This morning I was looking at this cartoon, drawn several months ago, but still unsold.

The idea of replacing EFFECT with AFFECT seemed like a good one. The joke is that the guy only APPEARS to be experiencing the Placebo Effect; AFFECT meaning to put on an appearance.

On a sadly belated whim, I looked up the meaning of AFFECT. It doesn't mean what I thought it meant.

Affect

In order to understand the correct situation in which to use the word affect or effect, the first thing one must do is have a clear understanding of what each word means. According to yourDictionary.com, the word Affect means:

1. To have an influence on or effect a change in: Inflation affects the buying power of the dollar.
2. To act on the emotions of; touch or move.
3. To attack or infect, as a disease: Rheumatic fever can affect the heart.

On the bright side, I don't need to look up EMBARRASSING.

Here's another Neatorama design. Note the snazzy trick of fading the colors as the woman freezes.

I'd be reluctant to wear this t-shirt myself — I suspect I might qualify as the zero — but if you're on the receiving end, here's a shirt to keep you warm.

My Moon Hates the Beach cartoon is featured at Neatorama in its new, more populated, glory.

Here's a closer look.

In the original cartoon, only the moon was disturbed by the unscheduled tide, and the water was his problem. The lone onlooker was untouched (sight gags are often funnier if there's a witness.) I thought it would be more interesting if the moon's influence affected everyone. And in the re-draw the moon's personality changed from milquetoast to Mark Heath; wary curmudgeon; enjoying the beach, but not too much.

By the way, I'll send a Spot the Frog sketch to the first person who can identify the cameo appearance of one of my strip characters. Here's a clue: it's not the beach ball.

I wonder if greeting cards are next.

And speaking of postage. I mailed a 9x12 envelope yesterday. It contained a letter-sized sheet and a postcard. According to my electronic scale, it weighed 1.1 ounces. I financed the expedition with a pair of stamps.

Instead of dropping it in the mail box, I took it to the post office. I had another envelope going to Canada and I didn't know the rate.

The clerk weighed the stamped envelope. 

"It's already stamped," I said, enjoying the rare feeling of self-sufficiency. 

"You only need another forty-four cents."

"Huh?"

"There's an extra cost for non-standard envelope sizes."

"It's not a standard size?"

She turned it around in her hands to emphasise its lack of standards.

Said the clerk, "I guess you haven't mailed one of these in a while."

Starting in the eighties, I mailed 9X12 envelopes so often I could predict their weight and postage by eye. I knew what a batch of eight cartoons would cost to mail, with or without a paper clip — plastic or metal — a tearsheet, the SASE. I slapped stamps on the envelope with a card dealer's precision.  I knew the weight of a cardboard sheet slipped into the envelope to keep it flat, whether it was  salvaged from a spent pad of drawing paper, the packaging of a new dress shirt, or bought in bulk from a print shop. I knew the weight of the extra ink if I signed a cover letter and added a P.S. I knew the weight of the paper if it was damp from a muggy day. When I strode into the post office lobby, I was a colossus. The little people made way. The mail wasn't my hobby, or a mere public utility. It was my business.

And now, thanks to years of email and ftp and the hemi-decade of drawing Spot the Frog, I didn't know the cost of mailing a standard non-standard envelope.

When the clerk said, "I guess you haven't mailed one of these in a while," I felt a hundred years old. Lost in a land that had once been familiar.

I often feel lost when I sort out new technology. It's a rare feeling to be lost when I sort out the old.

Every once in a while I'd write a Spot the Frog joke that was inspired by my life, or at least my mirror. Sadly, this was one of them.

As with Moon at the Beach, this illustration began as a single-panel cartoon. I'll be sending it out as a postcard.

After a lifetime of punchlines and captions, it's an odd feeling to draw in support of someone else's words.

Look, Ma. No caption. This cartoon — I mean, illustration — is a recent promotional piece.  You can also find it as a t-shirt at Neatorama.*

*The cartoon began at American Scientist Online, then spruced up a bit and appeared in the shop at Neatorama; then as a promo with a greater beach population, and will eventually replace Neatorama's more sedate design. It's also in the mail as a greeting card design, and, as it began, and forever will be,  a single-panel cartoon.

Now that some time has passed, I can say with a minimum of blush that I love this cartoon.

As the saying goes: it's funny because it's true.

By the way, I've been asked why I draw my suns that way. I'm pretty sure I stole it as a kid from a Chuck Jones cartoon, but I'm not certain. I stole a lot back then. Artist as kleptomaniac.

Another cartoon is up at American Scientist. Take a good look at this image of a strange-headed man with his wallet. He'll be a smudgy dot when you see the cartoon. Another slap in the face for this put-upon gentleman.

This storyline about Spot having reverse cabin fever, a need to stay indoors, was the result of something I tried not to do: listen to a reader — too many cooks in the kitchen, i.e. too many writers at the storyboard. It muddied my ideas, it sapped my confidence.

This particular reader didn't like that Spot was usually outdoors. She wanted to see the domestic Spot. Rather than writing back and thanking her for the email, I went into a funk, imagining that every reader was thinking the same thing. My insecurity was strong in the first year of the strip (it finally picked up about a year after the strip ended.)

One reader complained that a real frog would die if it bathed in a soapy kitchen sink, so I pulled the plug on a fun idea, that Spot would see a sink of dirty dishes as a pond simulacrum.

Another reader worried that I was prepared to kill Spot and company when my storyline involved Karl mowing the lawn, unaware that Spot was asleep in the grass.

I responded to the complaint about Outdoors Spot by having him realize that he'd suddenly had too much of it. The reverse of Cabin Fever. The solution was to hide in a small box, indoors for a week or so.

I felt uncomfortable about the whole thing. Spot wasn't the only one trapped in a box.

I've been working on science t-shirts the past few weeks. They'll be online with an appropriate price tag in another few weeks. I'll let you know when, on the chance you're tired of wearing the usual white shirt and tie to work.

I drew the original for this cartoon way back when, before laptops were common; when monitors were generally the size of concrete bricks:

I redrew the bear because I've always wanted to draw one with a visible nipple.

Another in my series of science and romance cartoons is waiting at American Scientist Online.  I'm equally qualified in both science and romance. I know just enough to write a punchline.

Here's a fitting example of this literary evolution:

I have a joke in mind, a pun — The Origami of Species. I'm picturing Darwin making origami animals that display evolution. But there are several ways to show this.

• I could draw a young Darwin, idly folding origami finches, before the publication of his book.
• I could show a middle-aged Darwin, making the same finches, or making a fish, then an amphibian, reptile, and so on.
• I could show an old Darwin, the image most familiar to the casual reader, with his long beard. The main advantage is that Darwin will be quickly recognizable. But why would he be making origami species, long after the publication of his book? Maybe the punchline could read, "Darwin's Little-Known Sequel, The Origami of Species."

I'll post the result when it mutates into something I can draw.

(In the meanwhile, here's a Darwin cartoon I managed to finish. Be sure to pass it on.)

I'm late in announcing this, but anniversaries are forgiving things, encompassing years with the promise of more.

Mike Lynch,  bon vivant and scholar of cartooning, celebrated the fourth anniversary of his blog on February 9.

It doesn't feel like four years. There's a timeless quality to Mike's blog because his posts aren't grounded to any year. They're generally not a measure of his day. His calendar is more vast than any one cartoonist. His timeline is marked on an epic scale.

If a prehistoric stick figure on a cave wall got a laugh, he'll talk about it as if the ink/berry juice is still wet.

If a cartoonist in 1923 found fleeting success, he'll vivify the lost memory and restore it to life; not in the manner of Mary Shelley's monster, but in the style of Peter Boyle in top hat and tails.

Though he routinely exhumes old books and magazines and newspaper clippings in search of cartoons, his blog is never dusty.  His stage is clean and well-lit, with new shows daily.

He's also an intermittent classroom on cartooning as a profession. His desk may be cluttered, but his lessons are clear: work hard, don't give up, know your markets, know your self.

And in Mike's case, know your blog.

When you consider the order form on the home page, is it confusing? Is it clear that $30 is the cost to license a cartoon for a powerpoint presentation, and that $75 is the licensing cost for an in-house newsletter?

If you could click the Contact link on the notepad and drop me a yes or no, you have my thanks.

Update: I went with number 7.

For your consideration, an anti-Rorschach.

It's not missing a caption. It has a surplus of captions.

This is typical of most of my cartoons. The captions that occur to me are like the tangled roots beneath a plant. I need a few days to tease them apart; decide which ones to toss.  Right now I'm inclined to break the plant into two, saving the third and fifth caption.

(though I'm now considering a number six: "I'll do it. I'll quit. Starting this spring.")

Another dozen or so cartoons uploaded, if you're in the mood to verify it.

This cartoon was originally about scrapbooking unpaid bills from past vacations. Mary asked why they would paste away bills that still had to be paid. And wasn't that kind of depressing? So I turned the premise around for a better caption. Mary doesn't usually write finished captions, but she often steers mine around until they're out of the ditch and back on the road.

A new cartoon is on the hook at American Scientist.

Everyone likes to get mail.

I mentioned a few posts back that I was diagnosed with ADHD. This shouldn't startle anyone who knows me.

• I promised something and didn't finish it? 
• I repeatedly ask for an address you've provided a dozen times before? 
• I forget appointments? 
• I spout dreams like a fish on top of a fountain, only to have them fall back into the pool, unrealized?

My latest public display of ADD was my plan to rerun a Christmas Spot the Frog story from 2004. I think I got as far as posting six, maybe seven strips, out of twenty-eight. That's six or seven strips better than my usual record — running none of the strips, while flogging myself because I couldn't complete this simple thing; letting my disgust cascade into memories of other failures; every failure leading to the same conclusion: I'm a failure as well.

I'll try not to talk about my ADD too much here (since I'm already talking about it here.) But it's amazing how much of my career finally makes sense. The lack of follow-through, the abundance of laziness*, the mind as composed as a dandelion in the wind. The self-loathing, the crippling perfectionism, the familiar weight of inertia as I contemplate everything that needs to be done, unable to find the strength to bull through it.

There's a slogan that finds its way into many offices: you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.

