Chalk Talk

I've never made a big deal about the fact that a big-time syndicated cartoonist lives in my neighborhood. In fact, out of a high-minded notion of being cool and respecting his privacy, I don't think I've mentioned it at all. Out of that same sense of respect, I won't tell you who he is; I'll just show you two pictures I took of his driveway.


Karen and I noticed these on an after-dinner walk a couple of nights ago. I figure if he's going to out himself so shamelessly and publicly, I could at least share the charming results with you.

Sorry again for the dearth of posts. I'm on a tough deadline for at least the next few weeks and can't remember when I last worked so hard. It's good busy, even fun, but tough to sustain for so long. It's only temporary, I promise. Unless it kills me.
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The Phantom Strikes Again!

Here's what I like about living in the 21st Century. Frank Mariani is a cartoonist and illustrator I've become friends with online. Frank also helps organize the "Lindsay's Legacy" run to fight childhood cancer, which I wrote about last October.

So Frank read my previous post about the Phantom unmasking for the first time in history and dropped a line to his buddy Graham Nolan, who drew the Phantom comic strip for several years until 2006. And Nolan replied with this Sunday Phantom strip from October 2003:

The Phantom unmasked! (Gasp!) In his reply, Nolan noted that overseas Phantom fans were very upset with him when this was published. For now, this stands as the earliest record of the mysterious Mr. Walker's* true face.

Many thanks to Frank and Graham for following up on such a silly subject and giving me permission to write about it.

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*For "The Ghost Who Walks"

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Quick Bits 2

1. The Phantom comic strip has been in continuous publication since its debut on February 17, 1936. In all that time, readers have never seen the Phantom's unmasked face, unless hidden behind huge sunglasses and wide-brimmed hat. Until today:

That's him in panel 3, in bed with his wife, sleeping in his purple tights and stripey trunks. History in the making. You'll always remember where you were when you saw it.

2. Mark Evanier's blog alerts me to a second historic occasion, this heroic shattering of a world record:

I think that clip simultaneously captures everything that's wrong with America and everything that's right with it.

3. When someone asks me what my fee would be to speak to their group, I really ought to come up with a better answer than to snort hot chocolate through my nose and choke.
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Orphan Works

I wish I posted more often and regularly, but I've been awfully busy and blogging takes time, what with the thinking and writing and all. My site stats say a bunch of you check in regularly and I appreciate it.

"Orphan Works" is a topic that's really riled up my cartooning and illustrating acquaintances. Senate Bill S2913 is the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 and HR5889 is its counterpart in the House. If the legislation passes, it will dramatically change copyright law in the U.S., and not for the benefit of creative types. I'm trying to educate myself and haven't actually yet read the text of the bill, so my comments are tentative and based on what others tell me.

As I understand it, Orphan Works are creative products--books, articles, essays, photos, artwork, cartoons--that somebody wants to reproduce but can't find the original copyright holder to pay or ask permission. As the law stands now, you'd be a criminal fool to say "what the heck" and use it anyway; someone owns the rights to the work even if you don't know who. If the Orphan Works bill passes, it would make it legal to do a diligent search for the work's original owners and, if you can't find them, not only go ahead and use it but register it for protection under your own copyright. What exactly constitutes a "diligent search" isn't defined.

Here's part of the problem: before 1978, if you created something and wanted to copyright it, you had to pay a small fee and register it with the U.S. Copyright Office. But in 1978 the law changed so that creators obtain copyright to their work the moment they create it without doing anything at all. You don't have to register or pay a fee; if you made it, you automatically own the legal rights to it and get to decide what happens to it. (If you want, you can still register with the U.S. Copyright Office, which does leave a useful paper trail. But you don't have to.) From the creator's point of view, that's great. It really cuts down on the hassle and expense. The drawback is that it doesn't create an official record for someone else to follow.

So let's say you wrote or drew something a few years ago. Maybe the publisher went out of business, maybe your signature or byline isn't legible, maybe your work is clearly marked “©1989 Bob Smith” but there are a million Bob Smiths in America so good luck finding the right one. Maybe you've got an old family photo posted on the Web. Or maybe you created one of those memes that just floats around the Internet. Next thing you know, someone else could take your work, register it as theirs, and crank out t-shirts, posters, books, movies and breakfast cereals based on your stuff. They could even prevent you from using it. And there's nothing you could do about it.

You can understand where the outrage comes from. Some artists call it legalized theft. Some imagine giant corporations laying claim to all the work they can find and bulldozing any creators who come out of the woodwork to object. Some fear the establishment of a registration clearinghouse--essentially a return to the pre-1978 situation--that could put them out of business (imagine being a magazine cartoonist creating 50 gags a week and having to register them all at $20 a pop).

I can actually see both sides of the issue. As a writer, I'm a very vigorous defender of copyright and I'd be outraged if someone took my words, art or characters and used them without my permission (if there's any exploiting to be done, it'll be by me!). I created 'em, I say what happens to 'em. I really despise the whole modern song-sharing software-pirating mash-up-media "information should be free" ethic. It's disrespectful. As I've written before: especially in a society that produces so few material goods anymore, the most valuable products we have are ideas; if you think my ideas are good enough to steal, you ought to think they're worth asking permission or paying for.

On the other hand... I'm working on a project now that incorporates bits of old artwork. One was copyrighted by General Motors in the 1940s, so I wrote GM (they've got a whole department for the purpose) and paid them a fair fee to license its use. Another was produced by a now-deceased artist in the 1950s, so I tracked down his estate and got their permission to use it. But there are other pieces done for publications long defunct by obscure artists long dead who as far as I can tell left no heirs. They're terrific work I'd really like to use but I can't and won't. That's a shame, and it also seems contrary to the original spirit of copyright, which was to give creators a reasonable time to profit from their work before freeing it for use by everyone (that's called "public domain," which is why anyone who wants to can write a Dracula or Sherlock Holmes story). Instead, the work is locked away and nobody benefits.

Still, it seems clear to me that the current Orphan Works bill is an abomination that ought to be stopped. It's an overkill solution to an insignificant problem. I'd urge you to write your legislators blah blah blah, and I have, but I don't really expect you to. I just thought you'd like to know what they're up to and why your favorite cartoonists may seem grouchy lately.

My copyright registration for Mom's Cancer.
So don't even think about trying any funny business.

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Baby Blues

One of the very nice things about being a member of the Charles M. Schulz Museum is that you don't have to waste a lot of time seeking out your favorite cartoonists. Sooner or later, they all come to you.

So it was last Sunday, when I went to a talk and book signing by the gentlemen who do the successful comic strip "Baby Blues," Jerry Scott (writing) and Rick Kirkman (art). Jerry had been scheduled to appear last year with his "Zits" co-creator Jim Borgman but canceled for a medical emergency, so it was good to finally see him. They gave a swell chalk talk in the museum's little theater, clearly something they have a lot of experience with. Jerry spoke and Rick drew, anticipating and punctuating each other's points like a good comedy team, and they did a nice job talking about the origin of the strip, how their partnership works, how they developed the characters and themes, etc.

View from the back row of the theater. My wife and I habitually
sat up front for these things until we figured out that, when it came
time to queue up for book signings afterward, everyone behind us
got to file out of the room and get in line first. We learn by doing.

