Richard Thompson

Cartoonist Richard Thompson died yesterday from Parkinson's disease at age 58. Michael Cavna wrote a good obit in the Washington Post, for which Richard did a lot of work. Richard was also the genius behind the comic strip Cul de Sac, which, when it retired in 2012 because Parkinson's had made it too difficult for Richard to draw, I called the best comic strip of the 21st Century. So far, it still is.

Unlike most people, I don't throw around the word "genius" lightly. To me it means something beyond "extremely smart and talented." More like "sprung full-blown from the brow of Zeus," doing things I don't even understand how any human could do. Richard did that.

The past couple of weeks I've been writing the Comic Strip of the Day blog while its founder, Mike Peterson, recovered from surgery. Mike came back yesterday, and for my final two posts on Monday and Tuesday I republished the testimonial I posted here when Cul de Sac closed up shop. I won't re-repost it again, but here's Part 1 and Part 2. Richard died on Wednesday.

The timing was coincidental but providential. I'd heard from people close to Richard that he was in very bad shape but didn't know he was near death. I reposted that piece partly because I wanted people to think good thoughts about him, and hoped he might see it and it would make him happy. Monday's Part 1 post got a Facebook "Like" in his name. He obviously didn't push the button but someone near him did, so I'm grateful for that.

I never met Richard but we exchanged some messages over the years. He was the same with me as he was with everyone: kind, funny, generous with his time and praise. I live 3000 miles away but always hoped I'd have a chance to take him up on the cup of coffee he promised, and I don't even drink coffee. I'm pretty heartsick and gutted by his loss.

Chris Sparks started Team Cul de Sac to raise money for Parkinson's disease research in Richard's name. I contributed a drawing to a tribute book published a couple of years ago, and the group is still active at comics conventions and online, doing good work with the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Check them out.

I recommend two good books: The Complete Cul de Sac, which collects all of the strips in Cul de Sac's five-year run, and the Art of Richard Thompson, which, if you're an artist, will either inspire you to work harder or give up.

In addition, Picture This Press will soon release two books as part of its Richard Thompson Library: The Incompleat Art of Why Things Are, collecting Richard's illustrations for Joel Achenbach's column in the Washington Post, and Compleating Cul de Sac. 

If you're curious what a genius looks like, watch this video. I'll miss having him in the world.

Drinking & Drawing in Baltimore

. . . sadly, without me.

The Baltimore Comic Con is this weekend, and since I'm on the other side of the continent and not wealthy, I'm not going. However, as part of the festivities, cartoonist Joe Sutliff--whom I met at the June Comics & Medicine Conference in, yes, Baltimore--is organizing a "Drink & Draw" event, where art will be sold to raise funds for Team Cul de Sac, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and Parkinson's Disease Research. Parkinson's research is a cause that many cartoonists have taken on as their own since one of our own, "Cul de Sac" creator Richard Thompson, had to retire his excellent strip because of it.

Several days ago Joe asked if I could donate something to the cause, and after asking Joe's opinion on subject matter I put ink to paper. Since it arrived safely in Joe's mailbox yesterday, I thought I'd share:

This is the first authorized mash-up of Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow and The Last Mechanical Monster. Probably the only mash-up. Although they really go well together, don't they? As I drew it, I was surprised how naturally these two projects of mine fit. Knowing me as well as I do, I probably shouldn't have been.

Who's going to win this Battle of Brian's Books? The Robot's very strong, but never underestimate the destructive power of a teenager.

Some of my light blue penciling shows in this scan. I don't even try to hide or erase it. For me, a big part of the fun of owning original comic art is seeing all the work and process that goes into it. I expect a lot of folks attending a comics convention might feel the same. If you want to own it, go have a beer or soda pop with Joe.

Best of luck to Joe, the Drink & Draw, and everyone attending the Baltimore Comic Con without me. Especially all you Harvey Award nominees (like my friend and editor Charlie Kochman!). I hope it's a blast.

I Owe You a Post

Here it is.