After 49 years of employing my share of crazy, I can report that it doesn't.

*That is, the perception of laziness — if you can't fight the ennui and inertia that results from a distracted mind, you're not getting things done — de facto laziness. 

I loved the ending of this episode. After 20 years of character development and family dynamics, the writers create something new out of something old — in a way familiar to most families. 

Homer and Grandpa have always been the same person in my eyes.* With this episode, Homer becomes more so. 

*Are Homer's adventures more outlandish than the tales Grandpa tells? The only difference is that we know Homer's stories are true, as improbable as they are. And since Homer is Grandpa, Q.E.D.

I know you're feeling blue at the lack of posting here. What's Christmas without Mark Heath, you're thinking. Where's the jolly fat man?*

For me, a Mark Heathless holiday would be a sad thing indeed. But for the rest of you, I have an idea that one fat bearded man is more than enough.

Wishing you the best.

*Lately he's been posting about the joys of ADHD at his blog, Another Fine Mess.

Update: You can read more about my ADD at Another Fine Mess.

A few months ago I was diagnosed with ADD. I wasn't sure what to make of it. I'm still not sure. It's one thing to put a name to my distracted behavior. It's another to make use of it. I'm ADD. What now?

Mostly I feel embarrassed.  I know that I drive my business with the skill of a cat at the wheel, going off-road to follow dust motes and birds and anything else that catches my fancy. I know I have the paradoxical ability to focus on some things while spacing out on others. I know that deadlines can surprise me, along with doctor appointments, car inspections, bills. I know that the start of each day is generally a grand thing, with bold plans scribbled on mental Post-It notes — today I'll begin a picture book, a new strip, a batch for a magazine —  and then I take my first step and discover that the distance between a Post-It note and a finished project is exhausting.

I don't mean the exhaustion of a full day's work. I mean the exhaustion of moving forward, taking that first step, then the second, then the third and the fourth and a few hundred more, all in my head while I sit in my office as numb as a statue. 

As the saying goes, the longest journey begins with a single step. It's meant to be reassuring.  But offered the same encouragement, my knees buckle as I imagine ten thousand steps all at once.

There are days when drawing a cartoon is akin to pushing a boulder uphill.

There are days when I can't budge the boulder.

There are days when I'm sitting under the boulder.

For most of my life, I've described these feelings as depression.  If you asked, I'd confess to depression from crib to chair and most likely coffin. 

My glass wasn't half full, it was leaking. At best it was a dribble glass, inspiring a laugh and my life in comedy.

That's why I was seeing a new psychiatrist a few months ago. My daily medication was punching the clock, showing up for work, but I had the feeling it was interviewing for a new job. I had a position to fill.

I needed a new dose, or a new pill. I began with a new psychiatrist.

The first session is like an interview for a job you don't want. The goal is to make a bad impression. Confess secrets. Throw open the closet door and rattle the skeletons, work the jaws like an evil ventriloquist's doll. 

I tell her I'm lazy. Moody. Irresponsible. Undisciplined. I tell her I have a hard time focusing, except for those times when I don't. My life is like Dial M for Murder, without the murder part, and I'm struggling to understand the plot twist with the keys. I tell her I'm depressed, but not really depressed. It's more like I'm tired, baffled, disappointed, ashamed. 

I keep talking like I'm on the phone and the police need time to trace the call.

Several minutes in, she leans forward. The call's been traced.  "You have ADD," she says.

I've been carrying my diagnosis for months now. I feel like I've moved into a new house, and my books are unpacked and my furniture settled. But I'm still lugging my ADD from room to room — it's like a pillow stuffed with marbles, always changing shape, not especially comfortable — wondering where to put it down.

This morning I decided to put it down here.

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

I've never done this before, and I can't vouch for the product because I just uploaded the design on a whim* — it was that, or pull on my winter gear and snowblow the driveway (I may wash the cat next; anything to delay my snowblower reunion) — and I haven't seen a finished sample. But if you believe in holiday miracles and happy endings, here's your chance to test it. (If you're not satisfied with the item, however, I see that Zazzle has a money-back guarantee.** )

This was the final strip of a month-long series I wrote when Spot was first syndicated. You can find the story in my book It's Hard to Comb a Grass Toupee.

*My thanks to Brian Whitmer for rescuing my lost files.

**The punchline, however, is non-refundable.

In the blink of an eye it goes from blood-chilling to heart-warming, if you're not a penguin.

I haven't posted one of these in awhile — what I call a Rorschach cartoon because it's missing a caption. I keep looking at it, hoping I'll see the punchline.

Way back when, years ago when I drew it, I had one. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with science; perhaps the lawn was registering subatomic particles passing through. 

I post it here on the chance you'll see a new joke, and share it with me. If I use it, you'll earn 25% of any eventual sale. And all the fame and fortune that goes along with being a cartoonist.

Sadly, on closer inspection, the actual title was (and presumably still is) Superman: Double Trouble.

Robots. Clones. Doppelgangers. I've seen it all before.

But an entire comic devoted to Superman and his super double-take?

That would be worth a second look.

• After a coin toss, we decided to hand out candy for Halloween. We even raked the walkway and set a jackolantern in the front window. When the last trick-or-treater came and went, the tally was 16. The consequence: one large bowl of candy unclaimed. It looks innocent — literally sweet — but it's evil, killing me in small doses. (I'm diabetic, with little will power.)
• A truck's coming by today to haul off junk from the garage. Discounting the grunting and sweat required to shape it all into a pile, its disappearance will be like magic.
• Mary's just said, "The dehumidifier!" It weighs about two hundred pounds with razor-sharp edges and no handle and it's in the basement. It's supposed to be in the junk pile in the driveway.
• If I never write another post, you'll know that I expired somewhere between the basement and the driveway.

I understand there's a cameo by Zombie Dickens. I've already placed my order.

Last night Mary and I watched the Peanuts Halloween cartoon.

"Why doesn't he throw the rocks away?" Mary asked.

"Huh?"

"He keeps the rocks."

We pondered that. Was Charlie Brown holding onto the rocks as a penance, in the manner of Sisyphus pushing his rock up the mountain? Or Did Charlie Brown plan to revisit those rock-dispensing homes later on, in the manner of Lee Marvin in Point Blank? (This actually seems like something Sally would do, determined to get her fair share.)

Other points:

• Why doesn't Charlie Brown follow Lucy's example and ask for an extra candy bar for Sally?
• Why aren't the Van Pelts looking for Linus who hasn't come home? Do they exist? Perhaps Lucy is the defacto mother, covering for absent parents. Or is the lack of parents town-wide, ala Village of the Damned?

Halloween, the season of mystery and questions unanswered.

Reading this Sherwood Schwartz interview reminded me of the terror I felt watching Gilligan's Island, on those occasions when Gilligan was either Dr. Jekyll, or a vampire. Especially the vampire. (The undead Gilligan makes his appearance at the 16:40 mark. Don't watch it alone.)

Looking at it now, I still shiver. The colors make me uneasy. They're lurid. Pornographic. The coffin doubles as a twin bed. In profile, Gilligan's strong nose could double for Bela Legosi's. When he runs, swoops, dives, he does so with confidence. Gone is the bumbling Gilligan,  abashed and apologetic for his clumsiness. Undead Gilligan still stumbles — he's a comic vampire, proof that Vaudeville is undead — but he recovers from his pratfalls with irritation. Impatience. Hunger.

Undead Gilligan is clearly a monster.

I was scared for Mrs. Howell, fainting at the inexplicable sight of Gilligan in command.

And I was afraid for him,  for the memory of good-hearted Gilligan. It was a TV show. A dream sequence on a TV show, twice-removed from reality. But would Gilligan wake up in time? If you die in a make-believe dream, do you really die? Would Undead Gilligan — only a dream — kill the real Gilligan?

I knew the Professor couldn't fail. I knew about Dracula. I'd read the comic book, seen the movie. Vampire Gilligan was seconds away from being staked by a coconut.

But the Skipper — still his best friend despite being his adversary — shakes him awake.

And it turns out that Gilligan was bitten by a fruit bat, not a vampire bat.

Happy ending.

Except.

Are fruit bats native to small Pacific islands?

And why would a fruit bat bite Gilligan (not a fruit) in the first place? Isn't it more likely that the Professor — real name Renfield — was in the thrall of the real vampire?*

How else to explain the improbable appearance of the Butterfly Collector, the Japanese soldier, the Tarzan, the Big Game Hunter, if not drawn to the island by a vampire's irresistible will?

Or should I say vampires.**

The castaways have been on that island for forty years, and they haven't aged.

Forty years of slapstick and cornball puns.

We're still watching.

We can't turn away.

We're compelled to visit Gilligan's Isle.***

*Keep in mind that Dracula involves a shipwreck as well.

**This isn't widely known, but Stephen King's second novel was originally titled Gilligan's Lot.

*** I know what you're thinking. All of those guest stars left the island. But did they? Did they?

The other surprise was the scene with Rosemary preparing a rare steak. She eats off a plate that's sitting in our cupboard. The very same pattern. We have Rosemary's plate.

Now I'm wondering what else we might have.

The original Ghostbuster's theme was good. But this version by Matt Mulholland is exactly one monkey better. [SF Signal.]

Click on NEW on the notepad to see what the title promises.

The above cartoon is autobiographical, except in reverse.

Another thought provoking cartoon at American Scientist.

A new cartoon awaits at American Scientist.

Hank shouldn't despair. Even wind chimes disturb after a while.

I loved this punchline. Or punchlines. Somewhere along the way two punchlines in the final panel became the norm; possibly because I was still writing for a four-panel strip. Another possibility — which doesn't apply here, but elsewhere — was the intermittent insecurity I felt about my writing: offering two jokes improved the odds that someone might laugh.  This strip, however, wrote itself, without my usual second guessing.

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars.

When you learn how this recording was made, it's amazing how good it sounds.

I think I prefer this version as the soundtrack — it fits the spirit of grasping evolution. It's the sort of thing I can imagine the film's proto-humans performing, once they tire of throwing bones at the sky, in favor of blowing air through hollowed bones.

My computer is ready to come home. My poor, mind-wiped computer. A stranger in a familiar land.

It doesn't even know my name.

