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Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Monday Short Takes

Published: January 8, 2018 1 minute 16 comments

Betfriends
In today's Between Friends, Kim asks a question that all writers — and creative people in general — face, or, at least, ought to. 

The key is not what people want to read but what you want to say.

It's not that hard to see what is popular but there is that old Hollywood gag that what you need is sincerity and, if you can fake that, you've got it made.

I doubt there are a lot of best-selling anythings who don't on some level enjoy what they do.

Back when I was trying to be JD Salinger, people sometimes said, "You should write a (genre) book! People love those!" but there are two problems with the suggestion.

One is that I had a higher goal. If I were trying to make Roman-style marble statues, suggesting I try crafting bobbleheads instead would seem kind of silly.

Statue_italy_ilvaticano_1181876_o ThumbThere may be people making bobbleheads who secretly — or openly — dream of some day sculpting Minerva Triumphant, but they don't conflate what they do for a living with their greater goals in life.

And if you make bobbleheads, you'd damn well better enjoy making bobbleheads, whatever else your dreams.

And I'd apply that to cartooning as well: If you are a cartoonist who would like to be Picasso or Rubens, that's okay, but if you are a cartoonist who would rather be Picasso or Rubens, you're in trouble.

Here's another part of the puzzle: You can run a diner and enjoy it. It does not follow that the owner of a successful diner would rather be chef at a four-star restaurant turning out exquisite French dainties.

Nor does his enjoyment of making really good burgers make him any less than the chef who drapes pimentos over tiny chicken cutlets.

Nor is it the case that one of them is only working for money while the other is an artiste, unless you're willing to concede that the division could go either direction. 

So Kim wants people to want to read what she wants to say. Fair enough.

What I found was that I had — with considerable help from professors and well-intentioned friends — fooled myself into thinking that writing had a high road and a low road, that being Salinger was a worthy goal while being, say, Ernie Pyle or Nellie Bly was wasting my talent.

Took a while to free my mind from that.

First step is to stop wanting to do the things you think you ought to want to do, and just do what you want.

Whether it involves pimentos or french fries is irrelevant.

 

Juxtaposition of Changing Times

Aj180108
(Arlo and Janis)

Wppic180108
(Pickles)

These two strips share a delightful willingness to confront their own old fartedness.

I remain as puzzled as Janis over the whole bra straps and underwear thing. The braless fashion didn't last, because, once Maidenform and the rest realized that young women weren't buying bras anymore, they backed off on the heavy canvas and began using lighter fabrics that allowed nipples to protrude so that you could look braless and perky at the same time. 

Or perhaps it was a comfort issue, because, a half century later, there are young women who virtually live in their sports bras. Whatever.

But the visible straps — even of clashing colors — are as much a mystery as guys with the waistbands of their boxers on display and they've all got tags hanging out and dagnab it, what the hell ever happened to decency and good manners and telephones that were anchored on the wall like God and Alexander Graham Bell intended?

Meanwhile, I don't know anyone under 50 named Linda. Or Nancy or Sharon. Or Steve and certainly not Stuart. 

And I don't think I know anyone under 75 who has even heard of Linda Darnell.

Frank James Cooper changed his name to "Gary" for the city in Indiana and then people started naming their boys after him, but we seem to have recovered.

Chart
I did a story on naming babies in 1990, at which point these were the most popular names in our area. Fun story and you might enjoy the read.

That chart should also tell you why, in compiling honor rolls, we eventually quit calling the schools to confirm spellings. 

What greater gift than a name your child will have to spell out for somebody several times a week?

Anyway, Linda and Gary may rise and fade, but Michael isn't going anywhere.

 

The Whole World Is Watching

Not_so_much_stables_genius_trump__marian_kamensky(Marian Kamensky, Austria)

Fresh_air__bart_van_leeuwen(Bart Van Leeuwen, Netherlands)

If you want to be really depressed about things — and I know you do! — head over to Cartoon Movement and check out the newsroom to see how many cartoonists around the world are watching Dear Leader with horrified laughter.

Or I suppose you could take comfort in knowing that you're not imagining things and you're certainly not alone.

I'm still working my way through the book but, while it's quite entertaining, I'm not finding it terribly compelling because, so far, everything in it is stuff we already knew, or at least could have known if we had had our eyes open.

Which first of all makes me wonder about the whole Steve Bannon angle, because, while it's nice to have a scapegoat and I'm sure the windmill would not have collapsed if Snowball hadn't sabotaged it, the things I'm reading in the book didn't necessarily come from Bannon.

It's more like a compendium of rumors we read in the Washington Post or NY Times or saw on CNN or Politico or the Hill or just about anywhere but Fox and Friends.

Which of course means it's all fake news from the MSM. The odds of anyone saying, "I really liked Trump until I read this book" are, precisely, to the nearest thousandth, zero.

Okay, one more bit of Old Fartedness:

I remember when I used to see the tabloids in the supermarket and wonder how many gullible nitwits would fall for such obvious nonsense.

And then they counted the votes.