The paradox of blogging is that extended periods of silence that appear calm and boring to you are often frantically busy for me. Or sometimes calm and boring, that happens too. I have been pretty busy (if not frantic) lately with my day job, making good headway on Mystery Project X, and working on a cartooning project that fell into my lap via an e-mail from a stranger and has the potential to be something very cool, different, and possibly high-profile.

I'm not being cagey for its own sake. I just have a rule/guideline/superstition/neurosis about not spilling a lot of details too soon and then having to explain myself if it doesn't work out. Plans fall through all the time. "Hey, what happened with that thing you were doing?" "Um, well, hmmm...." I hate that.

I've said too much already.

Be assured I continue to work on what I hope will be some good, entertaining creative projects. What comes of them remains to be seen and isn't entirely up to me. I'm eager to share when I can.

To help you with the concept of "delayed gratification," here's actor Tom Hiddleston (Loki from the Marvel movies) working through some issues with the Cookie Monster:



And to help you pass the time, here's a practical joke involving the cast of the latest "Star Trek" movie (recently voted the worst "Star Trek" movie ever made at a big Trekkie convention, which I think is unfair; I'd rank it second worst. It was also one of the most profitable, so there you go). Some of the movie was shot at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility, which truly looks like it belongs aboard a starship.


National Ignition Facility--or the USS Enterprise's warp drive. Either way.

The gag set-up: actor Simon Pegg (whose movie "The World's End" my girls and I recently enjoyed) convinced his castmates that the facility emitted dangerous radiation that only "neutron cream" could protect them against. It went a little something like this:



Finally, Chris Sparks and Team Cul de Sac are nominated for four Harvey Awards this weekend at the Baltimore Comic-Con. Team Cul de Sac: Cartoonists Draw the Line at Parkinson's, is a book inspired by cartoonist Richard Thompson to raise funds for Parkinson's Disease research, to which I was honored to contribute a page. The Harveys are named for pioneering cartoonist/editor Harvey Kurtzman, and are one of the two big recognitions available to comics creators and projects.

Did I mention here that Team Cul de Sac was up for an Eisner Award--the other big recognition--last July at Comic-Con International, but lost? Nice consolation prize: the project instead won the Con's Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award, which is an even more exclusive club.

Best of luck at the Harveys, Team. You'll always deserve the "Best Anthology," "Best Biographical, Historical or Journalistic Presentation," "Special Award for Humor in Comics," and "Special Award for Excellence in Presentation" in my book!

Four Harvey Noms for "Team Cul de Sac"

Nice news from Baltimore this morning: Team Cul de Sac: Cartoonists Draw the Line at Parkinson's, a book I was proud to be a small part of (specifically, about 1/150th a part), has been nominated for four of the comics industry's Harvey Awards. It's up for Special Award for Humor in Comics; Best Anthology; Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation; and Special Award for Excellence in Presentation.

Team Cul de Sac was organized by Chris Sparks and inspired by cartoonist Richard Thompson, creator of the comic strip "Cul de Sac," which Richard retired when his Parkinson's Disease symptoms grew too severe for him to continue. It's an anthology of drawings by other cartoonists playing in Richard's sandbox--interpreting his characters in their own styles, mashing them up with their own characters, etc. Sparks found some of the best cartoonists around, most notably drawing out "Calvin and Hobbes" cartoonist Bill Watterson to contribute an oil painting. "Cul de Sac" and Richard's talent were so admired and respected (I wrote my own appreciation of "Cul de Sac" last August) that filling a book with the work of admirers was easy, and I feel lucky that mine was accepted. Proceeds go toward Parkinson's research, and I believe the book has raised more than $100,000 so far.

Other Harvey nominations that caught my eye were my friend Raina Telgemeier's book Drama for Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers, as well as two books from my publisher Abrams, The Carter Family and My Friend Dahmer, competing in the Best Graphic Album Original category. They're both excellent, and deciding which gets my vote will be hard. I also want to give a nod to Best Online Comics Work nominee "Nimona" by Noelle Stevenson, which I discovered when looking over the list of potential nominees and is the only one I've kept up with. It's a futuristic/medieval charmer.

