A couple more drawings from my time doing graphics work at a newspaper.
And, what the heck, here is a single panel example of my comic book drawing style, from when drawing that way still mattered to me. It looks rather generic because I was focusing on structure, and not style. This is from my portfolio that I showed to Joe Orlando at DC Comics, who said I “showed potential.”
Okay, I was wrong. I’m not ready to start showing Jeanie Beanie strips. This was a strong editorial piece in CBG I drew in protest of the surveillance and harassment of comic book shops, and the arrests of some owners, for selling underground comics. There’s a reference to “Watchmen” in the last panel.
I should note that I knew the notorious “Cherry Pop Tart” comics only by reputation, and I was a couple of years away from being the father of a son. Would I have let him see something like Cherry when he was 10-12 years old? No, but I had some Playboys when I was 11.
Speaking of becoming a dad, appearing below are a few panels from the last thing I worked on before that happened. But even with my wife’s due date approaching I was still traveling on business and couldn’t get the piece done before the day of the blessed event.
A few more of my cartoons that were in CBG, and a few that weren’t.
A tribute to EC Comics.
A tribute to Carl Barks.
A tribute to Donald Trump. Kidding!
That was one of my worst drawings to appear in CBG, but it shows I didn’t like the not-duck Donald even 30 years ago, and my opinion of him hasn’t changed since then. Hey, at least I didn’t give him a small hand! The clichéd use of money bags is unforgivable. That’s supposed to be a picture of Carl Barks on Uncle Scrooge’s wall.
Next are a couple of the first Calvin & Hobbes parodies I did. Working very fast, I was doing rough drawings in ink. Earlier posts have examples that were rendered more carefully, but I still like these gags.
Yes I know that in panel 3 below it should be “whose” and not “who’s.”
Carlyle & Hobson later made a guest appearance in my wannabe comic strip called “Jeanie Beanie.” I’ll be starting a long run of those in the next post.
In 1988 I was in line for a take-out lunch at M.I.T., near where I worked, when I overheard an excited conversation about something strange that was happening with Internet-connected computers on campus. It turned out to be the infamous Robert Morris Worm incident. Another technical troublemaker I became aware of around that time was the notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick.
Until the Internet hit big my primary technical specialty was data communications and networking. There was a period of overlap and transition that I enjoyed very much, when statistical time-division multiplexors were replaced with Ethernet bridges, which in turn gave way to IP routers.
In 1991 I was working on my first Internet-related project, involving an implementation of the Telnet virtual terminal protocol. Working with IP-enabled communication servers from Gandalf, Xyplex, and Xylogics — none of which are still in business — I became very familiar with Telnet and something called raw TCP sockets. In those early, clunky days of online tech I could connect a dumb ASCII terminal or a DOS-PC running ProComm to a modem and dial into a comm server with Internet access to get online.
With all of that background in mind I drew this cartoon for the Comics Buyers Guide. Twenty-eight years ago, anticipating the possibility of identity theft, swatting, and an overreaction by law enforcement seemed extremely extreme. But now, not so much.
The little serial interface diagram of a null-modem cable was an in-joke to myself, showing wires getting crossed. The name Estes is a dig at Senator Estes Kefauver, who is infamous to those who know comic book history.
Not everybody I know is a fan of Bill Griffith’s Zippy, but I am, and Griffith has a point in today’s April Fool strip. It appears to have been drawn with Griffy’s left hand, which happens to be my drawing hand.
Being a fatalist, I would go even further than Griffy, and say that editors have thrown in the towel on comic strips all together. Although a recent kerfuffle in the Boston Globe showed that it’s still too early to cut the comics page too deeply.
I admire everyone who has found a place in what’s left of syndicated cartooning, but that doesn’t mean I admire all of their work. Some cartoonists simply can’t draw. This post includes a couple of quickie cartoons that appeared in the Comic’s Buyer’s Guide so very long ago, when I was struggling to re-learn how to draw.
Here is another one of the Calvin & Hobbes parody tributes I did. I was working towards doing a mash-up with Dennis the Menace, but never got there because — wouldn’t ya know it? — I became a dad.
I never got around to inking this installment of C&H, despite completing the pencils. My ideas about Carlyle being a “holy terror” — a favorite expression of my mother’s — were getting a little “out there.”
