250 Words on Pre-Electric Entertainment

[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’m fascinated by mechanical contraptions and entertainment media created before the harnessing of electricity. For example, I think a pendulum clock is just about the most wonderous device humans have ever conceived. 

I love old-timey record players: Edison cylinders, Victrolas, etc. We used to have a Pathe Freres Actuelle spring-powered phonograph from about 1920 that came down through the family, and I played 78s on it quite often. It transported me to a time when a wooden box brought all the music of the world into your home. What a revelation it would have been!

I also have a niche interest in stereoscopic images. Think of the classic Viewmaster toy, but a hundred years earlier. Almost as soon as photography was invented, clever people thought of shooting two photos side by side and placing them in a lensed viewer so that the left eye saw one image, the right eye saw the other, and an illusion of depth was achieved. 

A well-appointed turn-of-the-century parlor might have had hundreds of stereo cards, neatly filed in elegant cases, for visitors to amuse themselves with for hours. Three-dimensional tours of the Holy Land and other exotic locales were a popular subject for people who could never visit them themselves. 

These days you can buy a good-quality antique viewer for less than $100, and cards for $5 to $10 each. I particularly like to find vintage stereo views of places I’ve been. Between them and phonographs, Victorians could experience the world without leaving home. 

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Unboxing

I'm not cool enough to shoot an unboxing video, so how about an unboxing photo? "Mr. McFly! Mr. McFly! This just arrived! I think it's your new book!" said Karen when UPS dropped it off, because that's the ritual in OUR house. 

Presenting the 20th Anniversary Edition of Mom's Cancer, soon to be on bookshelves near you. In has 32 pages of new content, including 22 new pages of comics that tell what happened after the original book ended. It's the ultimate, definitive edition!

It should be in stores in early March. If you have any interest in buying a copy, it would be a big help if you'd pre-order it now, either from your local bookstore (preferred) or online retailer. Pre-orders tell bookstores and everyone up the chain to the publisher how well they can expect the book to do, and it's important to make a good first impression.

Plus, I will renew my traditional offer of mailing a free signed bookplate to anyone who wants an autographed book and sends me their mailing address. (Honestly, I haven't ordered those bookplates yet, but it's top of my to-do list!) Such a deal!

It's always a great day to hold your new book in your hands. They smell wonderful. Mom would've loved it.

250 Words on Jury Duty

[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’ve been called for jury duty often but selected only once, when I was in my mid-20s and working as a newspaper reporter. I thought my job would disqualify me; it didn’t. I served about a week on a rape trial. 

That trial had a “Perry Mason twist” dramatic enough for television. The defense attorney tried to shake the victim’s credibility by claiming she couldn’t even describe where the attack took place. For example, she said it was in a car about half a mile from a highway, while other evidence suggested the distance was more like 40 yards. Then the prosecutor stood and asked:

“How far apart are you and I right now?”

“A hundred feet,” she answered. 

After lunch, the prosecutor produced a tape measure, stretched it between them, and asked her to read the length: 12 feet. 

Everyone on the jury instantly got the point: the victim was an unusually bad judge of distance. That didn’t make her a liar or impeach the essence of her testimony. She just couldn’t look at something and tell you how far away it was.* 

We deliberated thoroughly, giving the defendant the benefit of every reasonable doubt. Everyone took the responsibility profoundly seriously. Then we found him guilty.

People moan when they get a jury summons, and strategize ways to get out of it, but I think everybody should serve on a jury at least once. I left satisfied and proud, with more faith in my fellow citizens and the system.

.

* I still think about what a gamble that was for the prosecutor. It seemed like a completely spontaneous and unrehearsed question on his part. What if she’d answered it correctly?

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They're Dinky

I have a bookmark folder that is simply titled "Happy." It contains about 50 links guaranteed to make me smile. It occurred to me that I could share one from time to time, and maybe it will make you smile, too.