The most fun part of the talk was a look at some of the outraged letters they receive from readers--some not entirely unexpected, as when the strip jokes about (and shows) breastfeeding, but others from completely beyond left field. For example, I learned that you never want to anger square dancers. They also marveled at the mail they got when cartoonist Stephan Pastis borrowed their characters for his "Pearls Before Swine" comic strip--for example, showing the "Baby Blues" toddlers driving a car to go on a beer run. The very best part of that story? Stephan himself sitting beside me in the theater laughing his butt off.

I was really looking forward to meeting Jerry and Rick afterward. Jerry I didn't know, but Rick and I have met electronically in an Internet forum. He's said some very kind things about Mom's Cancer and even given me some invaluable Photoshop advice. So I figured he'd recognize my name, and it turned out Jerry did, too, and we all had a very nice conversation for a minute until it was time to move the line along.

Rick, Jerry and me

What Rick is drawing in the photo above. This
brings my collection of original "Mom and Dad
cartoon character art" to two (see Borgman).

Once again, after hearing Scott and Rick's talk, I was struck by how hard these guys work. Anytime I've met professionals at the top of their field (any field, not just cartooning), I came away impressed by the time and dedication they devote to it. That seems like such an obvious secret of success--"hard work, huh, who'da figured?"--and yet it seems to be the one thing I've seen that always separates the achievers from the wannabes. It also always strengthens my resolve to do better.

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Ollie Johnston

I'm lifting my head above the surface of work and deadlines to note the passing of animator Ollie Johnston, the last of Disney's "Nine Old Men." Walt Disney himself gave the group its name--though most were only in their thirties at the time--in deference to their pioneering work in the earliest days of the studio, when they refined a new art form beginning with Snow White and progressing through about the 1970s.

Johnston began working for Disney in 1935 and animated movies ranging from Snow White, Fantasia, Bambi and Pinocchio to The Rescuers. He retired in 1978. In 2005, President Bush presented Johnston the NEA National Medal of Arts in recognition of his career. Late in life, he and his partner Frank Thomas--the second-to-last "Old Man"--experienced something of a renaissance, as younger audiences remembered and honored their work. They became the subjects of a popular documentary film, Frank and Ollie, and won much well-deserved recognition. Among Johnston's new generation of fans were director Brad Bird, who used caricatures of Frank and Ollie in The Iron Giant, and the people at Pixar, who put them in The Incredibles (also directed by Bird). It was nice to see.

Johnston in Iron Giant (top), and Frank and
Ollie in The Incredibles, voiced by themselves

There are far more knowledgeable Disney experts and animation historians who can talk about Johnston and his colleagues' artistic contributions. Jim Hill is one. What Ollie Johnston meant most to me was that he and Thomas wrote The Illusion of Life, an inside look at the art and process behind Disney's classic films. Though ostensibly about animation, I think it's also an excellent book for cartoonists and even writers, and one of the first I recommend when asked.

The Illusion of Life is a beautifully illustrated coffee-table "How To" book. I'm sure it's one of the first that a serious student buys when they get to animation school, but I think it's more than that. What I got out of the book was less about how to do the work than how to approach it, and those lessons apply far beyond animated cartoons. I was amazed by how much thought went into the apparently simplest of things. How much analysis lay behind structuring stories and building characters. It's hard, and it's supposed to be hard, but if you do it right it looks easy--even inevitable, as if it were impossible to imagine turning out any other way. I use insights from this book every time I draw.

When I pulled my copy of Illusion of Life off the shelf this morning, I found tucked into its pages a few sheets of paper I printed off the Web more than 10 years ago summarizing advice from Johnston as passed on by Pixar's John Lasseter. Luckily, the same list is still available online. The 30 tips include technical notes that only an animator would need, but also some good advice for anyone creating characters in any medium. For example:

• If possible, make definite changes from one attitude to another in timing and expression.


• It is the thought and circumstances behind the action that will make the action interesting. Example: A man walks up to a mailbox, drops in his letter, and walks away. OR: A man desperately in love with a girl far away carefully mails a letter in which he has poured his heart out.


• Concentrate on drawing clear, not clean.


• Everything has a function. Don't draw without knowing why.


• Does the added action in a scene contribute to the main idea in that scene? Will it help sell it or confuse it?

Solid gold principles to write and draw by. More information about Johnston is available from Disney and at the official (and not recently updated) Frank and Ollie website. The Associated Press has written a nice obit as well.

Edited to Add: New links to nice tributes by animator Brad Bird and writer/animator John Canemaker.
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Casting a Critical Eye

Back when "Calvin and Hobbes" was an actual daily comic strip, a person of my close acquaintance looked up from the newspaper and asked, "Is Bill Watterson a really good cartoonist?" I assured them that Watterson was fantastic, one of the best working at the time, maybe one of the best ever. "I thought so," came the reply. "But it's hard to tell."

I understood the question. Watterson's brushwork is so economical and confident, I could see how it might look sloppy and slapdash to a "civilian." What was evident to me--but, as I was reminded, not to everyone--was the bedrock foundation of artistic fundamentals underlying it. Perspective, composition, expression, use of negative space. Watterson was also particularly smart about what he didn't draw. For example, if you or I set out to draw two characters walking through a snowy field, we might show drifts piled against fence posts, icicles hanging from tree limbs, rocks protruding through a crunchy crust. In contrast, Watterson followed Walt Kelly's directive: the best way to draw snow is to draw nothing at all. Feet disappearing into the ground, a scraggly weed, everything else blinding white as far as the eye can see. With such scant clues, you still immediately get a feel for how deep the snow is, maybe even its texture. That's fine cartooning.

I'm reminded of Jack Benny's ability to get laughs with silence, the audience reading his mind and filling in funnier responses than he could possibly voice. One imagines that the perfect cartoonist would somehow be able to communicate an idea by drawing nothing at all.

(Remember my post on Victorian era cartoonist Phil May? "When I can leave out half the lines I now use, I shall want six times the money." A cartoonist who figures out how to omit all the lines should get all the money.)

Of course there's more to cartooning than economy. A fairly common topic among cartoonists is "artists I didn't think were any good when I was young but love now." You hear names like Steve Ditko, Alex Toth, Chester Gould. My example is a comic book artist named Don Heck. When I was a kid reading Marvel Comics' "Avengers," Heck's credit on the title page made me groan. Part of the problem was that in the 1970s, when I was a young teenager collecting comics, Heck was in poor health and winding down his career. In addition, he was often called in to do rush jobs on tight deadlines when other artists couldn't. Frankly, I didn't catch him at his best.

But my main problem with Heck was that I just didn't "get" his style, which was so different from either the pop-art Jack Kirby or super-slick Neal Adams styles popular at the time. At his best, Heck did loose, sophisticated, impressionistic, dynamic brushwork in the tradition of newspaper great Milt Caniff ("Terry and the Pirates," "Steve Canyon"). He had a great eye for layout and storytelling, and a successful career in romance and western comics before superheroes hit big in the 1960s. It wasn't until I learned a little about the history and craft of cartooning, and maybe tried to do some myself, that I really appreciated how tremendously skillful he was.

Art by Don Heck ca. 1966

I've learned you can come to respect work that you don't particularly like. I recently had a cup of coffee with a syndicated cartoonist, during which the conversation turned to a comic strip done by another syndicated cartoonist. "I don't really like his strip," he said. "It's just not my thing. But you can tell at first glance that he's a great cartoonist who belongs on the comics page." I think that's a mature way to look at things, and I've got a fairly long list of artists like that: I'll probably never buy their work, it just doesn't appeal to me, but they're obviously very skilled professionals doing terrific stuff that somebody out there will really appreciate. I'll also admit there are artists I still don't get despite the raves of people whose opinions I trust. I'm always open to the possibilities that either they're wrong or I need to get educated.

