pencil doodles which are studies of shoes from Ponytail, an early-60s comic strip panel by Lee Holley. Not sure I can explain why, but I really dig the way Holley drew shoes in his strip then. [Among cartoonists, there are a lot of Jack Davis shoe fans, but for me Lee Holley is my Shoe Guy®!]

Long ago I read that the only truly American artforms are jazz, comic books, and rock-and-roll. [The accuracy of all of those claims is easily disputed, but let's leave that aside for the time being so I can make my wanky statement about them]:

I got thinking about this and realized that all these artforms share a common element. Even if we break down jazz into its three major waves [Dixieland, swing, and bebop], the same process always took place.

When these artforms first emerged, all of them were originally dismissed as garbage for kids, the poor, and the ignorant. It took years for each of them to achieve some measure of artistic credibility, i.e., acceptance by well-to-do whites. I just find the consistency of this sort of reaction to creativity to be kinda intriguing.

I autographed 115 copies of my new book for people who ordered signed ones.

For the past few days, I've been devoting my drawing time to doing studies of Dik Browne's work on Hi & Lois. And, as so often happens when I spend any time studying Browne, I come away with renewed awe at his genius. The only reason I rank Bill Watterson higher as a cartoonist is because of Watterson's peerless writing, so that he is The Total Package of cartoonists. But if we are just talking cartoon art, then no one beats Dik Browne.



Before he began working in syndicated comic strips, Browne had a thriving career in advertising art [he designed the classic 50s overhaul of the Campbell's Kids]. But Mort Walker hired Browne to tackle the art for Hi & Lois, where he very deliberately modelled his work on Walker's style, a unique and groundbreaking style that would take its classic shape in early-60s Beetle Bailey. Walker's style was extremely simple and open, meaning that it could still look good when significantly shrunk [a prime consideration in newspaper strips]. It was also cute and expressive and appealing, easy to read and easy to grasp.

Browne essentially perfected this style by adding a sense of grace and beauty to pristine immaculate economical linework, along with his mastery of cute. (Off the top of my head, the only cartoonists I can think of whose kids can equal his in cuteness would be Warren Kremer and Gene Hazelton.) His H&L work captures the formica ideal of postwar suburban America like no one else.

getting it right

Today I was working on upcoming strips of my new comic strip “series” Not That Magic: Tales of Vernor Magus... and I drew a couple of panels that really worked for me, I mean uncommonly well. So much so, that I want to post them here and brag about them.



When I look at these drawings, I see characters who are natural and alive and convincing, despite the stripped-down cartooniness of how they are rendered. Not saying they are perfect, but they are Plenty Good Enough®. I am grateful for times like this, few and far between, when I feel Plenty Good Enough®.

Although I am best known for creating comic books, and my love affair with them goes back decades, comic strips [the ones that appeared daily in newspapers] have also been important to me just as long. Before I started buying comic books with any regularity, I was reading the funnies every day. And it was while I was reading a comic strip that I had my epiphany and realized that I wanted to be a cartoonist.

( my history with comic strips )

a moment of self-acceptance

I have unexpectedly found myself creating a new comic strip this year. Part of my preparation for it has involved reading some of my Hägar collection, to try and osmote some of the power of Dik Browne's art. (While I proclaim Bill Watterson to be the greatest artist of humour comic strips, Dik Browne is my personal favourite, at least as far as his actual drawing goes. Watterson remains my fave comic strip writer. And this is as good a time as any to give a shout-out to Brian Crane, who is my fave comic strip creator currently active.) So far I am pleased with how the strip is turning out -- I had a couple of new-to-me technical ideas that have pleased me with how they're working.

There was a moment, while I was inking the strip shown below, where I suddenly thought, This isn't how Dik Browne would do it. It also isn't how Bill Watterson or Brian Crane would do it. And then I thought, more loudly, Well, this is how I do it. And it actually shook me, gently, for a moment. To realize that I felt enough validity in choosing my own artistic path, that I could consciously reject the artistic and stylistic examples of my heroes and carve a path of my own.

I still feel my sutff is not as good as theirs. But I also feel that my sutff is Plenty Good Enough®.

managing to keep this year's New Year's quasi-resolution so far and draw something every day, even if it's only a circle -- although, to be fair, so far it has always been more than that... anything to maintain my drawing muscle memory, that was my goal for this year after letting last year slide so much

a good idea, long awaited