250 Words on Professional Identity

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

We have an excellent art supply store in town that offers working artists a professional discount. Most of the time, I’m too timid to ask for it. 

Although they’ve never demanded proof, I’m afraid that someday they will. What proof can I offer? Nobody issues an art license. I imagine standing at the register Googling myself while they look at my comics and sniff, “You call that art?!”

I once took part in a discussion about what other cartoonists call themselves. If you say “cartoonist,” many people will ask, “Are you in the newspaper? Do you draw Superman?” If you say “No,” folks get confused—what other types of cartoonists are there?—or quickly lose interest. The number of people impressed that I’m a cartoonist who isn’t in the newspaper and doesn’t draw Superman is disappointingly tiny.

Some cartoonists prefer to call themselves “comics creators,” "graphic artists," or “illustrators.” I’m proud to be a cartoonist but if I’m giving a talk, or I’m somewhere that folks are likely to know what a graphic novel is, I’ll call myself a graphic novelist. It’s more specific and pinpoints my niche in the larger cartooning universe.

Otherwise, I call myself a writer. I’ve written for newspapers, magazines, and trade press before, and the process feels the same to me. Sometimes I write with words, other times I write with words and drawings. Both involve solving narrative problems and making a point as clearly and economically as possible, with whatever flair I can muster. 

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More Good Trouble

As Elvis Costello sang, "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?"

Made a little good trouble in downtown Santa Rosa, Calif. today. Others in my family had commitments so I did my best to represent us all. Crowd size is hard to estimate when you're in it but I'd guess 2000 to 3000. 

One of the defining characteristics of these anti-Trump, anti-ICE, anti-fascism, anti-whatever-all-this-is rallies is the evident kindness and decency of the people who attend. They obey traffic signals. They deposit their trash in the bin. They say "Excuse me" and "Thanks." For a lunatic mob of Antifa agitators, they are very well-mannered. 

One guy ran up and down the street waving an "Americans Love Trump" banner, obviously hoping to provoke a reaction. Must have really stung when he was totally ignored.

Demonstrators filled Courthouse Square in the center of town, with lines of them facing traffic on opposites sides. Got a lot of supportive honks from passing cars.

Lots of folks in these vests around. Indivisible.org does a lot of the legwork and planning to pull these things off, including teams of trained monitors who look for trouble, keep people out of traffic, supply first aid, and provide a general calming presence.

I expect to get a few mocking reactions from bots and trolls, mocking the futility of it all. So what's the point? Unity: knowing you're part of a community that feels the same. You're not alone, you're not crazy, we're in this together. The value of being a pebble in an avalanche, a snowflake in a blizzard. The small courage of standing up in public for a righteous cause, then putting your name behind it on social media. 

As Vietnam War protestor A.J. Muste said, "Oh, I don't do this to change the country. I do it so the country won't change me."

A common MAGA slander is that anyone opposed to them must be a paid protestor, bussed in for the day by George Soros. I liked this response.

Simple, direct, says it all.

I liked this collision of worlds. One thing that strikes me as funny about MAGA followers is that they always think of themselves as the plucky rebels instead of the oppressive empire. There's even a joke about it in the new "Knives Out" movie. I guess everybody is the hero of their own story, but the cognitive dissonance must be unbearable.

My favorite protestor of the day.

Advice from Jim Keefe

Jim Keefe is a great cartoonist who has done a lot in his long, impressive career, including working as a staff artist for King Features Syndicate, writing and drawing the comic strip "Flash Gordon," and currently drawing the "Sally Forth" comic strip. We're virtual friends but don't really know each other, and today he posted the best advice about being a working cartoonist I've seen in a long time. I think it would also apply to anyone pursuing self-employment in any creative field. 

I won't repeat all his tips--go read them yourself!--but some, such as develop your business skills, work both hard and smart, and surround yourself with better cartoonists, are the sorts of solid wisdom you'd expect. I want to focus on two, one of which I endorse with a resounding "YES!!" and the other I don't think necessarily applies to me and may not to others.