How can you tell the good from the bad? The "so good it looks simple" from the "looks simple because it really is simple"? I'm not sure. Read a lot, I guess. Good cartooning is always clear; if you have to stop and go back because you missed something or don't understand what a character is doing or how the action progresses, that's a failure (the cartoonist's, not yours). You shouldn't have to think about it. If a piece of writing or art makes me care about the characters and feel something--happy, sad, even appalled--I figure it's doing something right.

Honestly, I think I divide other people's work into three categories: 1.) I could do that. 2.) I wish I could do that. 3.) Wow, I have no idea how they did that. I think many people's taste evolves and matures as they realize that a lot of work they thought fell into Category 1 really belongs in Categories 2 or 3.

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The Denial of Something Essential

Last weekend I read a Q&A column by San Francisco Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle, in which a reader asked why modern film actresses don't get the same loving attention to lighting and cinematography that, for example, Von Sternberg lavished on Marlene Dietrich. The reader asked, "What's missing?"

"Black and white is what's missing," LaSalle replied. "The denial of something essential (like color) creates a longing in the viewer, which translates into an arresting image."

I think exactly the same thing happens in cartooning. It's all about "the denial of something essential," distilling characters and situations into the fewest words and lines possible--just enough to communicate an idea. When information is missing, readers fill in the rest--they yearn to fill in the rest--and the less the cartoonist gives them, the more invested they can become. Paradoxically, the more abstract a story, the more real it can seem. Somehow, a few squiggles of ink become a boy waiting by a mailbox for a Valentine's Day card that never comes. A few squiggles of ink can make you happy or sad. That's amazing.

I've mentioned this before, but I got a modest glimpse of this with Mom's Cancer when I heard from a few readers who said, "I'm not like you, my family's not like yours, and we weren't dealing with cancer, but it's just like you were in our living room." None of the details fit but somehow it still hit home in a way that felt very specific. That's also amazing.

Even more than black-and-white film, I think cartooning demands that its readers do their share the heavy lifting. That's one reason the characters in Mom's Cancer didn't have names: if I don't tell you what they're called, maybe their name is the same as yours. That's also why my editor and I didn't want to put a family photo in the book: it would've turned those abstract characters who maybe sort of resemble you and your family into real people who don't look anything like you at all. The more details I give, the more opportunities you have to find differences between us. I've thought a lot about how and why cartooning sometimes seem to tap directly into a reader's brain, and I think that's close.

I really like LaSalle's "denial of something essential" formulation. Of course for that to work, you also have to provide something essential and meet the audience half way. Otherwise, you've denied them too much to make any connection with the work at all. I think that's the difficult and rewarding (when it works) give-and-take conversation that the best writers, artists and cartoonists have with their readers or viewers.
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In Praise of Pioneers

A recent discussion at an Internet watering hole got me thinking about pioneering cartoonists, comic book artists and writers, and the lack of respect they get. The business has always been cruel to its veterans--comic books much more than comic strips, I think, but both find new voices more compelling, new styles more diverting. They eat their old. That's the way of the world, the way of business, and I understand it. I expect a profit-driven publisher (and publishers who aren't profit-driven don't publish long) to put out what sells.

What pains me is that fans go along.

The newspaper comic strip is just over a century old. Comic books have a history almost as long--at first, many of them existed to reprint newspaper strips--but turned a corner when Superman debuted in 1938, 70 years ago this June. Before the invention of television, comic strips were a major mass medium of entertainment and cartoonists were stars. Millions of comic books were sold every month during the "Golden Age" that began with World War II and lasted about a decade after (again, probably not coincidentally ending with the proliferation of TV). Into the 1970s, comics and cartoons were important and popular cultural touchstones in a way that many, including I, believe they haven't been since and probably won't be again.

That wasn't that long ago! A lot of very creative people who did that work are still alive. A few of them would still love to work. Not many of them get the opportunity.

Attending the big San Diego Comic-Con the past three years, I've gotten used to seeing cartooning pioneers sitting ignored in Artist's Alley, their view blocked by a long line waiting to meet the superstar wunderkind sitting at the next table. I dunno.... I've got no business telling people what to like. But to me, being a fan of something means having an appreciation of its history and the contributions of those who came before. To me, those fans lining up at the wrong table are like baseball fans who worship Barry Bonds but have never heard of Willie Mays.

(It's not the same thing, but I remember reading about a convention whose guests included "Star Trek" actors and Apollo astronauts. The actors drew huge crowds while the astronauts sat alone, chuckling to each other that fans would rather meet people who pretended to explore space than those who actually had.)

I can't say that the experienced pioneers deserve work; that's for the market to decide. But they deserve acknowledgement and respect. I've been lucky to meet a few. I never know what to say and I'm sure I always manage to sound like an idiot fanboy. It seems to come down to "thank you for your work, it means a lot to me," which is pretty weak but I think is better than nothing.

I'd take Willie Mays any day.

Top to bottom: Jerry Robinson, Irwin Hasen and Gene Colan,
talented pioneers and gracious gentlemen all. Look 'em up.

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On Cheating

Never draw what you can swipe.

Never swipe what you can trace.

Never trace what you can cut out and paste.

And never do any of that if you can hire somebody to do it for you..

--Wally Wood
Master Cartoonist

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I hate drawing cars. I'm not good at it. There's always a kid in the high school art class who earns minor fame, and maybe even a little pocket change, drawing beautifully rendered hot rods, with giant exhaust pipes roaring, tires squealing off the page, and every chrome reflection perfectly in place. He (invariably a "he" in my experience) is a venerated specialist, and he is not me.

In theory, an artist who understands perspective can draw anything. Establish a horizon line and vanishing points, and build the object out of simple shapes. It works great for a lot of things. The problem (or rather, my problem) with cars is that they're pretty complex objects, with lots of compound curves and subtle angles. Another problem with cars is that everyone is intimately familiar with them; if a drawing doesn't get the proportions just right, readers know it looks "funny" even if they can't say exactly why. Yet another problem is that every car model has dedicated owners and fans who know every bumper and bolt. I'd really like to get 'em right. .

So when I recently had occasion to draw an old car, I knew I needed help. The first resort is reference photos, and indeed you can google hundreds of pictures of old cars in various states of restoration and repair. That helps, but didn't give me the angle I needed. Evidently, no one in automotive history has ever photographed a car from a spot hovering 30 feet above the front left fender. That's a tough angle to extrapolate from a bunch of ground-level front and side shots.

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I needed a model. After combing fruitlessly through dozens of Hot Wheels racks, I found an online vendor of affordable, accurate models of old cars. A couple weeks later, I had a 1939 Chevy coupe ready to pose for me.
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At this point I might've drawn it freehand, but I decided not to do that. Instead, I put the model on a sheet of white poster board and took digital photos of it from several angles.

1939 Chevy coupe, with a smaller-scale 1940 Ford on its tail

I chose the photo above, opened it in Photoshop, and made the Chevy approximately the right size to fill the hole I'd left for it in another drawing several weeks earlier.

At this point I might've traced the photo using a light box ... but I decided not to do that. Instead, I converted the color photo into a duotone image, which is like a black-and-white photo except you substitute shades of some other color for black and gray, in this case cyan.