• I had a colonoscopy and endoscopy yesterday. I recommend it to anyone who is 49 and desires a dose of Demerol; an afternoon nap that still qualifies as work. The preliminary result is that all looked well, or as well as you'd expect your interior to look.
• Today our roof is being massaged and shampooed. Two guys with biosafe chemicals and hoses are uprooting and skimming moss and lichen from the shingles. Our house is nearly engulfed by trees; you can see it from Google Earth like a hole in a leafy blanket. I'd probably grow moss if I paused in the driveway. At the moment detritus and spume is falling past the living room's picture window, as if we're cliffside on an ocean, not high and dry in northeastern Connecticut.
• Still waiting for the return of my main computer (I write this from the small-brained laptop.) I've spent the week feeling like the Headless Horseman, minus the pumpkin.
• I bought a pumpkin a few days ago. It didn't help.

Here's my confession: my hard drive choked on a bad bit this weekend and died. Judging from the inert white screen on my monitor, it went toward the white light and kept going.

Its mortal remains are thoroughly dead, beyond reanimation, because I had the blindsight to never install a backup hard drive, or make dvd copies, or fling any of it into the digital cloud. I've thought about it. But in this case the thought doesn't count.

Inadvertently, some of what I lost is saved: my single-panel cartoons are safe on the server that runs my website, and most of my music is preserved, thanks to Lala, which uploaded my mp3s to allow web access from anywhere. And Spot the Frog lives on with my syndicate.

Here's what I lost: single-panel cartoons not uploaded to nobrowcartoons, greeting card designs, hundreds of comic strip roughs, photographs [of the usual, irreplaceable sort], a record of which market has seen what cartoon, possibly photoshop CS3 if I can't find the installation disks, several picture books in sundry stages, on and on, culminating in my work-in-progress, pdfs for the third Spot the Frog book, Clothing Optional.

My office is strewn with papers and books, radiating out from my desk and the iMac. But with the computer gone, recovering at the Apple Store, the vacated space reminds me of an impact crater, the devastating smack of a meteorite.

That's how it feels, anyway.

A new 80 page graphic novelette is available at the cheerful website of John Kovaleski, creator of Bo Nanas, the best Monkey Philosopher strip ever syndicated.

In John's words:

"What happens when the family gets too busy?
It's up to the family dog to help out.
(Imagine "The Brady Bunch" if Alice was a dog.)

That's the premise of my new graphic novelette "Great Scott: A Day in the Life," an all-ages look at the modern family and, of course, talking animals."

Good jokes and household tips. Two books for the price of one. And it's on sale for a limited time. When you finish your chores, hurry over.

It might be my keyboard. Or the Wacom tablet I use for a mouse. The Apple support guy told me that a few people have reported problems with their Wacom, post the latest operating system update. Maybe the BACK key is staging a coup and running rampant.

I didn't have a spare keyboard to check the first possibility — though I looked everywhere and couldn't imagine that I would have thrown out the joke keyboard that came with the computer, even though it was so thin it threatened to blow away like a tinfoil gum wrapper — but I remembered spying a mouse in a drawer. When I picked up the mouse, tugged on the cord buried beneath papers and notebooks, I found the original keyboard on the other end. 

So in a few moments I'll be checking both keyboard and Wacom. Feel free to dab the sweat from your brow while you wait in anticipation.

Bonus public service:  apparently, Wacom is pronounced WHACKom, not WAYcom.  Thank you, service guy.

But some tools, when broken, defy my abilities. My computer has suffered a blow to the head, and it's spending its final days reliving the past, flashing its pages backwards with any browser I use — as if the Back button is a bedside control, calling for the nurse, announcing its departure for the white light. 

On a good day, my progress is  slow and modest.  Now it's bordering on Zeno territory.

I mention this to explain why I've added a post-it of some note to the notepad, with links that lead to pages that don't fully work yet. I design my site through my browser, and my computer is taking two steps back for every step forward. It's a good metaphor for my life, but not so good for anchoring finished web pages.

A strip with a lot of naked guy jokes isn't a sure-fire path to syndication. It's probably the antithesis. But who knows? Spot was naked most of the time, and Karl wasn't reluctant to shed his clothes for a run at the pond.

Possible tweak: last panel, "Now get off my lap," instead of "Get off my lap." Now implies that Guy was on his lap the whole time, which, I think, is funnier.

By the way, if you're wondering how I achieve this delightfully sketchy drawing style, it's a little something I call Drawing On a Wacom Tablet When You Don't Know How To Draw on a Wacom Tablet.

I continue to push the sex in comic strips envelope.

Possible rewrite, second panel: so essentially you strip on camera to earn a few dollars.

That's right. Science is sexy. Or at least pornographic.

Let's imagine that this strip hangs around for a few years or more. Let's imagine that I'm asked if the syndicate ever censors what I write. This strip would be a good example.

Possible tweak: I might have Guy — yes, that's his name, Guy Mann — is drinking coffee in the middle panel. This would give him a chance to deliver a spit take in the third panel, demonstrating the visible nature of his ex-embodied saliva.

Keep in mind that these are roughs. Re-writing/drawing is often imminent.

For example, I might remove the sweat stain in the last panel, to make it clear that his brow sweat gives him away.

Observation: a tweak doesn't always make a strip better. The first draft may be best. The only way to know, for me, is to write the strip, and let it sit in a folder for a week or two — if I have the time to spare.

Here's a new comic strip idea. It's about two hours old. I couldn't sleep last night, and this morning my head feels like its missing. So I've extended the idea. I'm sure an invisible main character violates some rule of character building. It's hard to feel empathy for someone if you can't see their face or head. But for the moment it seems like a good idea.

I try to live in the moment. Every day. On most days I manage to find a few of those precisely balanced moments. But most days I'm somewhere between Lumpy and Buddy. I've never been like Karl, alas, and likely never will. Except for the bald part.

Today's Spot strip, embiggened.

Here's a story line that would have been good for a few weeks, courtesy of Carl Zimmer, science writer and patron saint of parasites:

"I heard about a parasite in Nebraska, a flatworm called a trematode (Halipegus eccentricus), that scientists discovered living in the ears of bullfrogs. But the trematodes in their ears are all adults. Matt Bolek from the University of Nebraska described how he and his colleagues had figured out the rest of the parasite's life cycle. The parasites release their eggs from the frog ears, which then get scarfed up by snails, where they hatch and start to develop. Then they leave the snails and swim in search of little aquatic invertebrates called ostracods. The ostracods get eaten by the larvae of damselflies, which then mature and fly into the air, only to be devoured by frogs. The parasites escape the damselflies and move through the bodies of the frogs to their ears. One trematode, four hosts."

I'll never know, of course, but I have a feeling that Tim the Trematode could have been a breakout character.

Not too long ago this same view of the driveway was a hard-won reward — beating back ice and snow, digging deep to reveal pavement; dreaming of the day when the driveway was free and clear, not an ice-hardened artery.

You'd think I'd pull up a lawn chair and marvel at the easy miracle of walking up and down the short route between our home and the road. Instead it's mostly forgotten, save for moments like this.

Living in the moment isn't easy for me. Living in the season is just as hard.

I get the chills looking at the top pair of photos. The fake smile. What a horrible thing for a cartoonist to see.

This considers the consequence of being a gelotophobe — one who can't stand to be ridiculed. It appears to be a personality trait, not a disease of the mind. It's the conviction that everyone is laughing at you, not with you, or apart from you.

If you have trouble discerning the genuine smiles from the fake, you might be one. (via Science News.)

Today's strip at comics.com is an example of a bumper strip.

Now that I've had a little time to think about it*, I'd redraw the last panel with Lumpy in the foreground, to clarify that he's eating the toad stool out from under him. And his comment, which now strikes me as a non sequitur — I've no idea what he's talking about — would be deleted and not replaced. Karl gets the last word, and Lumpy gets the sight gag.

Half a decade to tell a joke.

I'm sure it was worth the wait.

* 5 years.

I'm two nights into my cpap regime, and so far the little engine has kept its bargain, more or less. My airway stays inflated, and I wake in the morning feeling chipper.

The only downside is that my jaw hurts a bit — when I wear the mask, my lower jaw juts out like a cash register drawer, as if I'm completing a transaction; paying the price for becoming both man and machine, a low-tech Borg — and I wake refreshed and bright-eyed at four in the morning.

When I wake up before Willy the poodle, I know something's off.

*though the cpap machine pictured above is the one I use,  it doesn't actually require an ignition key to start. But the car alarm is a nice feature.

Is Tatulliastic a word?

And behold the back cover, with its promises of riches.

If you're enjoying the first year strips running at comics.com, you might enjoy the same strips in their bookcase edition. The title is out of print, but the book is still out there, as fresh as a plastic daisy.

How much would you pay for this timeless bounty? Ten dollars? Five dollars? $1.99?

Would you pay a penny?

Today's Spot the Frog is unusual. I rarely introduced fantasy that wasn't grounded in the premise of the strip, and if I did, I'd never have a punchline that didn't carry over into the next day, if the joke depended on something extraordinary.

But this time I bused in a pair of Lewis Carroll characters, and didn't follow up on it. Very odd. Almost Carrollian.

Stephan Pastis hates his many many pillows. They are killing him. Not in a Sam Raimi sort of way — sentient pillows settling on his face like plush starfish and squeezing the air out of his nasal passages — these pillows kill through passive aggression. 

It's not the pillows. It's the pillow maintenance. The cost of putting on a show of pillows, with no one but him and his wife in the audience.

We have more than two pillows on our bed, but they're not for show. Our bed is where old pillows go to die. They are thin, tired, feeble; barely able to maintain a distance between the back of our heads and the mattress. We keep them because of the passion they bring to our marriage. Every night, before we say I love you and good night, we repeat our vow:  we should really get some new pillows.

After four years of marriage — paper and cotton, leather and flowers — I'm hoping the traditional  fifth anniversary gift is a pillow.*

*turns out the traditional fifth anniversary gift is wood — with luck, carved like a pillow.

I've set up a facebook group for Clothing Optional. I'll be posting art and news and commentary. If you're feeling wild and daring, join the group for regular updates.

This will also give me an idea of how many people are interested in the third Spot book. At the moment, there are six of you.