The Harvey Awards, named for cartoonist and editor Harvey Kurtzman, are nominated and selected by comics pros. I got one once. It's neat. For the past several years their awards ceremony has coincided with the Baltimore Comic-Con, as it will this September 7. The full list of nominations is here. 

New Year's Tapas

As I get back to work and normal routines, some odds and ends to start 2013.

* * *

Washington Post writer and comics champion Michael Cavna wrote a lovely essay naming his "most compelling cartoon of the year," and I can't argue with his choice. I'll spoil the reveal but encourage you to read it anyway: it's a drawing cartoonist Richard Thompson did of his own brain while he was undergoing brain surgery to treat the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, which forced him to retire his great comic strip "Cul de Sac." I posted my own appreciation of Richard and his work (which I was thrilled to learn Richard saw and liked) shortly before the last "Cul de Sac" strip, and Cavna's piece retells the story leading up to that decision as well as events since.

While I'm on the topic: Team Cul de Sac, the effort organized by Chris Sparks via the Michael J. Fox Foundation to help fund Parkinson's research, raised more than $53,200 last year. Matching funds from the Fox folks boosted that sum over $100,000. The bulk of the money came through sales of the Team Cul de Sac book, for which cartoonists drew their own interpretations of Richard's world and characters, as well as an auction of the book's original art. I helped. That's a good amount of money for a good cause.

* * *

Occasionally I read something that perfectly captures my own thoughts, and sometimes thoughts I didn't even know I had, better than I could myself. This Gawker piece, "Journalism is Not Narcissism," is one. Here's the lede:

"Every year, thousands of fresh-faced young aspiring journalists flood our nation's college classrooms, in order to learn how to practice their craft. What should we tell them? This, first: journalism is not about you."

I was a newspaper reporter for a few years, fresh out of college, and my ideal for how I hoped to do the job could be summed up in two words: impartial and invisible. Neither is perfectly attainable, but if you're aware of your biases you can counterbalance them. Watch for assumptions and insinuations. Convey every responsible side of the story fairly. If I did my job right, no one would ever detect which candidates I liked or which issues I supported (although I hoped some might notice that this Fies fellow's stories read a bit more clearly and elegantly than most). Honestly, that was one of the existential burrs of journalism that chafed my hide: at the boneheaded age of 25, I could foresee a time when I'd rather do than write about those who did.

Gawker writer Hamilton Nolan goes on to skewer the notion that writers' best subjects are themselves.

"Left unsaid in most discussions of this sort of writing is the fact that most people's lives are not that interesting. Certainly, simple math will tell you that a 20-year-old has only a limited store of really compelling personal stories to tell. Most people who decide to base their writing careers on stories about themselves end up like bands that used their entire lifetime's worth of good material in their first album, and then sputtered uselessly when it came time for the follow-up."

Yes. Though not directed at comics, the Gawker piece bullseyes my gripe with a ton of comics and graphic novels, which somehow--and I don't know why, although I've done some thinking about it--lend themselves to overwrought navel-gazing by putative Voices of Their Generation. Unless you're a refugee from Revolutionary Iran, you're just not fascinating enough to support one book, let alone the cottage industries that some creators mine from their lives. Benjamin Franklin didn't start writing his autobiography until he was 65 because he wasn't sure he'd accomplished enough to merit one. What a maroon!

This may sound like an odd complaint from the guy who wrote Mom's Cancer. But Mom's Cancer isn't my story, it's my mother's. Although I'm necessarily a character in it, as a writer and editor I ruthlessly cut everything that didn't advance my Mom's story, including much (not all) of my personal whiny angst. In fact, I approached writing that book very much as a journalist, determined to report what I experienced as honestly as I could. To the extent it works, I think that's what readers respond to and what still makes it different from similar stories.

You could name some counterexamples of fine young memoirists doing great work, and I'd concede there are exceptions, but I think Nolan reminds writers of something important that's out of style and being forgotten. Less looking inward, more looking out.

* * *

I didn't know what to expect when I printed up 50 zines collecting the "Adventures of Old Time-Traveling Brian" and offered 45 for sale, but I'm pretty sure I didn't expect to only have two copies left two weeks later. Fantastic! My mailing list reads like a "Who's Who" of my favorite people (and I am keeping a list of which numbered limited-edition copy goes to whom, so that when they start showing up for enormous sums on eBay I can finger the culprit).