Cyan duotone

I printed that picture onto a sheet of the same 2-ply Bristol board I use for all my cartooning. Then, I used a brush and pens to ink directly over the light blue image.

Inked

The tricky thing here is to not get bogged down in detail and draw too tightly, despite the pains I've taken to this point to be as precise as possible. Cartooning is distillation and simplification. It's got to look as loose, relaxed, and hand-drawn as the rest of the artwork that will eventually surround it. I didn't go nuts putting in lots of reflections and spotted black because, again, that wouldn't match the style of the rest of the page.

Next, I scanned the drawing into Photoshop, where I made all the blue disappear (I likewise pencil all of my artwork in light "non-photo" blue so I don't have to erase after I've inked). All that remains is my black line art, ready to copy and paste onto the open road I drew for it elsewhere.

Blue erased, ready to copy and paste

Semi-final (I may add some shadows and such later). The road texture is a charcoal rubbing I did of my concrete front porch.

I ... kinda wish I hadn't had to do that. I'd love to have the skills to dash off any car from any era from any angle, but I don't. I admit I feel a little disappointed in myself--but not much. Over time, I've come to regard both writing and drawing as primarily problem solving. I know what I want to accomplish; now what's the best way to do it? This is the best way I could think of to solve a particular problem and produce the result I wanted.

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Gus Arriola and the Language of Lines

Cartoonist Gus Arriola died yesterday at age 90. His Associated Press obit is here. Mr. Arriola wrote and drew the comic strip "Gordo" between 1941 and 1985, when he retired. It's fair to say he's not a household name, but when I was a kid trying to figure out how comics worked, his strip was among those I most frequently clipped and saved. I think he's one of the all-time underrated greats.

"Gordo" was set in Mexico and featured an overweight tour guide, his housekeeper, and various human and animal characters--notably a chihuahua, pig, cat and rooster. The strip had swell characters and an easy-going charm, but what really caught my eye was the way Mr. Arriola played with the language and iconography of comics in ways I'd never seen before. His use of graphics was masterful.

Unfortunately, good examples are hard to come by online and I have no idea where to find my 30-year-old clip file (though I suspect I still have it somewhere). The images below were the best I could find, and you'll just have to take my word that I remember several even better.

(click to see larger)

The Sunday strip above, which I scanned from Jerry Robinson's book The Comics (which unfortunately reproduced it in black and white), is a nice piece from 1954. There's a lot of arty goodness going on here: the shapes of panels, the bottom border and negative profile in panel 6, the playful use of lettering guides as a design element in panel 3. Even the cigar smoke in panel 6 is an interesting squiggle. But what sells it is the checkerboard pattern, introduced in panel 4 and finished off in the final panel, where Gordo is not just a checkerboard silhouette, but one that has shattered into surprised shards.

The next Sunday strips are in color and highlight's Mr. Arriola's use of same as well as his incredibly graceful and expressive ink line. I thought he really shined when drawing the animals, particularly in frenetic action accompanied by colorful streaks or lightning bolts. I love the first strip, which is very "meta," in that the cartoonist literally cools off the characters by coloring them in cool colors (and maybe letting in some cross ventilation by cutting two holes through the panel border?).

(click either to see larger)

Next, another black-and-white Sunday strip I found online, this one capturing the dark festivities of Dia de los Muertos. Note that these aren't just pretty pictures, but pretty pictures that tell a story. But mostly, it's just Grade-A cartooning.


In his imaginative use of the entire cartoonist's toolbox, I always thought of Arriola as a natural heir to Cliff Sterrett, the best cartoonist you've never heard of. Mr. Sterrett did "Polly and Her Pals" in the 1910s through '30s, when he created innovative, abstract work that was both of its time and far ahead of it. Below are a couple of good examples.

(click either to see larger)

Here's a close-up of that sixth panel, which I think shows just how far comics allows you to push the boundaries of literal representation to communicate an idea--in this case, a spooked cat in the middle of the night--that couldn't be shown any other way. This is just beautiful stuff.

The Language of Lines
Coincidentally, I learned of Mr. Arriola's death after coming home last night from the opening of a new exhibition at the Charles Schulz Museum titled "The Language of Lines." The show pretty much covers what I've been writing about: the unique symbolism of comics that instantly communicates an idea, from the antique "light bulb of inspiration" and "sawing log of slumber" to increasingly sophisticated techniques that continue to emerge. Originals in the show date from the early 20th century (including Sterrett) to today, as represented by "Pearls Before Swine" and "Stone Soup," among others. Good examples from "Peanuts," "Pogo," "Doonesbury," "Calvin and Hobbes" and many others illustrate the thesis. When you see Snoopy dance on Schroeder's musical notes, Calvin melt into a puddle of snot, or George W. Bush depicted as an asterisk wearing a Roman soldier's helmet, that's the language of lines.

(An "inside baseball" note: I don't think I've ever seen "Calvin and Hobbes" originals before and was astonished by how small Bill Watterson drew them--particularly his Sundays, which looked even smaller than published size to me. Most cartoonists draw originals at least 1.5 to 2 times the size at which they'll be printed, and often larger. For example, "Peanuts" originals are huge. I guess the tight confines gave Watterson the look and line he wanted, but it really surprised me. Very gutsy.)

The exhibition was curated by Brian Walker, cartoonist Mort Walker's son and part of the Walker-Browne dynasty that continues to produce comic strips such as "Beetle Bailey" and "Hi & Lois." However, Brian may be even better known as a comics historian, author and museum curator, having organized dozens of comic art shows in the U.S. and abroad, including the very high-profile "Masters of American Comics" in 2005 through 2007. He also flew across the country to speak at last night's opening.

I've met Brian twice before. We share a publisher in Abrams and, I discovered just last night, the same editor (look out, Charlie, we compared notes). I also met his wife Abby. Brian grew up immersed in comics and is one of the most knowledgeable experts around, and it was a pleasure to reconnect with him. A bad cold, as well as sadness over not being home to see his beloved New York Giants play the Super Bowl, didn't distract him from giving a nice talk on the language of lines as demonstrated in the pages we then went into the gallery to view. Add some music, wine and snacks, and it was a very memorable evening.

So it was somehow fitting to come home with that exhibition and conversation on my mind, and then read about Mr. Arriola. "Gordo" isn't represented in "The Language of Lines" but it could be--probably should be. It was a very influential strip for me personally. In the bigger picture, I can't help comparing the bold graphic sensibilities of creators like Arriola and Sterrett to the much more pallid, static comic strips of today. If somebody drew comics like that now, it'd be heralded as a cutting-edge creative breakthrough--never mind that Sterrett did it 90 years ago and Arriola 60. This great stuff used to be in the newspaper every day!

Too many contemporary cartoonists and readers don't even remember what they've forgotten.

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The Trip Report

The Mighty Housatonic
(I hope to someday learn how to pronounce that)

One of the nice things about travel is it makes you appreciate home. My wife and I are happy to be back, although I return to face a mountain of work that has to get done before Thanksgiving. You may judge how eager I am to tackle the mountain by the length of this post. Let's see how well I can procrastinate.