 

Meanwhile …

 

 

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Comments 16

  1. Your opening grafs reminded me of three cartoonists. One was comic book artist John Buscema, who spent most of his career drawing for Marvel and literally wrote the book on how to draw superheroes. He was a favorite of mine growing up, so I was very disappointed to read late-life interviews in which Big John said he hated superheroes, just drew them for the money, and always wanted to be a “real” illustrator like Leyendecker or Wyeth. His indifference didn’t prevent him from being one of the best, and you have to wonder how much happier he might’ve been if he’d just embraced it.
    My friend Dave Roman (“Astronaut Academy”) wrote an essay a while back about the difficulty he had discovering his artistic style. He wanted his art to look a particular way, and was frustrated that he both wasn’t particularly good at it nor making any money with it. Meanwhile, in the margins of his notebook, he was drawing these cute little characters in a totally different style that people really liked. It took him a long time to realize that, like it or not, THAT was his style. He gave up that other stuff he was trying to do and ran with what worked for him.
    The third cartoonist I thought of was Charles Schulz, who (per late-career interviews I recall) went to his grave bemoaning that he’d never produced his “Citizen Kane” and lamenting cartooning’s disrepute. Schulz wasn’t a falsely humble Eeyore–he knew exactly what he’d done and was proud of his place in the culture–but I think that dissatisfaction both drove him creatively and led to some overreaches/missteps. My take is that he wanted to leave one type of legacy without really grasping the value of the enormous legacy he already had.
    Much of the above is only my humble opinion, of course.

  2. Your opening grafs reminded me of three cartoonists. One was comic book artist John Buscema, who spent most of his career drawing for Marvel and literally wrote the book on how to draw superheroes. He was a favorite of mine growing up, so I was very disappointed to read late-life interviews in which Big John said he hated superheroes, just drew them for the money, and always wanted to be a “real” illustrator like Leyendecker or Wyeth. His indifference didn’t prevent him from being one of the best, and you have to wonder how much happier he might’ve been if he’d just embraced it.
    My friend Dave Roman (“Astronaut Academy”) wrote an essay a while back about the difficulty he had discovering his artistic style. He wanted his art to look a particular way, and was frustrated that he both wasn’t particularly good at it nor making any money with it. Meanwhile, in the margins of his notebook, he was drawing these cute little characters in a totally different style that people really liked. It took him a long time to realize that, like it or not, THAT was his style. He gave up that other stuff he was trying to do and ran with what worked for him.
    The third cartoonist I thought of was Charles Schulz, who (per late-career interviews I recall) went to his grave bemoaning that he’d never produced his “Citizen Kane” and lamenting cartooning’s disrepute. Schulz wasn’t a falsely humble Eeyore–he knew exactly what he’d done and was proud of his place in the culture–but I think that dissatisfaction both drove him creatively and led to some overreaches/missteps. My take is that he wanted to leave one type of legacy without really grasping the value of the enormous legacy he already had.
    Much of the above is only my humble opinion, of course.

  3. re naming conventions:
    I was told once that you can identify a woman born in the 1950s if she has a five-letter name ending in “y”. I was skeptical until I thought about the crowd that I hung around with when I was a wee one: Nancy (2 of us), Cindy, Kathy, Patty, Peggy (2 of them), and Sandy.

  4. re naming conventions:
    I was told once that you can identify a woman born in the 1950s if she has a five-letter name ending in “y”. I was skeptical until I thought about the crowd that I hung around with when I was a wee one: Nancy (2 of us), Cindy, Kathy, Patty, Peggy (2 of them), and Sandy.

  5. And in the ’50’s there were no girls named Heather.

  6. And in the ’50’s there were no girls named Heather.

  7. If you click on the link to the story about baby names, you’ll find “Heather” covered in the lower left corner, along with Brittany, Nichole and especially Kayla, among the soap opera names.

  8. If you click on the link to the story about baby names, you’ll find “Heather” covered in the lower left corner, along with Brittany, Nichole and especially Kayla, among the soap opera names.

  9. There are millions of Linda who are about 70 years old, and I assume it’s because of the 1946 hit song.
    Stan Lee says he used a pseudonym because he was a bit ashamed of writing comic books and was saving his real name for his novel. Things took off when he admitted to himself that comics was actually his career, after 20 years in the business.

  10. There are millions of Linda who are about 70 years old, and I assume it’s because of the 1946 hit song.
    Stan Lee says he used a pseudonym because he was a bit ashamed of writing comic books and was saving his real name for his novel. Things took off when he admitted to himself that comics was actually his career, after 20 years in the business.

  11. By the way, “Comics I Don’t Understand” seems to have ceased to exist completely.

  12. By the way, “Comics I Don’t Understand” seems to have ceased to exist completely.

  13. I have a spreadsheet of my college students for the past ten years, the class, the semester, and their grade. There are over 1,600 names on it now, including repeats from students taking multiple classes with me. I searched on some of the names mentioned above. The numbers below are for the number of different students with that name. All are within the “normal” college-age range (18-24) with one exception which I note.
    Linda: 7 (1 of which is about 70)
    Nancy: 1
    Sharon: 0
    Steve: 3
    Stuart: 2
    Gary: 1
    FWIW, most of the young Lindas have Hispanic family names.

  14. I have a spreadsheet of my college students for the past ten years, the class, the semester, and their grade. There are over 1,600 names on it now, including repeats from students taking multiple classes with me. I searched on some of the names mentioned above. The numbers below are for the number of different students with that name. All are within the “normal” college-age range (18-24) with one exception which I note.
    Linda: 7 (1 of which is about 70)
    Nancy: 1
    Sharon: 0
    Steve: 3
    Stuart: 2
    Gary: 1
    FWIW, most of the young Lindas have Hispanic family names.

  15. Ignatz – CIDU is experiencing “GoDaddy” issues; appears to be accessible now, but still showing a lot of “errors”.

  16. Ignatz – CIDU is experiencing “GoDaddy” issues; appears to be accessible now, but still showing a lot of “errors”.

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