Numbers 44/45 and 45/45 are still available. After that, there'll be no more ever. Many thanks to everyone who supported my work by sending a few bucks my way, I don't take it for granted and hope you found it worthwhile.

But no returns.

Cul de Sac

In a recent Facebook note about cartoonist Richard Thompson’s decision to quit doing his comic strip “Cul de Sac,” I called it “the best comic strip being drawn today.” That's not praise I lavish lightly. I mean it. Now I aim to defend that opinion.

I’m not going to rage against Parkinson’s disease, which Richard has and is why he's quitting his 5-year-old strip (and was also the reason for the “Team Cul de Sac” fundraising book and art auction, to which I was honored to contribute a page). It’s an awful degenerative disease and it’s terrible that Richard is afflicted with it, and what more can be said? Nor do I have much to contribute to testimonials about what a swell guy Richard is because I don’t really know him. Everyone who does know him says he’s swell, and his peers in the National Cartoonists' Society named him their 2011 "Cartoonist of the Year," to which my second-hand opinion adds nothing.

Instead, I thought I’d explain why I think “Cul de Sac” is the best comic strip being drawn today. What I—someone who loves comics, studies comics, makes comics, and aspires to make better comics—see when I look at Richard’s.

I considered posting and dissecting some of his strips but quickly concluded that wouldn’t work, although I do a bit of it below. Which strips to pick? One mark of “Cul de Sac’s” excellence is that you could choose any dozen strips at random and find something admirable and teachable in nearly all of them. In fact, I simply did a Google Image search and chose the first 30 that popped up, from which I culled these examples. I confess that a recent post by Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon asking his readers to pick their favorites turned up some good ones and was a big help.

I love that borderless second panel of Alice running, her scarf blowing behind her. The first panel is a moment of self-recognition for me: you think your kid is going to be the next Olympic champion when all they really want to do is splash around in the wading pool. And the third panel is the twist: who you think your kids are versus who they actually are.

I have been this parent, although I like to think I always made time to push a swing.

Instead, I want to tell a story on my wife, Karen, which I hope she forgives because this is the perfect time to use it. Way back when “Calvin and Hobbes” was published daily, Karen looked over the top of the newspaper one morning and asked, “Is Bill Watterson a really good cartoonist?”

I assured her that he was one of the best, maybe an all-time great.

“I thought so,” she said. “But sometimes it’s hard to tell.”

I sympathize. Sometimes it is hard to tell! The fact is, you don’t have to be a great artist to be a very successful cartoonist. There was a time you had to at least be a competent one, but those days gave way to valuing authentic authorial voices over skillful rendering. What a creator had to say became more important than how they said it. You can dress it up any way you want, and I strongly defend the proposition that a bad artist can still be a great cartoonist, but the fact remains that some simply can’t draw. Their work looks crude and simple, almost child-like.

Which is exactly how the work of the very best cartoonists can look, too.

How’s the reader supposed to tell?

I have also been this parent. Remembering how much I hated being embarrassed when I was a kid, I'm sometimes amazed by how much I enjoy dishing it out to my own children.

We've all had a kid stare at us like this, but I don't recall any cartoonist or comedian noting it before. Petey's bulbous head and wide eyes peeking over the seat in Panel 4 are the perfect punctuation. Even Mom is sneaking a peek. This situation is not improving.

When I look at “Cul de Sac,” I see the work of an artist who completed the Picassoesque loop from simplicity through mastery all the way back to (apparent) simplicity. Unlike unskilled artists who avoid portraying things they can’t draw (often hands and feet, and I’ve confessed my own challenges with cars), Richard can draw anything. An unskilled artist’s world is small, their settings constrained to the same shapeless couch, office cubicle, or unconvincing shrub. The “Cul de Sac” world is vast—limitless!—and always distilled to its essence so that the reader knows where they are without a wasted detail. His objects have volume and mass, shape and shadow. When his perspective is wonky, it’s wonky with a purpose.