Elaborating on my previous post's highlights:

1. Western Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Berkshires. Beautiful country, perfect little villages full of nice people. If there is a single home in the entire region that doesn't look like it belongs in a painting by Grandma Moses, Currier & Ives, or Norman Rockwell, we didn't see it. Ordinary houses well off the beaten path have all the clapboard, dormers, gables, cupolas, cornices, finials, and flying buttresses you could hope for (maybe not flying buttresses). Beautiful brick construction of the type we simply never see in northern California because ours all fell down in 1906. We're pretty sure everyone keeps their one-horse sleighs locked up in their garages until the first snow falls, because that was the only detail missing.

We met several locals who were almost apologetic about the state of their trees' leaves. Leaf tourism is a big deal, and we were alternately told that we'd missed the best colors by a few weeks, that we'd see better color a little farther north, or that the colors were bad everywhere this year. As we explained to a few folks: we're from California. Our standards for fall leaf color are pretty low. However, I don't see anything wrong with vistas like these:

2. Opening of the LitGraphic Exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum. What a beautiful facility. I only realized as we drove to it that the reception was scheduled to begin after sunset, and it was pitch dark by the time we arrived at 5:45 p.m. So of the building exteriors and surrounding landscape, I can only say that the photos I've seen look very nice.

The interior, I can report first-hand, is terrific. Galleries are arrayed around a small central rotunda featuring Rockwell's "Four Freedoms" paintings. Many of Rockwell's huge, stunning originals are on display, in some cases accompanied by the sketches or studies he used in their creation. It's not an enormous place; I'd call it appropriately intimate, in an architectural style that seems to reflect a Rockwell aesthetic without calling attention to itself at the expense of the artwork.

The LitGraphic exhibit occupies three galleries in the back, with one dedicated to "historical" work by artists such as Eisner and Kurtzman, and the other two to more contemporary pieces. A tiny side gallery--almost a corridor--has benches facing two TV monitors that looped five-minute interviews with six of the exhibit's contributors, including me.

Me and my wall.

Watching myself on TV.
Because I'm just that vain.

It's hard to estimate how many people attended the opening reception. More than 100 for sure. Several were museum patrons and members, though the museum staff told me there were many new faces they didn't recognize--presumably people just drawn by the subject matter--and they were thrilled with the turnout. The first person we recognized shortly after we arrived was curator Martin Mahoney, who came to my home to interview me. I also reconnected with Jeremy Clowe, who ran the camera and did a fantastic job editing all the interviews into a great presentation. He worked very hard to find five minutes that did not make me look stupid. We also enjoyed meeting their friends and loved ones as well.

3. Meeting Artists. Dave Sim, Peter Kuper, Howard Cruse, Marc Hempel, and Mark Wheatley all had work in the exhibit and attended the opening. I spent a few minutes and had good conversations with each, during which we said nice things about each other. Dave was great, and Peter and I turned out to have a mutual friend in Editor Charlie (not as big a coincidence as it may seem; Charlie knows everybody). Even artists much cooler, better, and more experienced than I admitted that showing their work in the Norman Rockwell Museum was something of a career highlight, which made me feel a bit less like a freshman at the senior prom.

With "Cerebus" creator Dave Sim.

4. Terry and Robyn Moore. I mention Terry Moore of "Strangers in Paradise" separately because we had a little more time to talk and, maybe, connected in a less superficial way than usual at an event like this. We really had a good visit about writing, the creative process, family, all sorts of stuff. As I wrote in my last post, Terry and Robyn seem like especially nice people I look forward to seeing again whenever I can.

Terry (center) and I chatting with a museum patron who was very proud of the comic-themed tie he'd worn for the occasion.

Dinner following the reception was held at the palatial (literally) Cranwell Resort in nearby Lenox, where I got to know more of the museum's staff, curators and administrators. I was impressed by how excited they seemed to be about hosting the exhibit. They talked about the emergence of a new narrative form and the continuum of telling stories with pictures that linked Norman Rockwell to us. Good food and better company. It was after 11 when we finally parted.

5. Guy Gilchrist. Guy began his professional cartooning career at age 14. Mentored by "Beetle Bailey" creator Mort Walker and often working with his brother Brad, he's had an impressive career that's included "The Muppets" and "Nancy" comic strips as well as many books and commercial art projects. Now he works out of Guy Gilchrist's Cartoonist's Academy in Simsbury, Connecticut, which serves as his studio, a school, and a summer day camp for kids.

The first impression any fan of comics and cartoons would have when entering Guy's academy is jaw-dropping wonder. The walls are covered with original art, some by Guy but most by other great pros: Milt Caniff, Stan Drake, Curt Swan, Cliff Sterrett, Jack Davis, too many others to count or recount. As I told Guy, I think young cartoonists can learn more from looking at original artwork for 10 minutes than they can from a shelf full of books, so he's done them a tremendous service right there. The academy is also outfitted with desks, art supplies, light boxes, and computers for the students to make their own comics and flash animations. It's quite an undertaking.

Guy very graciously treated us to lunch and spent about two hours of his day off with us. He's known a lot of the old-guard East Coast cartooning elite and is quite a raconteur. He's also very generous. I won't embarrass Guy (or me) by revealing how generous; let's just say I'm pretty sure if I'd expressed admiration for his microwave oven, he would have unplugged it from the wall and carried it to my car. All in all, it was one of the nicest, most interesting, insightful and engaging conversation I can recall having with any cartoonist. Thanks, Guy.

Talking cartooning over the foosball table. Guy's students do animation at these computers, hence the cels on the wall for them to study.

6. Historic Boston. Not much to add here, except that we spent a day walking the "Freedom Trail" and seeing all the highlights. A couple of hours were spent in the company of this delightful man, who led a group tour and enhanced our understanding and enjoyment enormously.

My wife Karen and I flanking Revolutionary-era hat maker Nathaniel Balch.

We spent some time exploring the Common, the Public Garden and Beacon Hill, and Boston seems like a perfectly fine city that well deserves it reputation for nighmarish traffic. Now, I expected that in the heart of the city, laid out 250 years before the invention of the auto. Jumbled narrow streets are part of the charm. My real puzzlement and frustration was with the modern stuff, which was a lot more baffling than it ought to be. Tunnels you can't get to, streets with five names within four blocks, interstates to nowhere. And the Massachusetts Turnpike: seriously, what the hell? I'm familiar with the concept of toll roads, but this thing's got booths that take cash, booths that dispense little tickets with teeny Excel spreadsheets printed all over 'em, booths at every exit manned by three guys who collect $1.10 from the six cars per hour that wander through. We went through one booth whose entire purpose seemed to be circling us around to a different booth. To misappropriate an old saying, this is no way to run a railroad.

However, it's a poor guest who leaves badmouthing his host, so I'll wrap up by saying we had a wonderful time in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and only regret we didn't have a chance to see everyone we wanted to. Also, I have never seen so many Dunkin' Donuts franchises in my life.

UPDATE: At the request of exactly one person, I've linked the first four photos above to higher-resolution version of the same. OK, Sherwood?
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Three Shades

I don't do many "How To" posts about cartooning. I don't feel particularly well qualified--there are 3.74 million people doing this stuff better than me and I think of my own work as just adequate. I write and draw well enough to tell any story I can think up. I try to improve. I also think as fewer and fewer creators show interest in story or craft and readers' standards slip, my work will gradually look better and better.
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(That last is a joke, but in fact I think few people making a living cartooning today--some very celebrated and successful--could have gotten a job in the 1950s. There are some legitimate reasons for that: styles and tastes change, and modern readers value a quirky authorial voice. That's great. Still, I can't think of more than a dozen contemporary cartoonists who would've been fit to clean brushes for Walt Kelly, Milt Caniff, Will Eisner or Stan Drake. Including me. Those artists knew so much we don't even know we don't know.)
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However, I drew some stuff in the past few days that I thought turned out all right and might make a nice "How To" post. I noticed I'd used three different techniques to show the boundary between light and dark on a shaded object, and thought I could write about the techniques and the thinking behind them.



