Category: Cartooning

McCloud Computing

Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud, creator of the independent comic book series ZOT! and author of the book Understanding Comics, has created an online comic book for Google, explaining the new Chrome browser.

Chrome sounds interesting, mostly because of its independent tabs, but I’ll wait a bit before jumping on it. Computerworld’s review of Chrome is very good. Ever have a page in one tab lock up, resulting in a crash of the whole browser, or forcing you to crash it? Sure you have, so if you have at least a gig of memory you will like independent tabs.

McCloud, who grew up in Massachusetts, changed the spelling of his name from McLeod when he started working in comics. I know this because his mother’s apartment happens to be around the corner from my mother-in-law, in the retirement community where they live. I assume Scott wanted to avoid confusion with comic book artist Bob McLeod, who was already established in the business at the time McCloud came on the scene.

FBOFW

Lynn Johnston has finished her comic strip “For Better Or For Worse.” It’s now a somewhat ironic title, given that Lynn and her husband are divorcing, but she didn’t call the strip “Till Death Do Us Part.”

I enjoyed FBOFW very much for a long time, but my interest petered out towards the end. Eric hit the spot when he described it as having turned into a “chicken soup for the soul sort of thing.”

Johnston belongs to what I believe is pretty much the last generation of syndicated newspaper comic strip creators. For better or for worse, the great, grand age of print media is over, having been replaced by electronic media.

The last daily installment of FBOFW

I scanned the last daily and Sunday installments of FBOFW from the Boston Globe. I for one still get home delivered newspapers, but I have to admit I don’t jump on them right away like I used to, because I get most of my news online and from NPR.

Last Sunday installment of FBOFW

Johnston owes something to Sparky Schulz, and she has expressed that gratitude elsewhere, but it would have been nice for her to acknowledge it in her last Sunday panel.

Meet Joe Motocross

Meet Joe Motocross

Monte Schulz pointed out here on DogRat last year, that his brother Craig — and only Craig — was a dirt bike rider. Once again I refer you to the Coffee Lane portion of the documentary “Good Ol’ Charles Schulz,” where you can see both Craig and Monte.

Craig has an article in the October ’08 Racer X Illustrated, and he tells about riding dirt bikes.

The sound would travel for miles, and like a mating call, it would summon my buddies to head on over to my place to practice. My parents must have received plenty of phone calls, but I never heard of any complaints.

I’m struck by the fact there is something of a similarity in the contrast between Monte and his brother Craig, and me with my brother Jeff, who also rode dirt bikes. This picture of Craig could almost be one of my brother from that same period of time. Maybe I can get him to send one so you can see what I mean.

Craig Schulz

Guess the Cartoonist

I wonder if this cartoon was inspired by the famous photo of the Times Square kiss on V-J Day? Can you name the cartoonist?

I’m as good as anybody at recognizing the work of somebody I’m familiar with, but looking at this I see no hint whatsoever of his later style. He was a successful, well-known contemporary of Charles Schulz. In fact, for about the first ten years of ‘Peanuts’ he was more successful than Schulz.

Peanuts Rocks The Vote

I took some time off from blogging. Let’s pick up where we left off, with Peanuts and politics. The Charles M. Schulz Museum has an exhibit called Political Peanuts, running through December 1. And Peanuts Rocks The Vote this year with a nicely designed Flash animation page.

Happy birthday to Amy Schulz Johnson, back on August 5. And speaking of the Schulz family, in this photo there’s an extra swimmer in the pool with the Schulz kids. Who is that?

The Schulz family on Coffee Lane, Sebastopol, CA