Like they say, he works very hard to make it look so easy.

Beautiful art, costumes and expressions. How far apart can the universes of people living in the same house be? Alice's haunted gaze in Panel 4 slays me. This is one of my favorites.

Richard’s art is a bit of a throwback. Let’s spin that positively and call it “timeless.” He uses dip-pen nibs and ink, favoring the classic Hunt #101 Imperial. Ink-dipped nibs were predominantly used to draw newspaper comics from their invention until maybe the 1940s and ‘50s, when artists like Milton Caniff (“Terry and the Pirates”) and Walt Kelly (“Pogo”) made brushes cool. Brushes and nibs shared cartoonists’ affections (and of course many artists used both) for decades.

The Hunt #101

Both tools let an artist vary line width by bearing down or lightening pressure, creating lively lines with motion, mass, personality. Both also take time and practice to master. When you’re in the zone, the nib or brush becomes an extension of your brain. In recent years, more and more artists use technical pens, Staedtlers or Microns (basically permanent-ink felt-tips), or work digitally directly on the computer. Those are easier to control but, unless the artist is skilled and careful, the resulting line art can look uniform, sterile and dead. Pen guys like Richard and brush guys like me are increasingly considered dinosaurs.

Richard’s scritchy pen line is alive with nervous energy. It practically vibrates. It may look spontaneous and sloppy but in fact it’s quite thoughtful and disciplined. Confident. One way to tell: you never have to stop to figure out what something is or what’s going on. Richard would’ve fit right alongside the great Cliff Sterrett (“Polly and Her Pals”) and George Herriman (“Krazy Kat”) 70 years ago but shines like a lonely beacon of quirk and quality on the contemporary comics page.

So in the same way a carpenter might admire another woodworker’s fine dovetailing, I see a craftsman who knows how to use his tools.

I am always a sucker for an outer space gag, but the idea of drawing the garbage in orbit literally piling up overhead would not have occurred to me in a hundred years. This is one of those representations that looks easy and obvious until you realize you couldn't have done it yourself.

“Cul de Sac’s” characters have distinct personalities without descending to simple archetypes. They can’t be summed up in one word. Richard calls his protagonist, 4-year-old Alice, a “fireball.” She’s a creative, extroverted, anarchic narcissist. Something I once said about Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid, Greg Heffley, applies to Alice as well: she always tries to do the right thing, as long as it’s the right thing for her. Alice’s brother, 8-year-old Petey, is a neurotic, introspective oddball with a passion for making shoebox dioramas. Mom and Dad mean well but don’t seem entirely up to the challenge of wrangling these two kids, who’ll probably turn out all right anyway. Because most kids do. The strip’s deep supporting cast has its own quirks and foibles, none of them completely admirable but all clearly loved by Richard.

Building complex personalities day-by-day in a few tiny panels that take 10 seconds to read? That’s . . . hard to do. Most cartoonists don’t. Their characters are stereotypes—the lazy one, the grumpy one, the sarcastic one, the clumsy one—easy to define and plug into simple situations. Not in “Cul de Sac.”

"P.J. Piehole's" is funny. Petey's neurotic fear of being crushed by restaurant decor is funny. But the best part is his family's total indifference to his terror. That's a lot of funny (and a little bittersweetness) packed into four panels.

Reminds me of the "Calvin and Hobbes" gag in which Calvin's Dad explained how the world used to be in black and white until the 1930s. In this case, Dad tries to explain the science while Petey gets it wrong (does he believe what he says? I don't know!) and the best part: Mom buys in.

This is Alice's naive friend Dill in an homage to the classic comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland," particularly a storyline in which Nemo's bed came to life and carried him away. Thompson is very aware of Nemo; Petey's favorite comic book is "Little Neuro," the adventures of a boy too afraid to do anything.




Little Nemo and his dream-time walking bed (McCay, 1905)

In my opinion, “Cul de Sac” meets the gold standard of relatability—that quality of telling you something you always knew in a way you’d never thought about it—primarily (I surmise) because Richard remembers what it was like to be a kid, turned loose in a neighborhood where every storm drain hides an underground world and a playground slide could be a portal to another dimension. He’s good at taking a surprising left turn that pivots on the perfectly chosen word, or tying up scattered threads of story in a perfectly composed little bow.