This is pretty simple but also exacting and a bit tedious. I'd use it to shade a smooth but not necessarily shiny object in bright light; it also makes a fine "Ka-Pow!" effect. Using a crow-quill nib, I start each line at the narrow pointy end nearest the light source and pull the pen toward me, pressing down gradually to make the line thicker as it goes.


You can do this very precisely using a straight edge to make sure the lines are straight and all converge to a single point. In this case I wanted to suggest a less even surface so I did it freehand. I wanted them wiggly and uneven.

The next surface is illuminated by a single bright light source that casts deep shadows. In this case, it's a cavern wall.


I do about 80% of my cartooning with a brush, this included. The technique is almost the same as above: starting at the pointy end of each shadowy spike, I pull the brush toward me (toward the top in this picture) and apply more pressure to widen it as I go.


You can pull the brush at the same angle for every point or, as I did here, change the angles to suggest and enhance the curve of the surface. Each gives you a different look.

The surface below is a hard, dark, and metallic. The points showing the transition from light to shadow are short because the edge is sharp.
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I could very well have just drawn a straight line instead, but wanted to suggest a rough texture, like iron. I used the same brush here, and again started with the tip at the pointy end of each spike. But instead of pulling the brush backward, I swept it sideways to make a thicker sawtooth line.

I only notice now that I haven't done any cross-hatching lately. I can cross hatch; I guess I'm just going for a cleaner, slicker look than that. In general, when I find myself wondering if I should cross hatch an area, I decide I'm better off just making it black instead. I think spotting blacks is a dying art--notice how few areas of solid black there are in a typical page of contemporary comic strips or comic book panels--and I try to exercise it when I can. It really helps a picture jump off the paper.

None of this decisionmaking is really conscious. I don't spend a lot of time mulling it over (maybe that's one of my problems...). I do think about what and where the object is, and my pen or brush seems to know how to do the rest. I trust my tools.
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Oddly Ends

Oddly Normal creator Otis Frampton had posted some thoughts in response to my October 22 post in his own blog. While I touched on the idea that too few "mature" comics actually aspire to provide mature characters, plots and themes, Otis comes at it from the other direction: too few comics that should be for kids actually are.

Good point. While some sigh in frustration that comics aren't taken seriously as adult literature, it's worth remembering that they're still a terrific medium for juvenile literature--and there's no shame in that. As I replied to Otis, creating quality juvenile literature is hard and important, and I have great respect for people who do it with integrity and responsibility. Comics are big enough to embrace both--or should be.

Can't Think of a Good Segue to....
Family, friends, and regular readers know of my fondness for "Star Trek." Less frequently mentioned is my affection for Monty Python. I hope I'm forgiven, then, for finding the clip below irresistible. Thanks to my friend, cartoonist Mike Lynch, for the lead.




Sorry. I feel happy....
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Eddie Campbell + A Bonus Tirade

I broke a rule. Turns out it's more of a "guideline" than an actual "rule," but I wanted to explain myself anyway.

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In a few long-ago posts I wrote about my tiny collection of original cartoon art. Knowing that I could easily get carried away and bankrupt my family, I established my rule: I would only acquire art from friends or artists with whom I'd developed a relationship. We don't have to be buddies forever; just a couple of e-mails or a nice 10-minute conversation will do. The point is that when possible I'd get pieces directly from the artists themselves and have an emotional connection to the work that conjured a good story or nice memory. Right now I've got Irwin Hasen, Raina Telgemeier, Otis Frampton, Ted Slampyak, Charles Schulz (acquired way before I made up the rule but still a nice story) and Winsor McCay (also pre-rule--but I would have broken it for him anyway).

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And now I've got Eddie Campbell. Here's the original Page 80 from Mr. Campbell's recent book, The Black Diamond Detective Agency.

Original p. 80, Black Diamond Detective
Agency, by Eddie Campbell. Captions and word
balloons were added in production.

I broke my rule for Mr. Campbell. Never met him, never corresponded with him. I saw him at ComicCon last July and almost approached his table, but he looked too busy and I never got back to him.

Eddie Campbell is probably best known for drawing From Hell, a retelling of the Jack the Ripper story written by Alan Moore. He's the creator of a long-running series titled Bacchus about the Greek gods living in modern times; a few semi-autobiographical works including The Fate of the Artist, which I thought was terrific; and The Black Diamond Detective Agency, based on an unproduced screenplay about a deadly train explosion in 1899 Missouri and a Hitchcock-esque man-on-the-run framed for it.

On paper, I'm not a particularly devout fan--haven't seen much Bacchus and didn't actually care for From Hell, which I found unengaging, overwrought, silly, and lurid in a Bret Easton Ellis "let's carve up some women for fun" sort of way (I concede that if any subject cries out for carving up some women for fun, it's Jack the Ripper). However, Mr. Campbell's contributions are, I think, always excellent. Both his writing and artwork are interesting, witty, well-researched, and thoughtful. His confident, relaxed impressionistic style is built on a rock-solid foundation of craft. He's comfortable with ink, paint, collage, multi-media, typography: whatever he needs to get the effect he wants, he's not afraid to put it on the paper. He knows which rules to follow and break, and why. Everytime I read his work, I come away inspired to try two or three things I'd never thought of. In addition, I always get an absolute sense of integrity from his work.

Reading his blog for a while, I've also gotten a sense for Mr. Campbell as a person and I like the cut of his jib. He seems to be one of a small number of grown-ups working in the comics/cartooning/picture book/graphic novel business, and now I need to go on a little rant to explain what I mean by that.

Here's the Tirade
Comics are in an interesting, tricky place right now. First, there's the problem that much of the general public thinks comics are for kids. Some creators are striving mightily to have their comics taken seriously as literature, while others deliberately wallow in their low-class outsider status and confirm every slander against the entire medium. Others just don't care. Every few months for the past couple of decades, some reporter does a story with the headline "Pow! Bam! Comics Aren't Just for Kids Anymore!" Some of them have been about me. Every comics convention has at least one panel discussion on the topic of when comics will finally enter the mainstream. I've been on some of them.

As comics have been taken more seriously, they've drawn critics, students, analysts, theorists, and cranks. Much of their discourse happens on the Internet, though it occasionally spills over to print. There are people dedicated to making rules, defining terms, arguing what is or isn't a comic, deciding who's in or out of the club. Is it a comic strip, a comic book, an illustrated book, or a graphic novel? There are people who question whether "Prince Valiant" is a comic because it doesn't use word balloons or whether "Family Circus" is a comic because it doesn't show the passage of time via sequential panels. (Answer: they're comics. If your definition of comics excludes them the problem is yours, not theirs.) Webcomics spice the debate with arguments about what is or isn't a digital comic.

There are people who confidently declare that there are only eight kinds of this or four ways to do that, and whenever I hear that I immediately think of three other kinds of this and two different ways to do that, and then I realize what a waste of time it is. It all reminds me of a Victorian gentleman's butterfly collection in which the point isn't to appreciate butterflies or advance science, but to pin the right label on every specimen so it ends up in the proper cabinet drawer. That's the sport of it: getting the taxonomy right. And the way some of these guys talk, if they don't have a drawer for your butterfly, it might as well be a lemur.