Click for a slightly grander holiday size.

I have the title for the new Spot the Frog book. Clothing Optional. Because it is. Especially if you work at home.

I'm hammering away at the Lulu storefront. You can bookmark it if you like. The cover art is only a rough, but you'll get the gist.

If you've ever wanted to know how it feels to draw Spot the Frog, you could always trace the strip. Or you could use this thing. (via Gizmodo.)

If I fall short of the goal, the season, at least, will be appropriately named.

Spot the Frog at comics.com is running one of my favorite bits this week: Spot and Buddy go boating.

The Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont, has gone metaphysical with the installation of a bookstore within a bookstore. Print-on-demand books; a potentially infinite inventory.  It's called the Espresso Book Machine. Not because it brews and serves coffee — it only looks like it could.

"A Kiss From Tokyo" Theatrical trailer from Stephane coedel on Vimeo.

I found this at Bookgasm. It's a book trailer for an art book that celebrates the adventures of fictional spy Yuki 7 in films that never existed.

The music style is a mix of Bond and The Incredibles. And once again I'm left to wonder, why do I love spy/caper movies? Is it the plot, the doo-dads, the cliffhanger suspense? Or is it the music?

One of the sad things about writing jokes is that you can't repeat them. If the joke feels especially right, as this one does, it's sad to see it go, replaced by the next day's installment.

There are online archives and book collections, but enjoying a joke when it's new can't be repeated. It has its moment in the sun, and then the sun moves on.

It first appeared in a comic book by Enki Bilal.  And now it's a sport. Four minutes of chess. Three minutes of boxing. Found this morning at Weird Universe.

I'd like to propose something similar. Cartoon Boxing.

You might imagine that cartoonists are doughy in complexion and body, but consider this photo of Stephan Pastis; proof that most cartoonists are like Ned Flanders, once they've shed their sweaters.

Imagine the attendance at the next Reubens:

Mike Tyson vs. Richard Thompson.

I'm betting it's a draw.

 Click here for the eye-friendly version.

Notice anything odd in this early strip?  It's something that obsessed me until the strip's end.

The size of my frogs. 

In an early strip, I had Spot sitting on Karl's nose. It was a punchline. A sight gag. But like a lot of punchlines I wrote, I couldn't throw it away. If Spot was small enough to sit comfortably on Karl's nose, then he would always be that size.

But when you write for small characters — day after day, your nose close to the paper — they grow. Their personalities are large, so why not their bodies?

When I wasn't alert, Spot was large enough to wear Karl's hat.*

Another reason for embiggened frogs is isolation. Karl wasn't in every strip. His nose was often elsewhere, unavailable to limit Spot's size.

Isolated from the mainland of Karl's head, Spot followed the Island Rule and grew larger than the typical bullfrog.

By the end of the strip's run, Spot was taller than me.

It's been almost a year since the last strip ran. I've shrunk a few inches, but Spot's still pretty big.

*Rather than redraw — to save time — I'd use the scaling tool in Photoshop to shrink him back down.

Not for me.

I've long suspected that Legos are the friendly face of Robot World Domination, insinuating itself into the lives of children and cartoonists.

Lego is hiding its plan in plain sight. The company sells robot kits. Sponsors robot workshops and competitions. It's grand wholesome fun.

Until you download that special Lego app from the Apple store*, plug your iPhone into the control box, and fall to your knees** when the suddenly animate Legobot demands subservience and more bricks.

You're thinking, Big deal. Even if a legobot rises against me, I'll tear it down. Legos are designed to come apart.

But like I said, I know what the seven-year-old discovered. Legos are even more fun when the bricks are glued.

*It's not widely known, but Steve Jobs has a new liver built entirely from Legos.

**Unless you're already on your knees. Thanks to the diminutive size of most Lego creations, you're already conditioned to bow before your Legobot overlords.

• Wednesday is the deadline for another Reader's Digest cartoon submission. I'll be sending my contribution later today. With any luck, every other cartoonist forgot to send in theirs.
• Thanks to a sleep study a few weeks ago, where I was strapped down in wires like Gulliver and monitored (motion — legs, chest, jaw, eyes — temperature, audio, brain activity) for a long night in a sleep lab, I've learned that my snoring is actually sleep apnea. Or, as my doctor clarified on the phone, not mild, not moderate, but severe sleep apnea. I presume this means that I not only stop breathing dozens of times a night, but that I'm clinically dead and tap dancing toward the white light several times before morning. No wonder I'm tired when I wake.
• If you haven't tried the Lala music service yet, I recommend it. It's free, and you can listen to most any music when the mood hits you. You can also upload your own music to the site.
• Much is being made of the brutal monsters in The Strain, but if you're looking for vampires that behave like berserkers, creatures that are never slowed by remorse or compassion or bullets (well, sometimes the bullets slow them down), you might try David Wellington's series of novels: 13 Bullets, 99 Coffins, Vampire Zero, and his latest, 23 Hours.  I especially enjoyed the Civil War bits in 99 Coffins.

I feel younger already.

Or older.

I'll flip a coin.

When NPR — I think it was Fresh Air — did a story about Susannah McCorkle, following her suicide, this is the song they played. "The Waters of March" become a bittersweet hymn, a reminder that beauty is a foreign and indecipherable word when the listener is depressed. I've no idea how McCorkle felt when she recorded this song, but I'll always hear melancholy.

When I heard this song for the first time as a kid — this version, with the cowboy-style interlude in the middle — it struck a philosophical note that still sounds in my 48 year old brain. It was thoughtful, profound, and it had trumpets. What more could a buddying Humanist/ Herb Alpert fan ask for?

Or is it the mad work of Richard Thompson, his quill nibs bristling, forever jealous of my strip and its never-ending success?

Note to Mr. Cul-De-Sac: do what you will, but you can never erase my strip from the hundreds of papers that carry it, nor this website.

For the former, I'm way ahead of you. And for the latter I keep spares.

image Henry McLin

I'm not much of a traveller. I get around mostly by default, the spin of the Earth, the whirl of our solar system. But I take the occasional trip, especially if there's a bookstore waiting at Point B.

This Sunday Mary and I headed south, and along the way we passed a small turtle. It was half-way across the road. We drove on for a few hundred yards before deciding to rescue it. We turned around, raced back, parked on the roadside.

I felt giddy. "I wish we had a camera," I said.

I popped out of the car, ran around to the driver's side (I'm always the passenger), paused. I saw a few cars in the distance. I felt like the cop in Make Way for Ducklings. I thought about stepping out, holding back the modest traffic. Wishing for a whistle. I decided that the sight of a parked car with a portly cartoonist staring into the road would do the trick. 

The turtle's neck was stretched like the prow of a speed boat, red racing stripes along his throat. Being a cartoonist, I had to anthropomorphise. The turtle was smiling, thrilled by its adventure, glad for an audience.

And then the turtle exploded.

A second later I heard the crunch.

A splash of bright red. The turtle was thrown out of his shell.

I screamed at the fleeing driver.

I got back in the car. Slammed the door and cried. The transition between the joy of a good deed and the grief of a good deed gone wrong.

For all I knew, the turtle died because I was standing by the road, confusing the approaching driver.

He saw me, not what I was looking at.

When I recovered, I said to Mary: the death of a wild turtle was worth 15 minutes of tears; followed by an hour of tired acceptance. 

And then I said: There might be more tears, the grief longer lasting, but in the end we're all turtles.

Mary turned on the radio and switched to a Country Music station.

Surprisingly, no one sang about turtles.*

*As a public service, here's a small antidote to my post.

My version of the classic turtle falls in love with something vaguely shell-shaped.

Doing laundry isn't fun. But drawing laundry baskets is oddly relaxing.

But today we bid the lamps goodbye. The electrician is due, and possibly an exterminator.

I love the click-slap sound of the organ keys when this song begins.

When I think of Joni Mitchell, this is what I hear. Court and Spark is my favorite album, thanks to a girl named Michelle who brought the 8-track tape on the school bus for most of her senior year; a chunky Holy Grail of jazz, funk and rock. 

Barney the driver, who preferred Merle Haggard and ran the local store, was an agreeable guy, and shoved it into the player whenever asked. Which was often.

Living in a small town, Michelle and I were probably the only two on the bus who liked it.  I didn't know Michelle beyond the music. I was a freshman and shy and still grooving on Herb Alpert (still am, actually). I'd never heard of Joni Mitchell, or Tom Scott and his band. Sitting in the dark — our school ran on split sessions, and my bus ride began at 5:45 AM — my head spun like a light bulb finding its socket.

I still light up when I hear this song.

Here's how they should work: the contact lens in my left eye is honed for distance. The contact in my right eye is designed for reading. If my brain is up to it, the respective eye will be dominant when I need it.  But it takes awhile. Possibly weeks. Right now my close-up vision is mildly blurry, and my distance vision is slightly less blurry. And to be even more specific, I have a miniature poodle sitting on my chest as I write this on the couch. That's probably not the contacts fault.

Since they're new, contacts seem like finicky things. I feel like I'm wrangling a bubble, moving it from its storage case to my eye, the lens balanced on the tip of my finger. The barest nudge can leave lint or black specks on the lens. I squirt cleaning solution into my palm, swishing the lens in the puddle. I feel like a psychopath intent on drowning ants.

I study the bowl-shaped lens to be sure that it's not inside out — when it's inside out, it's a slightly-flattened bowl, and when it's outside in, it's a slightly less-flattened bowl  — and then I recreate the scene from countless films where the villain brings a lethal instrument — a drill bit, a knife — closer and closer to the hero's naked eye.

It feels wrong.  Masochistic, deranged, an invitation to poke my eye out.

And it never works on the first pass. I press the lens into my eye, shed a triumphant tear. When I lean back from the mirror, my reflection is still blurry, and the lens is still on my finger, a crumpled dunce cap that needs to be washed, reshaped, and reapplied.

The worst part of wearing contacts is that I'm not wearing glasses. I like the frames, the slight distance they put between me and the world. I like the cheat of drawing my caricature just by doodling glasses with a beard in the vicinity. I like the escape of an unpleasant encounter by pulling a Magoo and pocketing my glasses.