In sum, for me, “Cul de Sac” operates at a level of skill and ambition other cartoonists don’t often shoot for and some may not even comprehend. It’s smart, sweet but not saccharine, dark but not cynical, and artistic but not impenetrable. It’s reportedly carried in 250 newspapers, which is respectable but not spectacular. It should be in 10 times that number, and the fact that it isn’t is an indictment of something—I don’t know what. Clueless readers, tasteless editors, modern micro-attention spans, or the slow decline of newspapers.

It is the best comic strip being drawn today, and it will be until the last one runs on Sept. 23. All my best to Richard and his family, with thanks.

SOME LINKS:

Cul de Sac, the strip

Richard Thompson's Blog

A great interview with Tom Spurgeon in 2008

A great interview with Tom Spurgeon in 2010

Team Cul de Sac Raises $47K

The Team Cul de Sac auction of original comics artwork to benefit the Michael J. Fox Foundation and Parkinson's disease research ended last night. The result: 148 pieces of art brought in $47,107.07, a total that includes hefty buyer's premiums (the auction house's cut that's automatically added to bids). Heritage Auctions doesn't make it easy to find the actual bid totals minus the buyer's premium, but figuring that the premium adds about 20%* yields around $39,000 actually raised for the cause.

The top five sellers were Bill Watterson's oil painting of Petey ($13,145), Stephan Pastis's "Pearls Before Swine" tribute ($2,868), Richard Thompson's illustration for the cover of the Team Cul de Sac book ($2031.50), and two illustrations by Patrick McDonnell ($1912.50 and $1792.50). Again, those prices include a buyer's premium; to calculate the actual bids, divide by 1.195.

My drawing went for a bid of $130 ($155.35 with buyer's premium). I was happy with that! It's respectable enough that I wasn't tempted to bid it up myself. I actually bid on a couple of other pieces but was bested on both. That's all right. More money for research. That said, there were still a lot of bargains at the end of the night and I was genuinely surprised by how little some of the lots went for.

I have no idea who won my comic but, whoever you are, you're welcome to contact me if you want to say "Howdy" or have any questions (especially about those white spots I wrote about last week). I hope you enjoy it and thank you for your support of Team Cul de Sac.

If you missed the auction or got outbid, you can still always buy the book! Being part of Team Cul de Sac has been one of the nicest benefits of my cartooning semi-career and a real honor. Thanks again.

EDITED TO ADD: After posting this, I saw that my friend Mike Peterson did a superior write-up of the auction at his Comic Strip of the Day blog (where I also saw that Mike outbid me on one of the pieces I tried to win!). Go read that, and while you're there read Mike's other critiques and essays inspired by his good taste in comics. He's good.

[*Heritage Auction's buyer's premium (BP) is 19.5% or a minimum of $14, meaning (if I've done my math right) that the percentage doesn't kick in until a bid tops $72. Since many pieces sold for more than $72--some for MUCH more--but many others didn't (and therefore had BPs higher than 19.5%), 20% sounds like a fair estimate to me. One more math note: don't make the mistake of calculating 20% of $47,107 and subtracting that (or multiplying $47,107 by 0.8, which is the same thing). Rather, you've gotta ask, "What number added to 20% of itself totals $47,107?" That number is $47,107/1.2 = $39,256, which I rounded to two significant figures.]

Team Cul de Sac Shoots, Scores!

Team Cul de Sac, a collection of comic art by more than 100 cartoonists (including me) to help fund research on Parkinson's disease, arrived in my mailbox yesterday. The assignment was to offer your interpretation of the characters from the comic strip Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson, who has Parkinson's disease. Proceeds benefit the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

WOW, what a beautiful book! I had no idea.