In response to such as that, Mr. Campbell once assembled a tongue-in-cheek "Graphic Novel Manifesto." All 10 points can be read at the end of Mr. Campbell's Wikipedia entry; I'll just provide the first and last:

1. "Graphic novel" is a disagreeable term, but we will use it anyway on the understanding that graphic does not mean anything to do with graphics and that novel does not mean anything to do with novels.

10. The graphic novelist reserves the right to deny any or all of the above if it means a quick sale.

Yes! If I could be so bold as to sum up Mr. Campbell's perspective in one sentence, I'd say it's "Just shut up and make the things as best you can!" Don't worry about fitting into someone else's definitions or rules. Don't fret over whether its Number 6 or Number 7 on somebody's list of the only 12 things it could possibly be. It doesn't matter if it's a cartoon or comic or graphic novel. Like the shoe commercial said, Just Do It. If it's good, people will find it. None of them will care what it's called.

This was brought home to me in a small way at the San Diego Comic-Con last July, when I had dinner with Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. We were on our way to watch me lose two Eisner Awards and had a short chat about whether Jeff's book would be eligible for Eisner consideration next year. It looks like a comic--it's got little cartoon drawings with words coming out of characters' mouths--but, on the other hand, most of the book is typeset text (in a font made from Jeff's hand printing), so maybe it's more of an illustrated book or novel with pictures. As we were having this discussion, I realized two things: first, it was a ridiculous conversation that had absolutely no impact on what the book actually was and who would buy and read it; second, this was almost the only context in which that conversation had any merit whatsoever. The only people who should ever care are award administrators who need to decide which trophy to give you and bookstore clerks who need to figure out which shelf to put you on. It's otherwise useless, irrelevant, and probably counter-productive.

Anyway, in the weeks to come, we did figure out what to call Jeff's book: "Bestseller." Now with 26 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List for Children's Chapter Books, including a stint at Number 1.

I've never liked the term "graphic novel," though I accept its practical utility. When I was making Mom's Cancer, I thought of it as a serial comic strip. In light of the rant above, then, I've been especially delighted that it's gotten some recognition from the American Library Association, the German Jugendliteraturpreis, and others as a work of youth literature. I didn't know I wrote a kids' book. Never intended it, my publisher never positioned it as such. It not only broke out of the graphic novel drawer others put it in, but the drawer I put it in. I think that's just wonderful.

Here are some questions I ask when reading anything--even a graphic novel. Does it reward my time and attention? Does it introduce ideas I've never had before? Is it skillfully made? On its own terms, does it accomplish its goals? Is it worth the $2, $12.95, or $200 I paid for it? Is it good?

Some people in comics/cartooning are doing excellent, ambitious, high-quality work. But far too often, based on what I see (which is far from the whole industry), a lot of creators demand literary respect but do little to earn it. They want to sit at the adult table but don't know how to use a knife and spoon. They have no idea what makes great literature great or why theirs falls short. They're their own worst enemies. Not all, but some. Many. Maybe most.

(What's funny is to read someone's high-minded academic defense of their comic as art and literature just as good as anything ever done by Hemingway or Joyce, and then go look at it and find an artless scrawl about a video-gaming slacker with a time machine and wise-cracking dinosaur. You're not part of the solution, dude, you're part of the problem.)

That's what I mean when I say Eddie Campbell is a grown-up. He not only knows how to use a knife and spoon but also a finger bowl and the funny little fish fork (metaphorically; I have no idea what his actual table manners are like). He's cranky. He's sat on too many panels dedicated to dissecting what graphic novels are and when they'll be respected as real books, and he's tired of it. Instead of endlessly debating, he works. He makes books with words and pictures that reward the reader's time and attention, introduce new ideas, accomplish their goals, and are worth the money people pay for them. Even more than his work, I appreciate and respect his attitude toward his work. It's worth breaking a rule--or bending a guideline--to have it in my home. It makes me happy.

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An Illustrated History

I have better regular readers than I deserve. I've not been particularly blog inspired and have been otherwise busy for several days, and appreciate the loyalty of all six of you.

When I was a teenager trying to figure out how these things called "comics" were made, my local public library was a lode of meager treasure. The "treasure" was big, beautiful books about cartoons, comic books and comic strips, some written by or including information straight from the creators themselves. It was a meager trove because the library only had about five of them. I knew exactly where they were, had a favorite chair by a window next to their shelf, and spent hours reading and re-reading the same five books. I mourned when one was checked out and mourned more as, one by one, they were pulled from circulation over the years.

Of course those were the pre-Internet Dark Ages. Now we have the miracle/curse of eBay, which is where I stumbled across one of those jewels from my youth and bought it for less than its 1974 cover price of $15. It's The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art by Jerry Robinson, and I'm pleased to say it still holds up. It offers a terrific overview and sampling of newspaper comics from 1896 to the then-present. It's probably where I first saw Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo" and Herriman's "Krazy Kat." Best of all, it contains full-page essays by Milton Caniff, Lee Falk, Charles Schulz, Mort Walker, Chic Young, Hal Foster, Walt Kelly, and others that I remember absorbing through my pores as a kid.

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Do kids ever actually spend afternoons hanging out at the library anymore? (Maybe they never did; maybe it was just me. Little freak....)

I met Jerry Robinson at Comic-Con in 2006 and wish I'd remembered to mention this book to him instead of whatever lame hero worship I managed to stammer out. He's had a heck of a career, from his very early contributions to Batman (creating or co-creating Robin and the Joker) to editorial cartoons to syndicated comics to, obviously, comics historian. Maybe someday I'll get another chance to thank him. This book was important to me and I'm thrilled to be reunited with it.

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More Cartoons Matter

Some follow-ups to my previous post, from The Times of London.

Reaction from cartoonist Lars Vilks:

Mr Vilks arrived back in Sweden from Germany yesterday and made light of the assassination call. “I suppose that this makes my art project a bit more serious. It is also good to know how much one is worth,” he said.

“We must not give in. I’m starting to grow old. I could die at any time — it’s not a catastrophe.”
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From the same article:

A leading Swedish daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, yesterday republished the cartoon in an act of solidarity with the local paper that first printed it.

Thorbjörn Larsson, the editor, said in an opinion piece: “We live in a country where freedom of expression is not dictated by fundamentalists, nor by governments. To me, publishing it was the obvious thing to do.”

The daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet urged Swedes to defend their right to free speech in the face of religious fanaticism. It said: “Freedom of expression is not a privilege for the media companies and journalists but a guarantee that citizens can have different impressions, numerous sources of information and inspiration, as well as the possibility of drawing their own conclusions.”

Go Sweden.


UPDATE: Just found this by Oliver Kamm, writing in the magazine Index on Censorship:

The notion that free speech, while important, needs to be held in balance with the avoidance of offence is question-begging, because it assumes that offence is something to be avoided. Free speech does indeed cause hurt – but there is nothing wrong in this. Knowledge advances through the destruction of bad ideas. Mockery and derision are among the most powerful tools in that process. Consider Voltaire’s Candide, or H L Mencken’s reports – saturated in contempt for religious obscurantists who opposed the teaching of evolution in schools – on the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial.

