip running underneath his "The Dingbat Family" feature (later regrettably renamed as "The Family Upstairs"). It represents a great deal of extra work which I suppose is why no one does it anymore.

D'oh!

I just re-watched The Simpsons Movie last night. I can't say enough how much I love The Simpsons. It's easily the best thing that's ever been on TV. I thought the movie was great.... a 90 minute TV episode that didn't destroy the integrity of the franchise. Matt Groening is a huge hero of mine (and a major influence). I religiously clip his weekly comic strip "Life in Hell" every week and file it away in a very stuffed drawer. Last November I had the honor of meeting him briefly at the Alternative Press Expo. Great guy. Of course as usual I turned into a blubbering idiot when confronted with greatness but I guess I made myself understood well enough to get an autograph. I got to meet Jaime Hernandez and Dan Clowes as well. It was quite a day.

2B or Not 2B?

This is a quick snapshot of a page in my sketchbook. I use a pretty soft lead (usually a 2B) so it can be erased easily. Although this was just to record the idea, my initial sketches are pretty loose as well. I'm quite happy to ink over something like this for the final version although these days it's always comforting to know that there's still a chance to fiddle with lines once the art has been scanned into the computer.

Naughty or Nice?

I ran all my weakest strips over the holidays in the hope that people wouldn't notice the sudden decline in quality because they were busy indulging in rampant consumerism or moping around with their dysfunctional families. I had several strips that I had held back for various reasons and decided to sneak in. However my web stats indicate that hits on the website actually went up during that time period! It's rookie mistakes like this that have clearly impacted my potential to get nominated for a Weblogs Award. This years nominations were announced today. I think Medium-Large deserves it most.

I am Zorry

My spousal unit and I often joke about how the English mispronounce Spanish words even worse than people in the US. "Jaguar" [JAG-YOO-ARR] is one such irritant. It always reminds me of an advertisment for English classes in Tegucigalpa that tried to make learning English seem really easy by using homophones. A cartoon coati is saying "Jaguar you?" to a fox who exclaims 'I am Zorry". If you don't speak Spanish that will make no sense but if you do it's highly amusing.

An Ape Like Tea

This is based on an actual tea called "Monkey Tikuyin" produced only on the Mo Ye mountains in Fukkin (settle down now) province. The tea plants grow on high cliffs where people can't reach but where presumably it's safe for certain types of monkeys. It tastes like regular green tea. Darjeeling of course is an Indian tea. Kwazulu is from the Natal province of South Africa and is the usual choice for my morning cuppa.

Retro Decoman

Here's me celebrating something or other in the observation bar on the Queen Mary which is docked at Long Beach, California. It's a hotel, museum and dining establishment these days but still oozes with the golden age of cruising decadence. I think I was drinking some odd little cocktail (not shown) and wishing it was 1949 all over again.

Happy Alcoholidays

I like to include a lot of vintage "fad" toys in my strips. Here's one with the thermodynamically powered drinking bird also known as bobble, happy, dippy, dipping, tippy, tipping, sippy, sipping, sippy-dip, dip-dip, dinking, dinky-dinky or dunking birds depending on which part of the planet you live in. It was invented in 1945 by Miles V. Sullivan who was a Ph.D. inventor-scientist at Bell labs in Murray Hill, NJ, USA. I don't know if it would actually work with alcohol as it would be liable to evaporation than water.

Greetings From Yesteryear

I didn't do a holiday card this year but I did find this old postcard design I did a few years back that I never had printed up.

Boop Island

This strip represents the first time I've ever drawn the rabbits' backyard. I guess they now live in the suburbs since I was too lazy to draw anything but tract housing in the background. It's details like this that probably hold me back from being a world dominating cartoonist. I also struggled to think of Eightball's ideal female companion. I originally had Whoopie Goldberg in the rough until I decided that it had to be a non-human. I'm still not sure Betty Boop is a good match for him but as far as I know she's still single and available.

Jimmy the Corn Man

Art Imitates Taquería

This strip was based on a real life offer that my local taquería, Casa Sanchez on 24th Street in San Francisco, was doing a few years ago. They had a much cooler mascot called Jimmy the Corn Man and anyone who had it tattooed on their body got free burritos for life. They would post photos of the tattoos in the window. They soon discontinued the promotion and closed down for several months. They're open for business again now but I don't know if the inked patrons still get the free comida.

Vintage Geekiness

Sorry about the lax postings of late. Hello? Anyone still here? [crickets]. I've been busy with exciting undisclosed happenings. Here's a special dip into the "where are they now?" archives of my past comic strip glory. This was a two-pager that ran in a few fanzines from a series of semi-autobiographical strips I did back in the eighties when was a serious young nineteen year-old in important trousers. I say semi-autobiographical because I'm supposedly the tall one with the buck teeth and impaired vision who had zero success on the dating front. Tex (?!) was my good friend Alan who now lives in France and is now some sort of martial arts expert. I used a lot of Zip-o-Tone back in those pre-computer days (called Letratone in Britain). This was supposed to be a sort of English Archy & Jughead-type feature. It was discontinued after a few months for obvious reasons, most likely because all the strips were just as terrible as this one.

Prambulator

I did this one "on the road" during a recent trip to Arizona. I bet you're probably thinking that the black lines look slightly different. Well, that's because my travel ink is different from my usual bottle of Pelikan since you're not allowed to take glass ink bottles onto a plane in your hand luggage. Is there a finer word in the English language than "prambulator"?

Monochrome

This is the black and white version of an upcoming Rabbits Against Magic strip. I'm starting to use a lot more solid blacks in the strip so that they will reproduce better in print and not rely so heavily on color. I got the premise from the chapter on the French in "A Child's Geography of the World" by V.M. Hillyer written in 1929 (charmingly embossed as the"new and cheaper edition"). I guess people really did worry about foreign policy even back then.

Dead Day

November 2nd is celebrated in Mexico as Day of the Dead. Here in San Francisco, the sizable Latino population in the Mission district joined in the festivities. That's me (right) and my spouse (left) dressed as a tribute to José Guadelupe Posada. I posted a feeble and amateurish video here that does little justice to the vibrant street celebrations and procession.