Editor/cartoonist wrangler Chris Sparks and publisher Andrews McMeel went all out: sturdy hardcover, glossly dust jacket, skillfully designed and printed in full color throughout (which I didn't know when I drew my b&w comic, or I'd have used some). Just as a physical printed object, it's a classy piece of work. Add to that the introductory profile taken from this feature by Michael Cavna in The Washington Post Magazine (if you don't know of Thompson or Cul de Sac, that's the piece to read), and it's a heck of a thing.

The roster of contributors says something about the esteem with which Richard and his strip are held. Big cartooning names: Sergio Aragones, Jim Borgman, Jim Davis, Cathy Guisewite, Lynn Johnston, Mell Lazarus, Patrick McDonnell, Pat Oliphant, Stephan Pastis, Tom Richmond, Garry Trudeau, Mo Willems, and the undisputed main attraction, "Calvin & Hobbes" creator Bill Watterson. Some, including me, think Cul de Sac is the best comic strip in newspapers right now, and by all accounts Richard is one of the kindest, gentlest souls on Earth (I've never met him but we've had a couple of online interactions and he types kindly and gently).

Petey by Watterson

Although the book stands on its own, it's also essentially a catlog of artwork that is being auctioned online through Sunday, June 10 at Heritage Auctions (which may also list some pieces that weren't included in the book, I'm not sure). HERE'S the link to all the lots up for bid and HERE'S a link to mine.

"Jungle Gym" by me, page 36. Hard to make heads or tails of it if you don't know the strip, but take my word that it reflects some of Richard's recurring motifs. Pangolins (the scaly critters at bottom left) are fun to draw.

At this writing, the current bid on Watterson's oil painting of the Cul de Sac character Petey is $5500. The current bid on mine is $42 (not placed by me!). That proportion is about right but both numbers are too low. Bid 'em up!

The way online bidding works, neither number likely represents what someone is actually willing to pay. Rather, you're asked to bid the maximum amount you're willing to pay, then the computer automatically raises your bid to top other bids until your secret maximum is surpassed. So say you're willing to pay $100 and enter that amount. If no one else bids, the "current bid" reads $1 and you could conceivably win it for that. If someone else bids $25, the "current bid" increases to $26 and you're still the high bidder. If someone else bids $200, the "current bid" increases to $101 and they're the new high bidder. Like that. Fair warning: I'm completely willing to bid on my own piece if necessary to save face. I'm nearly shameless.

The image of my page above is a cleaned-up scan of the original, and is pretty much how it looks in the book. The scan at the Heritage Auctions site is how it looks "in real life": blue-pencil under-drawing, brush marks, white-out corrections, etc. I like seeing the craft in original comic art and think others do, too, so I deliberately declined to pretty it up any more than if it were something I was doing for a book of my own.

I am irked to see some white blobs in the Heritage scan that I didn't put there. They look like this:

I don't know what those are. Thankfully, they're not in the book because the production people used a high-res scan I provided. My only guess is that the vellum paper I laid over the artwork to protect it during shipment may have stuck to some not-quite-dry ink underneath, although a couple of days passed between drawing and mailing. In any event, they're not part of the "artist's intent" and I'd encourage the winner to scrape them off if they're stuck pieces of paper, or blot them out if they're not. Or send it to me and I'll do it. Seriously.

I was already proud to be a tiny part of Team Cul de Sac, but seeing the quality of the resulting book has puffed me up considerably. It's a great book for a great cause and you should buy it. Furthermore, as Friend Of The Blog Mike Peterson has pointed out, it'll make a terrific autograph album as you hunt down the contributors and ask them to sign their pages. I may actually do that.

Thanks and compliments to Chris Sparks for his good work and for including me, and to Richard for being prodigiously talented in the first place.

Here's the book's Amazon listing. Currently #4783 (that's pretty good), the #3 bestseller among exhibition catalogs and the #9 bestseller among books about comic strips. Or you can buy it directly from Chris.

Shilling

In the past week or so, I've had three different people tell me they like reading my blog because it's interesting and funny.

I don't need that kind of pressure.

To give you a break from that high-quality reading experience, I'll shamelessly flog a couple of things.