It is inevitable that those who find their deepest convictions mocked will be offended, and it is possible (though not mandatory, and is incidentally not felt by me) to extend sympathy and compassion to them. But they are not entitled to protection, still less restitution, in the public sphere, even for crass and gross sentiments. A free society does not legislate in the realm of beliefs; by extension, it must not concern itself either with the state of its citizens’ sensibilities. If it did, there would in principle be no limit to the powers of the state, even into the private realm of thought and feeling.

The debate has not been aided – it has indeed been severely clouded – by an imprecise use of the term ‘respect’. If this is merely a metaphor for the free exercise of religious and political liberty, then it is an unexceptionable principle, but also an unclear and redundant usage. Respect for ideas and those who hold them is a different matter altogether. Ideas have no claim on our respect; they earn respect to the extent that they are able to withstand criticism.

Cartoons Matter

I think this is important:

By MAGGIE MICHAEL
The Associated Press

CAIRO, Egypt -- The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq offered money for the murder of a Swedish cartoonist and his editor who recently produced images deemed insulting to Islam, according to a statement carried by Islamist Web sites Saturday.

In a half hour audio file entitled "They plotted yet God too was plotting," Abu Omar al-Baghdadi also named the other insurgent groups in Iraq that al-Qaida was fighting and promised new attacks, particularly against the minority Yazidi sect.

"We are calling for the assassination of cartoonist Lars Vilks who dared insult our Prophet, peace be upon him, and we announce a reward during this generous month of Ramadan of $100,000 for the one who kills this criminal," the transcript on the Web site said.

The al-Qaida leader upped the reward for Vilks' death to $150,000 if he was "slaughtered like a lamb" and offered $50,000 for the killing of the editor of Nerikes Allehanda, the Swedish paper that printed Vilks' cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a dog's body on Aug. 19.

Vilks said from Sweden he believed the matter of his cartoons had been blown out of proportion.

"We have a real problem here," Vilks told The Associated Press by telephone. "We can only hope that Muslims in Europe and in the Western world choose to distance themselves from this and support the idea of freedom of expression..."

...Al-Baghdadi added in his message that if the "crusader state of Sweden" didn't apologize, his organization would also attack major companies.

"We know how to force you to retreat and apologize and if you don't, wait for us to strike the economy of your giant companies including Ericsson, Scania, Volvo, Ikea, and Electrolux," he said....

More here.

I'm struck by the fact that al-Qaida conveys the generous spirit of Ramadan not by offering mercy to those who offend them, but by providing an extra large bounty on their heads. Not being raised on a farm, I can only wonder what lamb slaughtering involves and why it's worth an additional $50,000. I was unaware until now that Sweden had taken part in the Crusades. And I believe "we have a real problem here" is a masterpiece of understatement. Indeed, we have an enormous problem here.

If Western Civilization means anything, it's that freedom of speech, press, and religion are inviolable. Anyone offended can peacefully protest, boycott products or media, and express their competing point of view. Free speech carries risk and consequences, and I have little patience or respect for those who whine "censorship" whenever someone objects to their message. You have a right to speak and others have a right to disagree. If Al-Baghdadi's reference to Ericcson, Scania, Volvo, Ikea, and Electrolux were a call to boycott (which I definitely don't infer from context), that's fair play. But he can not put a price on writers' and artists' heads with a bonus for "extra messy."

Well, obviously he can, but it's barbaric and wrong. This is so self-evident to me that I simply can't understand anyone in the West who fails to regard it as a serious strike at civilization's most essential foundations. Or more: anyone who apologizes for it, expands definitions of hate speech to embrace it, or reassigns or fires cartoonists and their editors to pacify it. The timidity and cowardice I see astounds me.

I can't imagine any circumstance in which I'd draw a cartoon defaming The Prophet (PBUH), any more than I would Jesus Christ or the Buddha. I just wouldn't do that. But today, Ich bin ein Swedish cartoonist.
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MoCCA: Infinite Canvas

I see that New York's Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) is promoting the exhibition Infinite Canvas: The Art of Webcomics, to which I've contributed four original pages from Mom's Cancer. The show will be up September 14 through January 14, 2008, with an opening reception on September 13. Unfortunately I won't be there, but I know some people who might make it and report back to me.

"The exhibit explores three aspects of online comics," reads MoCCA's blurb. "The unique format and design of webcomics, their appeal to niche audiences, and the transitions between web and print comics." Curator Jennifer Babcock further explains, "webcomics are free of the space constraints and editorial censorship to which printed comics are often subjected...." I agree with that sentiment completely. I also think that freedom to break all the rules doesn't necessarily carry an obligation to do so.

Let me back up to explain that the exhibition's title, "Infinite Canvas," comes (to the best of my knowledge) from Scott McCloud's notion that the Internet provides just that: an infinite canvas. Online, there's no need to restrict a comic to three or four panels, stick to traditional comic book page layouts, or draw in black and white. No need for most of the artistic constraints imposed on comics by 19th-century printing press technology. No need to avoid words that might emotionally scar five-year-old Suzy or give Grandma the vapors. We're finally free. Free!

So why do so few cartoonists take advantage of the limitless space, time and language available to them? Why do so many webcomics look exactly like their print counterparts? Why did mine?

I can't speak for anyone else--although I have some notions--but I put considerable thought into how I wanted Mom's Cancer to interact with the electronic medium that transmitted it. First, I designed the pages to be proportional to a least-common-denominator computer monitor. I wanted anyone on any computer to be able to read each page without scrolling or clicking. That in turn mandated the size I needed to draw to produce art that would be clear and legible at on-screen resolution. My decision was a deliberate break from the infinite canvas idea, which can obviously demand significant reader interaction (and allow the cartoonist to play with story flow as scrolling reveals and conceals information). Those were features I willingly gave up so that my readers could apprehend each individual page as a unit of story--a thought, an idea, a chunk of time. I did that on purpose.

Also, I always had hopes that Mom's Cancer might see print. I didn't know how, I couldn't imagine who would publish such a book, but I wanted to keep my options open. I drew in black and white, colored in the cyan-magenta-yellow palette needed for press, and saved high-resolution versions of everything (not high enough, I later learned, but that's another sad story). I think that same hope motivates more web cartoonists than would admit it, and partly explains why so few break out of the shackles of print: they want it. Print still matters.

For similar reasons, I wrote and drew Mom's Cancer to be as all-ages as possible. It's an adult story, but I wanted it accessible to readers from young children to great-grandparents. There's not a dirty word in it (I actually thought long and hard about the "My God" on Page 99 but couldn't conceive of anything better). I fought my first impulse to draw it dark and gothic with scritchy-scratchy cross-hatching, partly because I wanted it to look as friendly and familiar as a 1950s' comic strip. I wanted people who'd never read a comic or graphic novel to get comfortable and ease into the story, where I hoped to hit 'em between the eyes. The web gave me complete freedom--including the freedom to approach the audience however I wanted.

Still, I share McCloud's frustration (as I perceive it) that almost no one has grabbed webcomics by the horns and exploited the new medium's potential to create something never seen before. Literature done in a new visual language that couldn't have existed until today. Why do so many webcomics consist of tiny, repetitive, static panels of talking heads when they could be ... ANYTHING? I would very much like to see that someday--maybe even try to do it. But that's not what Mom's Cancer was intended to be. I've always seen it less as a webcomic than as a comic that happened to be on the web, and never pretended it was anything else.
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