Unhappy Anniversary

The last photo we took of the wall of flame coming over the hills toward us as we evacuated. 

Tonight is a grim anniversary for my family and neighbors: eight years ago (!) in the middle of the night, the Tubbs Fire destroyed about 5600 structures, including ours. It also killed 22 people, and was only one of more than a dozen fires that broke out all over northern California during a freakishly intense and dry easterly wind.

My graphic novel, A Fire Story, says about all I have to say about it. I would only add that, at the time, I thought our fire was one of those once-a-century random disasters that happens sometimes. In the years since, as I've watched the western half of North America erupt into flames and our record of "Most Destructive Wildfire in California History" has been eclipsed again and again and again, I've realized that we were victims of climate change, and my book is an early entry into a growing body of work on what living in a climate-changed world is like. 

The street into my neighborhood. This is the exact spot I wrote about in the book, where I realized the scope of what had happened and uttered several "fucks."

Sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago; other times, like yesterday. Karen and I still look at each other blankly, trying to figure out if we had some item--a bowl, a tool, a piece of clothing--before or after the fire. Random stimuli raise the hairs on the backs of our necks. It changes you forever, I think. Or at least for eight years plus.

It's cool and cloudy in northern California tonight. We expect a little rain tomorrow. There is nothing we appreciate more than rain in early October. 

Our home shortly after sunrise the next morning.

Captain LOL

My pal Craig Yoe offered to send me a copy of his new kids book, Captain LOL + Rubber Chicken: Har Har!, if I'd consider mentioning it on social media. I replied with two caveats: I have scant social media influence (quality over quantity!), and I'd only say nice things if I meant them.

Luckily, it's easy to say nice things because Captain LOL is great fun and delightfully drawn. Superficially, it's a collection of dad jokes, dumb riddles and corny puns, with a little green fart cloud emitting from Captain LOL's tights on nearly every page. If that's all it was, I don't know if I could recommend it (although fart jokes are always funny).

 
But on top of that foundation, Craig has layered every page with richly detailed absurdity and metatextual silliness. I particularly enjoyed Easter eggs that the 7- to 10-year-olds the book is aimed at would never get but that someone who knows what comics were like in 1968 would love. Every page has a lot going on. It's dense in a way that would make it fun to read more than once.

My favorite feature is a little die-cut hole, passing entirely through the book, that gives every page its own hole-based gag. I know enough about publishing to know that punching that hole wasn't cheap, and a lesser writer or publisher wouldn't have bothered. It was worth it.

Craig is a writer, cartoonist, and publisher whose backlist shows a keen interest in comics history. He was the long-time creative director for the Muppets, after which he started his own company, Yoe Studio, with clients like Kellogg's, Disney, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. As a publisher, he's put out dozens of books reprinting obscure comics that deserved new attention. And, in my experience, he's a good person who approaches comics with deep knowledge, respect and love. 

I had fun with Captain LOL. Depending on your kid's affinity for Dad jokes and fart gags, they may, too. 

250 Words on Less is More

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

“I am sorry this letter is so long, I did not have time to make it short.” –Blaise Pascal*

When I lecture about comics, I often show that quote and talk about how the real art of cartooning is distillation. A cartoon isn’t an accurate rendering of reality; it’s not a high-definition video or a stenographer’s transcript. Comics may start with reality but then they amplify and simplify, polishing away everything unnecessary until they arrive at one gleaming gem of an idea. 

Whenever I rewrite or redraw a piece I’m not happy with, I always remove details, never add them. If I could ever draw a single black dot that conveyed exactly the message I intended, I’d die a very satisfied cartoonist. 

To be fair, there are others approaches to comics. There are artists who never use one line when a thousand would do, rendering elaborately cross-hatched minutia, and some of them are all-time greats! But temperamentally and philosophically, I lean the opposite way. 

I often end my comics talks with another quote, this one from cartoonist Larry Gonick: “Our brains represent things in some stripped-down, abstracted way. We don’t remember things as photographs or movies. We remember them as cartoons.”

I think that’s exactly right. When a cartoon is firing on all cylinders, it can feel less like reading and more like telepathy between writer and reader because a comic’s combination of words and images is speaking our brains' native language. That’s the goal: direct, instant, clear, intimate communication.

*Also attributed to many others, including Cicero, Pliny, Mark Twain, and George Bernard Shaw.

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