Best of all, I like the chance that this time, when I remove my glasses, I'll become Superman. It's never happened, I'll admit the odds are long.

But now I'll never know.

I took a lot of pride in drawing this chair — so much so that I cut and pasted the image three times for the Sunday. Anything that follows a certain perspective and construction is a puzzle for me. My cartoons often feel like Ikea kits.

I used to own one of these t-shirts. I played in a high school stage band. We played "Give It One," along with other MF charts, and I never came close to sounding like Maynard.

And come to think of it, my t-shirt didn't fit, either.

Whatever you do, don't look at my new cartoons.

I should mention that when I see a therapist, no couch is involved. I'd rather have a bed with lots of blankets to hide under, but I make do with scrunching up in a chair.

I was very sad when this clip ended. Must see the rest.  [Ecstatic Days.]

And if that wasn't broad enough, you had Photoshop (the analog edition) to expand the strips further, along any axis; no face was safe from the twist and stretch of Silly Putty.*

Sadly, comic strips are now printed for a nano audience, and Silly Putty and comics are no longer user-friendly. [The Retro Blog.]

*It's widely believed that many of the Dick Tracy villians resulted from Chester Gould's infatuation with Silly Putty.  It's also widely believed that Dick Tracy launched in 1931, and Silly Putty in 1950. The connection may be a stretch, but that's what Silly Putty does.

I hate TV news banter. It's rarely clever, or deserving of the guffaws they inspire on set. It's fake, it's plastic, it's wasted time.

This, on the other hand, is honest and nicely unscripted.  They should teach this in broadcasting schools. (Mental Floss.)

My new cartoon is up at American Scientist.

The last time I believed in astrology was when I got a beach towel for my tenth birthday. It displayed a lovely woman beneath the logo Virgo. I felt wordly, being in the company of a beautiful woman. I asked someone what it meant to be a Virgo. I don't remember the answer, precisely — I think it had something to do with being a stick in the mud — but astrology frittered away to nonsense when Carl Sagan demonstrated that Virgo's daily horoscope will satisfy a Leo, if you don't tell Leo what he's looking at.

The characters in my cartoons must lead charmed lives. This is the first time I've drawn a hand gun.

This one was a little tricky. In the Twilight Zone episode, Burgess Meredith is sitting on library steps surrounded by books. His glasses are broken. I thought it would be funny to keep his glasses intact, but give him a broken Kindle.

To make the connection between the cartoon and the TZ episode, I started drawing stacks of books and broken bookcases. That's the look of the classic scene. And then it occured to me that a broken Kindle wouldn't be tragic if he still had the books at hand.

This was my first caption: In the classic Twilight Zone episode, Burgess Meredith breaks his Kindle. I changed it to the above because I worried about the reader thinking, so what? he can still read the books.

I tossed a coin for the solution. But I might toss it again.

This Sunday was inspired by the rivalry between me and my friend Craig Terlson. We were both working on a comic strip submission and wishing each other the best — replace FLY with SYNDICATE CONTRACT — while privately wishing the other slightly less luck*; such is the compromise we strike between friendship and selfishness.

*Speaking for myself, that is. Craig was likely more munificent in his good wishes. I tend to suppose that everyone is as egocentric as I am.

The outdoors is never as far away as you think. Drips in the ceiling. Ants on the floor. Cold through the cracks. The racoon that slips through the open damper in the chimney because you forgot to close it for the spring and summer.*

*This didn't happen to us, but I'm told it's possible. I had a dream about it. An elephant replaced the raccoon. Anything's possible in a dream; though if that's true, you'd think stuffing the elephant back up the chimney would have been easier.

My new cartoon is up at American Scientist.

Once again science and romance collide.

When it comes to web-making, Charlotte was a piker.

This is from the 80's. It doesn't look like my style today, but I like the cat's expression — it reminds me of a Chet Baker album cover — and I'm fond of the trumpet. I hate drawing mechanical things, even if it's just a long tube with piston valves.

I'm guessing this wasn't the general reaction to a Sagan lecture. Bad Astronomy.

I love to improvise on my trumpet. But my thoughts only move at a certain speed, a sedate 33 1/3. This is a great song to inspire improvization in the breakdown lane.

May the fourth be with you.

Tor.com

Update: I just shared this pun with Mary, who said, "I hate to burst your bubble, but today is the fifth."  I didn't see a lot of regret on her face.

My new cartoon is up at American Scientist.

One of the perks of Science: nagging is encouraged. It's not always welcome, since nagging is nagging, a grating noise. But if a scientific truth can't withstand a good kibitz, then it definitely deserves it.

Today's Spot the Frog strip awaits at comics.com. Maybe it's the cloudy weather pressed to my office window, but the art looked gray, weather-beaten, like an old barn well on its way to being reclaimed by the elements; especially in the company of the other strips, mostly colored.

Here's the same strip with a coat of paint to brighten things up. Unlike Ted Turner's infamous colorization, the added color puts a blush in the cheeks, not a waxy rouge.

There are days when I wake instantly. It's the sharp transition of rolling off a cliff, still wrapped in my sleeping bag. Other times I roll off the cliff and float like Little Nemo in his ambulatory bed; a waking dream that can stay aloft for hours.

Watermelon Man, with it's opening assault of random toots and whistles and yelps, finally coalescing into the classic melody, is the perfect wakeup music, when you're up and still dreaming.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giant Midgets.

There comes a time in every cartoonist's life when he or she must decide on a favorite instrument. Pen or Pencil. Brush or Wacom. Trumpet or trombone.

James Morrison addresses the last two. I think it's clear which one is best.

Here's another of my old cartoons that needs to be redrawn: note the bulky television. In all other ways, of course, it's still timely.

Didn't the woman deserve protection more substantial than a sheet of Saran Wrap, something best reserved for potato salad? Oven mitts keep heat at a distance — a fine metaphor for thwarted love — but as a means to protect the love of your life, they're too easily discarded, too easily forgotten if you leave them on the counter. Or Playtex gloves, generally water and death-proof, so easily torn.

I'd watch an episode in a twist, waiting for an inadvertent touch.

Which would be fine, if the shows were written with that in mind. But too often the Achille's Heel was ignored. The lovers — I didn't watch enough episodes to learn their names* — were always on the verge of bumping elbows, or squeezing into tight quarters, generally running about in pursuit of clues and villains, and I didn't get the sense that the lovers were worried about an accidental collision.

At the very least, the series would have worked better for me if they didn't share the same employment, or work the same shift.

And now Pushing Daisies is cancelled**, proving that something more than dish washing gloves was needed to keep things alive.

*and it's possible that one or more of those episodes elaborated on the peril of a lover's lethal touch. I would have enjoyed those.

**I think there are several more episodes left to air this summer.

One of my favorite Simpsons characters — the caterpillar that screams all the time, even when asleep — is less fanciful than I thought.

If my hearing was more acute,  this would drive me mad.

Science News speculates that the noise is meant to thwart predators. But I know otherwise.

To most minds, caterpillars exist for the sole purpose of becoming something else. They're understudies, temp workers, stand-ins for the soundcheck while the star waits in the wings.

They are proof that sometimes it is the destination and not the journey. Life is endless waiting. Living in the moment is a joke. It's the yadda yadda yadda of existence.

I've always been more of a caterpillar than a butterfly, though I try to be otherwise. Change is simultaneously imminent and out of reach.  I'm slow-moving, hungry, and generally unremarkable, save for the caterpillar-like bristles of hair on my head when I wake in the morning.

I'll step on an ant — incessant reminders of hard work and focus — but I'm loathe to squash a caterpillar, a soft-bodied creature in a hard world, stuffing its face, desperate to fill the void where an ego should be.

Caterpillars are foils to crops and foliage. They're spiky, bizarre, unappreciated. The highest compliment generally offered is that they're a vital link in the food chain. Like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life and Homer Simpson in Homer's Odyssey, the world is better off with them dead.*

No wonder they scream.

*Though Homer, Like George Bailey, eventually realizes that his life is valuable.

I don't recall our family renting a beach house when I was a kid. But I know that sort of thing loom large in other families. This one's for you, Richard Thompson, who loves his summer rentals so much that he visits them upon his comic strip family as well as his more vital one.

My new cartoon is up at American Scientist.

Yet another consideration of what happens when large astral bodies collide with the Earth.

This cartoon is note-worthy because it inspired a new category this morning: Recreation. Which now consists of one cartoon. I'll hunt through the database; I suspect I'll find a few more.

My thanks to Benita Epstein for helping me tweak this cartoon into its final shape.

But this morning the shields were too slow. I was told by the host of kottke.org that a photo essay on a woman's wedding would be tough to get through — that the last picture would be heartbreaking.

Don't tell me how to feel, I replied, murmuring the Drop Shields command into my hand mike, confident that my art deco armor would protect me. But the shields were a heart beat too slow.

If you're inclined to use this defense,  you should probably drop shields a good two or three  minutes before clicking on this.

With a glib tongue you can rationalize anything. Almost.

Note that I troubled to put a TM after Lenscrafters, though a capital letter would have sufficed (as with Dumpster.) In the early days of the strip, I wasn't sure how to present brand names. Adding the TM symbol calls attention to the word. It makes the cartoon feel like an ad — which, as an artist, I strenously object to, since Lenscrafters never paid for it.