Jim quotes Steve Martin's advice from his book "Born Standing Up," which I loved: "Be so good they can't ignore you." 

Yes yes yes. 

I remember being in my teens and twenties, and thinking what I really wanted to do was draw superhero comics (a career that holds no appeal to me today). I kept looking at artists I considered the least talented working for DC and Marvel and thinking, "I'm better than that guy, they should hire me instead of him!" 

I think that attitude is very common among aspiring creative people, but in retrospect its ignorance and arrogance is embarrassing. First, I can see now that I really wasn't better than that guy. Second, that guy had a 30-year track record producing professional-grade work on deadline, while I had none. Third, aiming for the lowest bar I thought I could clear guaranteed that I would never get over it.

Don't aim to be better than the worst. Aim to be better than the best. 

But that's so daunting! You could never be as good as Jack Kirby or Neal Adams or Bill Watterson or Charles Schulz! Impossible!

So you work hard and do your best and fall short because you're right, you'll never be better than the best. But maybe you've made yourself better than 90 percent of your competition instead of 1 percent of it. Maybe now you're so good they can't ignore you, and even if they can't hire you today, they will remember you later. 

The other point I like, but will push back a bit on, is "Don't pigeonhole yourself into one small aspect of the art form." On its face, that's great advice. Be flexible and nimble. Don't be so focused on one goal that you miss unexpected opportunities. 

I knew a guy in high school who wanted nothing more than to draw superhero comic books. He was good enough to get a little interest from the big publishers, but no work. Year after year he pounded on their doors in vain until now, decades later, he's still posting examples of his superhero submissions without facing the truth that it is never going to happen. He could have built a career in other aspects of the business but wouldn't pivot.

I saw one young artist a few years ago whose portfolio was nothing but drawings of Wolverine. "What do you want to do with your career?" "Draw Wolverine." "What would you do if you couldn't draw Wolverine?" "Keep trying harder until I get to draw Wolverine." 

Don't be like them. 

Here's my different angle on Jim's advice. He writes about how, when he couldn't get work as a comic book artist, he did lettering, coloring, teaching. Picking up what he could where he could to earn a living in the business, at least stay in the periphery.

I get it but personally wouldn't do that. I have no interest in lettering or coloring as a profession (though I have great respect for those that do). I don't want to draw greeting cards or advertisement art or coloring books. Getting paid to draw is not the "end all be all" for me. My passion for cartooning is telling stories with words and pictures. If for some reason I couldn't do that, then I guess I'd be out of the business. Shrug. I could almost as happily draw on my own time and get paid to do something else. 

I'm not even sure I'm saying anything different than Jim, but that's the thought he prompted when I read his excellent piece this morning. 

250 Words on Mathematics

[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 have little patience for adults who complain/brag they never use the math they learned in school. I use high school math—algebra, geometry, trigonometry—routinely. Calculating fractions and proportions, cutting big things into little things, figuring out where to plant for sun or shade, ordering cubic yards of soil, buying enough paint to cover a wall. 

That level of math is a fundamental part of how I interact with the world. I don’t really understand how people get through life without it.

As a physics major, I dove into the deep pool of calculus and realized that all the high school stuff was preliminary. Calculus is where math really begins. And gets profound!

The foundation of calculus is slicing up space and time into an infinite number of infinitely tiny bits. When you do that, you can describe phenomena you otherwise couldn’t, from the flow of water through a pipe to the drift of galaxies through the cosmos. 

I admit I don’t use calculus in everyday life. It goes much deeper. Beyond its usefulness as a computational tool, calculus changed how I see the world. 

The more I studied F = ma, E = mc2, Maxwell’s and Schrodinger’s equations, etc., the more I realized that math was less about plugging in numbers and disgorging answers than an abstract but robust philosophical approach to life. I’ve forgotten how to solve partial differential equations, but the truth that mathematics lies at the foundation of all reality will stay with me forever. 

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