Me, If I Were The Cheat

If you've never seen a Homestar Runner cartoon, stop what you're doing, right now, go to www.homestarrunner.com and then laugh hysterically at the antics of Homestar, Marzipan, Bubs, Strong Sad, Strong Bad and Strong Bad's best friend, The Cheat.

The Cheat is this adorable yellow thing with black spots. He has a gold tooth. He is criminally inclined and he makes crappy Flash cartoons with incredibly poor voice acting. The Cheat's cartoon, "Mile," is one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. My wife and I quote it on a weekly basis.

So here I am as the Cheat. Thanks for cheering me on!

Me, If I Were Flip From Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo In Slumberland"

My favorite comic strip of all time is Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo In Slumberland." If that guy could've lettered his word balloons a little better and actually written dialog, there would have been no stopping the Little Nemo train. As it is, readers will just have to settle for lush, mind-bending art done in a beautiful turn of the (last) century style with gorgeous, muted colors and beds that grow giant legs and tower over the Empire State Building.

Flip, one of the characters, is a beard muzzled, cigar-smoking, conniving jerk who somehow becomes Nemo's best friend. He's also supposed to be a kid, which is weird, given the muzzle and cigar. And his skin is green.

I can't find the original panel I used as reference for this picture of me as Flip, but here's one to give you an idea of what the guy looked like when drawn by McCay.

Me, If I Were Jack Skellington

My first attempt to draw me as Jack Skellington (from Tim Burton and Henry Selick's "Nightmare Before Christmas") failed miserably. I was using a still from the film as reference. I just couldn't get it to look right to save my life. Luckily, my life didn't depend on it and I drew it this way instead. I don't know who the original artist on this piece was... I found this picture on several websites. I think it's rather nifty.

I like the curlicue goatee, especially. I came up with that on my lonesome.

Me, If I Were A Kid In Calvin & Hobbes' Neighborhood

So, my second favorite comic strip of all time is Bill Watterson's "Calvin & Hobbes." I think he's a remarkable artist and the sheer variety of his strip, which features only a handful of regular characters, is staggering. Spaceman Spiff, Tracer Bullet, Stupendousman... all of Calvin's alter egos allow Watterson to explore and invent in other genres even as he pokes fun at them (not unlike what I'm trying to do with this blog...).

I'm a "Calvin" nut... I have all the books, including one printed for the 10th anniversary of the strip... That one's my favorite, because it allows a look in at Watterson's mind, his creative process, his struggles and his inspirations. Also, it opened a door on one of my favorite comic artists' prejudices. In one fantastic strip, Calvin delineates the different between "low art" (commercial illustration, like comic strips) and "high art" (an ironic painting of a comic strip). It's a valid point... why is Roy Lichtenstein, with his framed pictures of comic strip style art, museum-worthy, while the sketchy wonder of something like "Calvin & Hobbes" is ghettoized to "museums of sequential art." It's unfair and Watterson makes a good point.

Later in the book, though he takes a shot at "graphic novels," and how dressing up superheroes with a harder cover and better binding still leaves them just as dumb. But how is that fair, Bill? How can you judge an entire body of work with one simple, insulting adjective. There certainly ARE dumb graphic novels (I would say a goodly portion of them...), but there are WAY more dumb comic strips. So while Bill doesn't think it's fair to treat comic strips as "low art," he's perfectly content with keeping comic books in their sub-literature state. Not that that affects the brilliance of his work or anything... I just thought it was interesting.

Anyways, here I am drawn in Watterson's style... and I'm just noticing now I have five fingers on my right hand. In real life and in the drawing. *sigh* I should've caught that. Oh well.

Me, If I Were Gumby

From what I've heard, Gumby is here and he will be sure to stay... so, hey, why don't we all see what magical games he can play? Who doesn't love Gumby (besides Nazis and serial killers)? NOBODY. Everybody thinks this green guy is loads of fun... he can, of course, change into anything. He's got a horse. A flying seal friend who spits blue balls of clay at his enemies. He has a big ol' pet wooly mammoth. A fire-breathing dinosaur friend. Dude can enter the magical world of books that are just laying around. He drives a jeep. He fought moon people on the moon! He's a jack-of-all-trades, a lover, a fighter, big brother to Minga and a loving son who's not afraid to show villainous Blockheads who's boss. And he's got a moralistic streak a mile wide.

Art and Ruth Clokey's weird little green guy has been around since 1956 when he debuted on the unintentionally terrifying "Howdy Doody Show." Later, he got his own series of weird cartoons. As a kid, I would watch them at five in the morning, eating Cheerios in a dark living room after my dad had gone to work and before anybody else in the house woke up. I always liked the really old shorts the best, because they were a little more eerie and incomprehensible. Plus, a lot of them revolved around Gumby being on the moon. I thought Gumby was at his best on the moon.



Drawing me as Gumby was tough... I wanted it to look like a photograph, so I found a well lit shot of Gumby for reference. As an added bonus, Gumby was standing in front of awesome wallpaper, and I tried to mimic that as best as I could. I also took care to try to make the glasses and goatee look made of clay as well. It turned out pretty nicely, I think... when the picture is shrunk down to a small enough size, it does, in fact, look like a photo. When it was completed, I was a little disappointed that the most realistic thing I've ever drawn was Gumby with facial hair... but, hey, you take your little victories where you can.



One last point about Gumby: He WILL walk through a wall if you want him to.

Me, If I Were The Old School Early Version of Charlie Brown

As with most cartoonists, Charles Schultz is one of my heroes. What he could do with a few simple lines, a dot or two and squiggle was just freaking amazing. Half a century has a way of diluting the power of anything, much less a gentle comic strip about philosophizing children, and the overexposure of the "Peanuts" brand has made Charlie Brown and his friends such a staple of our pop culture that it's easy to overlook just how good those comic strips were. Especially in the beginning. Charles Schultz drew "Peanuts" for decades, and his style morphed and his sense of humor changed and to keep up a daily grind, he eventually started resorting to increasingly bizarre stories and totally weird punchlines before he surrendered the strip just prior to his death. Even those later strips, I believe, have value, but I believe his best work was done at the dawn of the "Peanuts" era. In the beginning, the kids all had enormous craniums and wide faces and a fluid look to them that become stretched and pinched as time went on. Personally, I think the early version of Charlie Brown squashes the later one like a grape.

So, here's me as the old school early version of Charlie Brown. The picture is cribbed from the cover of the first volume of "The Complete Peanuts," which features Charlie taken from an early strip panel and then given a shadow by the cover designer (and another of my favorite cartoonists) Seth.













I've heard it remarked that NOBODY but Schultz can draw Charlie Brown and get it exactly right... there's always something off about it. Better men and women than me have tried and failed. But I think I did ok. Not quite up to par, but I've seen worse.

Good grief!