Random shots from the scatter gun:

• It's an odd feeling, walking outside when you have a cold and it's shirt-sleeve weather. If my nose wasn't stoppered, I'd probably be dizzy with the uncorked scent of Green. Instead my head is sealed in wax. I can still feel the warm breeze, however, which is nice.
• Willy now resembles a Tribble, with more curl. Soon he'll return from the groomer looking like a plush Bobbing Head doll, held together by springs.
• I've been toying with a site called Book Army, billed as the literary equivalent of last. fm. I haven't discovered new writers or works yet, but my time with the site is only hours old. I'm not thrilled with the site name. An actual book army would be a scattered affair, with indifferent marching and noses in books. It wouldn't advance, it would wander. I'm listing favorite titles, but they should offer another category: books you've partly read, liked, would recommend, but then for some reason became distracted and never finished. Most of my books end up that way.
• In a stunning development that I didn't acknowledge but should have, I drew a cartoon last Thursday, from start to finish. Certainly not a remarkable thing, you're thinking; isn't that what a cartoonist does? But until that day, every cartoon I've uploaded has been an old one. Every cartoon I've submitted has been at least five years old. Many were revised, like furniture stripped and given fresh varnish or fabric.  None were new. Thursday was the new threshold because I wrote ideas, I roughed ideas, I drew finished cartoons. How did I do it? How did I transform from a Tin Man stiff with rust, into a well-oiled pen-swinging   machine? I'll talk about that later.
• Thanks to lazy glasses, I haven't seen a theater movie in years. I'm wearing new prescriptions, and distance is less distant. I'm a hawk amoung humans. I can read the sign at the other end of the grocery store aisle without walking the full length of it first. I'll christen my vision with the revamped, refurnished, refinished Star Trek. If I like it, I'll call J.J. Abrams and see what he can do for my career. I bet the role of Mark Heath could really pop with a younger actor.

My favorite line comes at the 1:23 mark. It's the sort of thing I could have written for Spot the Frog.

So there I am, enjoying an interview with Paul Di Filippo, courtesy of Bibliophile Stalker, when I read this:

If money wasn't a factor, is there a project you'd like to pursue that you haven't had the opportunity to do so?

I want to write a "horsepower-punk" novel involving the philosopher Bishop Berkeley, set in Newport, Rhode Island, where he lived for a time. But the research involved is daunting, and so I keep putting it off to earn my living.

Paul has written cyberpunk, steampunk, biopunk, and the littlest-known genre of cartoonenginepunk. But before he retires from this Earth, I hope he finds the time and spunk to write his horsepower-punk novel. I'm smiling just thinking about the concept. I hope it involves clocks powered by tiny horses.

My new cartoon is up at American Scientist.

Be amazed by my ability to draw a chalk board.

It was only $20. And the pay was on publication. But in the scheme of my life, it was a definite highlight. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at the letter, thrilled for two reasons: it was my first magazine sale, and one of the cartoons was heavy with shading. I'd never had a tonal cartoon printed before. I'd been selling black and white cartoons to local newspapers.  A cartoon with gray shading, printed on slick paper in a magazine, was akin to seeing the latest CGI animation.

I submitted cartoons for several years before finally selling to WildBird. I submitted cartoons for several more years before selling a second time, to Writer's Digest.

At this rate, I suspect my greatest success will arrive, on schedule, several years after I'm dead.

I had two ways to finish this cartoon. The one you see, and the one I didn't draw, a bottle stuffed with struggling and drowned water sliders. I might still draw the latter, but right now I'm thinking positive thoughts, and assuming the water bottle has an easy exit.

I've never sold this cartoon, but it's one of my favorites. I love the title.

If I were to tweak it, in hopes of that elusive sale, I'd move the tail of the speech balloon closer to the table top, and maybe add a few radiating lines to show that the speaker is very tiny. Now that I look at this, the reader likely thinks that the speaker is on the floor, out of sight.

That's embarrassing. I'll have to fix that.

Update: Let the sales begin.

This is a picture book illustration in the guise of a promotional piece.

My new cartoon is up at American Scientist.

I once considered the possibility of being a naturalist. It seemed like a romantic occupation. But it turns out I'm more suited to another variety of science.

Looking at the bright side. This sunday could be a poster for surviving depression. If you can deal with the dismal mood, the bleak day, there's always the chance that something better will come along.

My favorite thing about this daily is that I used the word spook. I love the way it looks, the sound it makes, it's haunting acquaintance with both noun and verb, like a ghost that's comfortable in this life and the next.*

*Disclaimer. I don't believe in ghosts, nor any life outside of the one I skip or slog through. Which isn't to say that I haven't seen a ghost. I have. But I can think of explanations more likely than the B-Movie one.

I'll demonstrate with some machine gun fire of my own.

• I'm seeing the eye doctor this afternoon, where my eyeballs will be numbed, pressed, poked, photographed, looking for signs of burst capillaries and glaucoma, possibly the tattered remains of Vote Obama posters. I think of my eyes as twin fish bowls, with the constant possibility that the fish will go belly-up.
• Not incidentally I'll also have my vision checked, my prescription updated. My glasses have made for a frustrating year. They're lineless bifocals. I was told to give them time, that my eyes would adjust to the funhouse mirror of the lens — if you look here, in this way, it should come into focus. But alas, no. This time around I'll either get traditional bifocals, contacts, two sets of glasses, or a reading eye dog.
• Willy has a cough. It's the same cough he had when we got him a few years ago. It was inexplicable. But a new vet diagnosed the problem: a collapsed trachea. Apparently this isn't entirely uncommon with dogs, and there's not much you can do. It seems like an impressive disorder to carry around so casually. Beyond the hack, hack, KOFF! we hear a few times a day, Willy shrugs it off. He has the stamina of Michael Myers, the Star Trek fan from the Halloween movies.
• For $135 we had a landscaping crew blow and rake the winter debris from our front and back yard. It was cheaper than doing it myself, once you figure in the cost of a funeral.
• I exaggerated a bit in the previous bullet point. Sometimes punchlines demand it. My funeral will actually be an inexpensive one since my body's going to a teaching hospital. As a cartoonist, I like an audience. If I'm  lucky, I might have a crowd at my funeral, but it dissipates. At a teaching hospital I'll have the satisfaction of delivering gags and other physical humor for at least several classes.
• A new dishwasher is being delivered today. Mary's looking forward to its installation, but I'm feeling nostalgic about the dishes I washed last night; a time when a person wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty by getting them clean; of reaquainting oneself with the departed meal, a chance to give thanks for a full stomach. Those were the days.

If anyone doubts evolution, a brief consideration of Spot over the years  should prove reassuring.

The design of Spot in his second and third appearance in this sunday eventually transformed — in the first, that looking over his shoulder pose became more dimensional and solid, less like a head bound to a body by a tenuous bit of flesh, and in the second, that happy face disappeared and reappeared on Meg.

Sidenote: I use a lot of stippling in Spot for shadowing. I hate stippling. It always seems like a good idea at the time, when I apply the first hundred or so dots. But after that I feel like a famished woodpecker. I draw mud as stippling en masse; a miserable chore that recalls Mud Season perfectly.

My new cartoon is up at American Scientist.

This is one of my favorites. It's also a peek into the work attire for certain cartoonists.

Here's another Rorschach cartoon — a joke minus the joke. If you can write a caption I like, you'll earn 20% of any eventual sale, and the satisfaction of knowing you helped a cartoonist too lazy to write his own captions.

Actually, I did have a caption, and here it is: The day Bob learned that the black box is orange.

I submitted the cartoon to a few aviation magazines, and earned a few rejections. That happens on occasion. On a lot of occasions. I'd say most occasions. But rest assured: if I like your joke, and it doesn't sell, you'll earn 100% of what it's like to be a freelance cartoonist.

This would have been the first published Spot the Frog strip, if I hadn't made a few changes. This character was meant to be Karl's roommate, Winslow, but he was let go in favor of a plot that focused on Karl and Spot.

You'll note that Winslow bears a strong resemblance to the Winslow character in Moveable Feast, which nicely illustrates my range. Winslow, or a character like Winslow, has appeared in all of the strips I've submitted, just as Karl and his twin and Spot and his doppleganger have been used and re-used.

My father divorced an Edna and married another Edna. So this may be genetic.

I think I've mentioned my giant head a few dozen times. It occasionally finds its way into a cartoon.

You can tell when a cartoon was drawn way back when: my characters had heads shaped like tops.  Somewhere along the way, the sheer physics of the thing bothered me — how could a thin neck support a giant head? When I post older cartoons, I usually revise them a bit. But this one I'll preserve for its nostalgia.

My new cartoon is up at American Scientist.

I wrote Moveable Feast in 1997, maybe earlier. I posted it daily for a few months, just to see if I could write and draw a daily strip. But since no one was reading it, the work was stress-free. It was like learning to teach outside of a classroom (which, oddly enough, is where most of a teacher's education comes from on the way to a degree — when he or she finally encounters a real classroom, the many-headed beast of 20 or more students, it can be a shock. If I were writing the curriculum, I'd move the student teaching experience to the first year; give the student a chance to see how it feels to ride herd on the cattle — I mean, our Greatest Resource.)

This sunday strip was the unintentional beginning of the Headless Snowman. In a later daily, we learn that Karl saved the tiny snowman in the freezer, as a summer surprise for Spot. When Spot happens upon the snowman beside the ice cream, he mistakes the snowman for a snowcone and chomps off its head; a running gag is born.

I think it also leads to Buddy's crush on Marg Helgenberger. I'll have to wait and see.

You'll note a resemblance between Karl the carrot and Karl the human in Spot the Frog.  It's not coincidental.

Last week Mary and I visited a sugar house. The smiling master of ceremonies gave us a tour of the alchemy that boils sap into syrup, a busy, smoky, steamy enterprise — a vast tub built over a wood furnace. He tapped the tank of boiled sap and poured a trickle of hot syrup into tiny paper cups. Now I know what a butterfly tastes when it shoves its head into a flower.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Lincoln, but it's paraphrased, and possibly not from Lincoln. I still like it.

I may walk slow, but I get where I'm going.

Words to slowly live by.

I just noticed something odd about this picture. The glasses on his brow are closely-set, while his eyes are widely-set. I should change that.*

*Here's why the eyes and glasses don't match. I used to draw characters with eyes close together. The above cartoon was tweaked from an older one; I rearranged the eyes to satisfy my internal meter of what looks right to me now — the widely-spaced eye.

I just noticed something odd about this picture. The glasses on his brow are closely-set, while his eyes are widely-set. I should change that.*

*Here's why the eyes and glasses don't match. I used to draw characters with eyes close together. The above cartoon was tweaked from an older one; I rearranged the eyes to satisfy my internal meter of what looks right to me now — the widely-spaced eye.

Ideally, I'd clean my office through the year. It's a dizzy feeling to know where everything is. This must be how the gods feel. Or certain government agencies.

Apropos of nothing, if I buy a hat in its largest incarnation, 9 times out of 10 it will prove too small for my head.

If I sit too close to an aquarium, my head creates a tide.