First up is my publisher Abrams Books' catalog for Fall 2012, which features a full-page ad for the paperback edition of Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow. For those disinclined to click on the link and find Page 10, here's how it looks:

I'm sincerely touched that Editor Charlie and everyone at Abrams had enough faith in WHTTWOT to not only put it out in paperback in the first place, but to dedicate a full page of the catalog to it. They didn't have to do either. I expect I'll have more to say about how the paperback happened and why/how we redesigned the cover in future posts.

Speaking of the cover, that's not the final version of it above. It's close, but the catalog had to go to press before we were done designing it. In fact, Editor Charlie just e-mailed me a photo of the new cover's proof (the first one off the printing press to check for print quality and errors) and I couldn't be happier. Two words: "silver foil." It's gonna look fantastic!

Second, a listing for my contribution to the Team Cul de Sac book to help fund Parkinson's Disease research is now live on the Heritage Auction website. Inspired by "Cul de Sac" comic strip creator Richard Thompson, who has Parkinson's, Chris Sparks gathered artwork from dozens of cartoonists who interpreted Richard's characters in their own styles. In addition, the original art for the book will be auctioned beginning May 27 to raise more money for the cause.

My listing is just below "Calvin & Hobbes" creator's Bill Watterson's. I wish such close proximity somehow reflected the quality of my work, but it appears to be an accidental consequence of "Brian" following "Bill" alphabetically. I'll still take it.

You'll also note that Heritage hasn't posted an image of my drawing (or many others) yet. They're adding them a few at a time. Luckily, you've already seen it. I will be closely watching the auction and am prepared to make a generous face-saving bid on my own page just in case nobody else does. It'll be for two good causes: Parkinson's research and my pride.

If nothing else, please consider buying the book. It's a righteous deed. Plus, as my friend Mike Peterson pointed out, think about what a great autograph album it'd make as you hunt down all the cartoonists who contributed to it. Good luck with Watterson (or as I call him, "Bill").

Go Team Cul de Sac! Rah Rah Rah de Rac!

Team Cul de Sac is an effort by cartoonist Richard Thompson, creator of the comic strip "Cul de Sac," and others to raise funds for researching Parkinson's Disease, which Richard has. Working with the Michael J. Fox Foundation, Team Cul de Sac had the idea of asking other cartoonists, illustrators, animators and artists to donate art for a book and auction. What kind of art? As the original announcement said:

"The theme is going to be fun. It's your take on the Cul de Sac characters. Please run with them; deconstruct them, parody them, confuse them, cubisize them, psychoanalyze them, draw them in your own strip, whatever tickles your fancy. Enjoy. Open up your heart just create something out of the ordinary, maybe not your own characters, this is for you to let your talent to shine in a wide range of ways. Please write a little text if you would. Not necessarily about PD, but inspiration, technique, influences, determination, strength, spirituality, etc."

So I did, and so did a lot of other people--maybe more than they expected. Many syndicated cartoonists such as Stephan Pastis, Mort Walker, Greg Evans, Jim Davis and Lynn Johnston donated pieces. "Calvin & Hobbes" creator Bill Watterson emerged from retirement to paint a picture for the cause. The deadline was several weeks ago, and Team Cul de Sac organizer Chris Sparks just shot a little video showing a conference room stuffed with submissions. I found mine at 1:25, right after Chris says, "and then there's more." There sure is! Maybe more than they can use; I wouldn't presume they'll all be in the book, and if mine doesn't make the cut that's fine. Maybe it'll raise a few bucks anyway.



Unfortunately, you can't see much of my piece in the video because my cover letter's clipped to the front of it. Fortunately, I scanned it before I sent it off:

Click on the image for a super-big version

If you're not familiar with "Cul de Sac," which I believe is the best newspaper comic currently in print, the girl and boy inside the house are Alice and Petey, and the chaos around them invokes episodes and recurring themes from the strip. Pangolins, those scaly armadillo things which are Alice's favorite animal, are a lot of fun to draw! In fact the whole thing was a hoot, and I appreciated the opportunity to play in Richard's sandbox for a bit.

I'll be sure to post information about the auction and book project as they come. Team Cul de Sac is good people working for a good cause and I'm proud to make a little contribution.
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