It's all very sad, I know.

Me.

Maybe fond is too strong a word. A better phrase might be,  "a cause I'm very resigned to."  That sounds about right.

While the blood was being drawn, I distracted myself, focusing on a poster. It was all about the thyroid gland. Apparently, if your thyroid is overactive, your eyes bulge, and threaten to pop out like gumballs. I like gumballs — the crunch, the soft center, the atavistic thrill of eating an egg from a bird's nest — but not if they feature pupils.

I've become addicted to containers of Orbit White gum, Melon Breeze flavored. I tip ten or so into my mouth, chew for five or ten minutes, then dump in another ten. And so on. When my jaws are tired, in the way of a python swallowing a pig, I spit out a flavorless marrow, exhausted; also much like a python, I'm guessing, which probably doesn't digest the bones and offal.

It's satisfying work. My jaw muscles burn as if they've finished a 10K run. It's exercise, but not the sort to satisfy my doctor.

I hesitated to post this Sunday because, you know, not every Sunday makes me laugh. But here it is. I didn't want anyone to think they'd missed something extraordinary.

My new cartoon is up at American Scientist.

Sometimes the only copy of a cartoon I can find is a Xerox, where the gray has been calcified into black asphalt. Usually I go to pains to remove the texture, but this time I left it in. I still might change it. Once a cartoon is uploaded, it's  not safe from tweaking. If I'm buried (against my wishes, by the way — I'd prefer to lend my cadaver to a teaching hospital) and you hear a scrabbling inside the coffin, it's just me, rewriting another cartoon.

UPDATE: I decideded that the mottled gray in the father's suit was too distracting next to the torn newspaper. The change is above.

This cartoon appeared long ago in The Saturday Evening Post. The pay was modest — $125, I think, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's still $125 — but it's always good to have a client that the average person recognizes. Eventually a cartoonist is asked where they sell their work. "Magazines like the Saturday Evening Post," is always a good answer. Reader's Digest works well. Mentioning the New Yorker is obviously a good one, if you can pull it off, or keep a straight face.

And while I have your attention, may I bring your attention to the NEW link on the notepad. I try to add new material every day, so if you're curious to watch the incremental growth of my online inventory — sort of like watching the rings form on a tree, with more punchlines — don't hesitate to click the link.

In this round of Play the Cartoonist, we're trying to tweak the caption. Here's what I have:

"The Sleep Lab says you don't have apnea. But your cat sleeps on your face."

"We've ruled out apnea. Your cat likes to sleep on your face."

"You have a rare form of sleep apnea. Fluffy sleeps on your face."

"We've double-checked your brain telemetry, respiration rate and blood/oxygen levels, and gone over the video of your night in the sleep lab. Everything looks normal, except for the cat sleeping on your face."

[The rule is that you want a caption to be as short as possible. If it's a long one, it has to justify its length. In my second caption, I wanted to emphasise that they used a lot of fancy equipment to discover the obvious: the cat sleeps on the guy's face.]

I've had critics of my work, especially when I drew Spot the Frog*, but my worst critic is easily myself. I'm trying to change that — one of a dozen items I'm addressing with cognitive therapy and cracking wishbones — but habits are set in stone, or the bone of the skull, and are hard to dislodge. This morning I had a bleak stretch, shakily drinking coffee, waiting for Mary to wake up and talk me out of it. I didn't have a ledge to stand on, so I settled for sitting close to the edge of the couch.

To all those artists with unshakable confidence and conviction, I salute you, envy you, and possibly hate you.

This is known as Item #5 on my Therapy To Do list.

On the rare occasion when I read an artist talking about his self-doubt and late-night despair, I feel an immediate kinship. When I write and draw I like to be alone. But it's good to know that I'm not.

*for example: "Not funny." "Why does Spot have that big eye? Is he sick?"  "I don't get it." "It's stupid."  "Bring back Calvin & Hobbess." And a good part of me believed every one. Over the years my skin grew thicker, my defenses stronger. I took encouragement from those who liked Spot. But like Achilles, I will always have a vulnerable spot in my thickened skin, and criticism will occasionally find it.

I wasn't sure if I'd add this to my online inventory. But I'm in the mood for some self-flagellation. Behold. My worst pun, in a long and ongoing history of puns.

Such are the things that compose my life: staring at two similar lines until the eyes cross and I can no longer distinguish between them. Do you prefer the first caption? The second caption? A possible third: "You knew I wanted kids."

I've been told that I have a pleasant voice on the phone. When I meet someone I've only known by phone, I feel a tangible anticlimax in the air.

Back when I wrote for the Artist's Magazine, I'd provide an occasional article for the P.S. page, along with an illustration. The above accompanied an essay about recently-divorced artists who are too shaken to write or draw, so they find a job at a book store because it's a relief to finally be doing something, even though they've sworn to never work retail again, and to their surprise they enjoy the job for a few weeks, mostly selling calendars in a kioske outside the store, when the epiphany hits:  I — I mean they — could be selling their own art, rather than someone else's.

(if you're reading this Nik, that epiphany was for you.)

Bonus surprise: Phil can fit a lot of that big into his blog.

He posted a picture recently that blew my mind (though not literally, as I'm still thinking about writing this sentence. But if my mind were a basement without windows, lit only by lamps, the breaker would have overloaded and shut down, leaving me in the dark.) It's a Hubble photograph of Saturn, the planet with many moons (dozens) and a ring. (Or is that many rings?) The novelty of the photo is the number of moons visible. You'll immediately see three, and then a fourth. But for me the true amazement is the verisimilitude: it looks real. CGI real. George Lucas Real. Two of the moons even throw shadows.

The only thing missing is the tourist-class spaceship rounding the bend, heading for Titan to refuel.

Reality and fancy, like a long-married couple, are starting to resemble each other.

Getting back to the Adams line, look at the picture. Pass the time by pouring Earth-sized marbles into a Saturn-sized jar. You'll need 800 to fill it; each marble covered in oceans and mountains and millions of species. It's impossible to know intimately every spot on the globe, every aspect of life and non-life. It's too much for a single human mind. We still try, of course. Scholars and adventurers, scientists and artists, run about like ants, bringing crumbs of discovery back to the nest. We assemble the bits into systems, models; we gather the gist. But it's not a god-like knowledge. It's possible that Humanity, the collective human, understands the Earth. But humans can never know what Humanity is thinking. Or even if it is.

(which isn't to say that humans will never transition into a collective awareness. I have an idea that it probably will.)

Imagine you're driving on a back road. Your car runs out of gas. You start walking to a service station. It doesn't take long to realize that you live on a big planet. And Saturn is 800 times bigger. Sitting here, pausing in my writing, closing my eyes, I can barely imagine it. There's a threshold where really really big is just really really big, no matter how big it really is.

I can see a thousand things in my head. Maybe, if I grant myself leeway, I can see a millions things. But once the quantity is billions, trillions, and beyond, it's all the same.

Looking at a picture of another galaxy doesn't impress me with the size and distance of the universe. It's too big. But looking at Saturn, 800-Earths large, I can say to myself, 800. That's not so big. I can see 800 Earths being pushed inside an empty sphere. If I hold my breath and listen, I can even hear the screams.

I can't feel in my gut how truly big Saturn is, but I can imagine 800 of anything.

Don't get me started on Jupiter.

Second, I had an idea this morning, inspired by the last few weeks of emptying boxes of old roughs and finished cartoons. When I come across a Spot the Frog rough that wasn't finished, I'll post it here. Some of the jokes are good, some of the story lines still amuse me.

Third, I wish I'd had the second idea sooner. I've been tossing the Spot roughs in the bin as I plow ahead to my (perhaps impossible) destination: an office where every rough and doodle and idea is in it's place, and every cartoon that can be uploaded, is uploaded.

Fourth, my morning blood sugar was 104. If you're not in the habit of testing your blood sugar, 104's pretty good for a diabetic.

Fifth, I had another idea this morning. I wondered if I could write a list of bullet points without anyone noticing, as long as I kept the bullets in their box on the top shelf in the closet.

Sixth, no, I don't own a gun. Just the bullets, which I plan to throw furiously at any attacker.

Seventh, I'm being especially kind to Willy (the poodle) this morning because he's about to revisit a crime scene. I'm taking him back to the vet to have his anal glands expressed. This will take place in the Euphemism Room. He was there several weeks ago for the same thing, but his port side has the tensile strength of parchment, and ruptured. The look on Willy's face would be familiar to those who've seen any teaser segment on Law & Order.

Eighth, I no longer use To Do lists. I always fall short. Such is the way of hubris. I'm now using a To Done list. When I accomplish a noteworthy item, it goes on the list. I've been averaging 7 items a day. I'm a scatter-brained sort, and my daily progress is rarely a straight one. It's hard to tell if my day was productive. The To Done list reassures me that I'm moving ahead, even if it's a zig-zag. The To Done list also has a Lewis Carroll feel to it; moving backward to move ahead.

Nine, To Done List, wrote blog post.

This is the first strip I created post-divorce. As far as I know, it was never syndicated.

I was never censored by my syndicate, but I occasionally censored myself.

I like this daily, but I wrote it in the first year of Spot; a Family strip was the peg for the sales people's hats. Sweet and gentle, as offensive as a summer breeze. I pictured the audience reading the strip at the breakfast table, a bagel with cream cheese half-way to the mouth, when they spot the pile of excrement in the final panel. I pictured double-takes at best, choking at worst.

That's not true. Worse than choking: writing the newspaper's editor and complaining. I wanted papers. I needed papers. Internet readership is a fine thing, but most of a cartoonist's income will come from newspaper clients.*

So I set the rough aside, picturing a day when my strip was so well-loved that I could get away with anything.**

I might have used it in the final weeks of Spot, but like most things in my office, if they're not bound to my desk with iron chain, they're swept away, lost to the sea of unmarked flotsam.

But a blog allows me to say better late than never.

*When you're browsing a cartoonist's website, enjoying the strips, you will usually find a page where the cartoonist modestly coughs into a fist and suggests that you write to the editor of your local paper. The tone is casual. If you have a moment, for a lark, could you pitch in your two cents worth?

The tone is offhand. The cartoonist avoids numbing the reader with a PBS-style pledge drive. Or spooking the reader with the startling confession that their favorite strip isn't selling well, and may be losing papers.

Speaking for myself, my request for letter writers should have looked like this:

I BEG YOU. I'M ON MY KNEES. I'M RENDING GARMENTS. WRITE TO THE EDITOR. PRAISE MY VIRTUES. IF I DON'T APPEAR IN ENOUGH PAPERS I CAN'T AFFORD TO KEEP THE STRIP GOING. TO PARAPHRASE THE NATIONAL LAMPOON, IF YOU DON'T WRITE OR CALL, THE FROG DIES.

**Or picturing a day when the strip's tone had changed over time, to something more ribald, and this sort of joke wouldn't be remarkable. The alternative, of course, is to create a ribald strip from the start, making it the sales pitch.

If you've ever wondered what a space suit would look like, if you didn't really know what one looked like, here you go. My American Scientist cartoon for the week.

Like a lot of you, I've always wondered why hippos don't get sunburns.

Now we know.

I can burn indoors on a sunny day. I have the fair skin of a fairy tale virgin. The vulnerability of unexposed film. I'll be first in line to buy a bottle of Hippobloc. I hope they have a picture of a hippo on the label, rather than burying its inspiration in the fine print.

Which company uses — or used — the ad with a dog pulling on a little girl's bathing suit? I'm picturing the toothy dog replaced with the sweet and amazed face of a baby hippo.

I wonder what it's like to wonder what it's like to emerge from a hole in the ground after winter. I throw in the repetition because I don't need to wonder; I know what's it's like. I've been shouldering the weight of depression for a good long while — for the length of Spot the Frog, and well before — and there are days when the dark earth falls away and I'm back in the sun.  To stay in the sun takes work. The right pill. The right therapy. The right patch of ground.

I've lately enjoyed sunlight, and I'm hoping to follow Woodchuck's example. Stay away from the hole, keep my face to the sky.

*Yes, I need new glasses.

I'll have to look up the artist who drew this. I wish all Eye Exams were this diverting.

Mark reads the captions with an actor's panache, and peppers his comments with thoughts on the topic — Baseball, Sales, et al. — or shares his inspiration behind a punchline. Jaunty piano plays in the background which gives it the feel of an Everybody Loves Raymond episode.

Mark is Raymond. You can guess who I am. 

I'm pretty sure I didn't use this for a finished Sunday. I found the rough in a box in the back of the basement this morning.  I probably abandoned the idea because the ending didn't have sufficient punch.

This is one of my many math cartoons. And by many, I mean two.

I was never good at math.

I like this cartoon, but I've noticed something that doesn't belong. He has a bulky Walkman clipped to his shorts. There was a time, long ago, when cassettes were the medium, and that's when I drew this cartoon. He's also wearing a pair of over-the-head headphones, which I wear when I walk, but few others do.

It's a given that a cartoon has a long life, selling to one market, then another, and another. But technology has a precarious lifespan. Soon we'll be listening to music through our brain chips. Maybe science will develop a dog food additive that causes dog droppings to flash freeze when they contact the air, then crumble into ash, and this cartoon will finally be retired.*

In the meanwhile I think his Walkman may transform into a fanny pack sort of thing, or the ear bud cord will disappear into a pocket. And maybe I'll throw in a jetpack.

*Or may be retired. Perhaps public ettiquette will demand that you sweep the ash pile into something more discrete, and my protagonist will be asking for a pocket broom.

I have a new cartoon at American Scientist.  I drew it years ago, as a joke on how astronomers see distance. But now it's a joke on disaster averted; the gallows humor of surviving another day.

I'm not sure if this is the first time we see Spot and Buddy collaborate on fooling Karl. It wasn't the last.

Other noteworthy items: Karl debuts his purple pants. Buddy wears a stocking hat, rather than his billed one. Bonus observation: we see Karl's warm breath, but not Buddy's, being a cold-blooded creature. I'm a stickler for scientific accuracy.

I have a make-shift light table I set up when necessary. But I don't like to use it. It's like assembling a camping tent.  I need to clear off my desk, prop the plexiglass, drag in a light source, haul over a chair, lean forward without falling to the floor. It's exhausting.

Which is why I've ordered a light box that's thinner than a paperback — it looks like a Wacom tablet — that neatly fits on my lap desk,  which fits on my lap,  which fits the recliner in my office.

I'd post a picture of it, but you know.

UPDATE:  It's the morning after, I've regained my wind, sails are full, so here's the picture.

First off, that should probably be its, not THEIR.

Second off, this is how literate I am. In the rough, I wrote My Town, not Our Town, and Morning Sings Electra, not Mourning Becomes Electra (my excuse: I was thinking of the Ray Bradbury story, I Sing the Body Electric.)

Luckily, Mary looks over my shoulder on occasion.

Captions look so simple. Unassuming, quiet, preordained, natural. But behind this caption is another eight* — and several more I didn't bother to write down — and I'm not sure that I've chosen the right one. When I look at this cartoon in a week or so, the resolution should be clearer.

Nearly all of my wisdom and expertise is hindsight.

*they all revolve around the idea that dogs like to chase things, especially cars, but there are many ways to express the same idea.

Yankee Magazine once had a feature — and perhaps still does — asking readers to identify an antique implement. Let's play the same game. Does anyone recognize the obsolete and rarely seen tool in the bottom left of this drawing?

And speaking of anxiety, I'm not saying that Monday's asteroid will abruptly veer off course and land somewhere inconvenient, but it's theoretically not impossible that an undetected asteroid or comet will zoom in like a billiard and smack the first asteroid explosively close.

Keep those hard hats handy. And wear them correctly. On your head while you stand at the bottom of a mine shaft.

UPDATE: I need to check a calendar. According to another blog the asteroid has sailed by.

UPDATE 2: It passed by this previous Monday, not the impending one.  A mere 44, 750 miles away. Close enough to shave by.

Today's Spot strip at comics.com is relevant because we ran out of oil yesterday. Our oil tank ceased to be an oil tank. Now it's an oil fume tank. Which means no heat, no hot water. I'm staring at that last panel, absorbing as much warmth as possible.

Duck!

Starting today, I'll be bumping elbows with people far smarter than I am. You might think I could do this with a quick run to the gas station, and you might be right. But the odds being what they are, you might be wrong.

For a sure bet, check out Science of the Week, courtesy of American Scientist.

I love to be amazed, surprised, illuminated.  Science is the guide book with an infinite Index. For some of us science verges on religion; a faith informed by curiousity and wonder; where miracles routinely repeat themselves; where the inexplicable rarely remains so. I look at the night sky and feel spellbound, awestruck, simultaneously small and large. I feel the same way when I squint in the opposite direction, at the grass beneath my feet and its molecules and atoms and tinier things still.

One of the pleasures of selling a science cartoon is the Bumping Elbows Effect — of mingling with those who practice what I love. I'm rotten at math, I forget crucial detail, and my mind skitters when I try to think logically.

But when I slip a cartoon into a science magazine, for a brief and fanciful moment, I'm a fan sneaking backstage, bumping elbows with lab coats.

American Scientist is one of the few science publications to run cartoons with a collector's fervor. It's rare to read an issue without one or more, often by brilliant cartoonists like Sidney Harris or Benita Epstein. It's a fine feeling to bump elbows with them as well.

I haven't done a bullet list in a while.

• I'm reading Death From the Skies!, by Phil Plait. No matter how bad your day is, it could be worse. Dinosaur Extinction worse. It's funny and gruesome and disorienting — it's like reading your obituary. Some of the deaths could happen while you're reading this. Others take place billions of years from now. It's funny how the latter is just as upsetting.
• Lots of snow this morning. Many thanks to the person who devised the snow blower.
• My apologies to Spot fans looking for yesterday's Sunday strip. I'll have it up today. It's one of my early favorites.
• This weekend I worked on Thin Green Line strips. It's gone through at least three incarnations. The ranger character is gone, or way out of the picture.
• I'll soon be adding a Wish List to nobrowcartoons.com. If you like to browse, but don't have an immediate need to buy a cartoon, it's a handy way to stockpile. My Amazon Wish List is never less than six pages long.
• Today I'm starting something new, which I'll talk about soon. It involves one of my fannish loves: science.
• I should write everything as a bullet list. No need for those bothersome segues between paragraphs.
• I like Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream. It isn't low fat and neither am I.
• Poodles are also known as water dogs, but if Willy is typical, they don't necessarily like water, rain or snow; though he is drawn to a shower when it's occupied.

This was an actual header I considered, before I sent an email to 3232 Design.

I've been playing around with a wordless strip for kids. I don't know if I'll do more with it, but I'll post them as they appear at my desk.

Thin Green Line hasn't fared well with the syndicates, so it's back in the shop, up on the lift, undergoing loud and busy re-tooling.

I drew this a long time ago, but my knowledge of Spanish is about the same. I'm guessing that La should be Las. Yes?

In five year retrospect, I'd drop Spot's speech balloon in the last panel. If you have tape handy, just block out the part of the screen where it appears.

My site was recently welcomed at CoolHomepages.com, under a slew of categories:

Animation
CSS-DHTML
E-Commerce
Flash
Fun
Illustration

CHP doesn't mention brilliant cartoons, but I suppose it's implied. A round of applause, please, for my web designer, Richard Mueller, mad genius and steampunk whiz.

In the previous form of this cartoon, the emperor wore clothes. Now he doesn't. This is better for two reasons: I get to draw chest hair (using a technique I learned in third grade for writing cursive Es), and it quickly identifies the king as the fabled emperor of no clothes. I'm not sure if the cartoon makes sense this way — the original idea was that the king had resumed his normal attire, and no longer needed his invisible wardrobe — but when all else fails, it never hurts to pull a Benny Hill.

Jokes that depend on posterior venting aren't usually encouraged in comic strips. But here's one.

Sliding like this actually works, if you're a kid, and desperate.

This was a rewrite that I'll be reverting back to the original, which is this:

"You said on the phone you were Ronnie Rat, not the voice of Ronnie Rat."

Sometimes in my eagerness to edit I take out too much, in the same way I can trim my beard too far if I'm distracted.

By the way, note the lack of a nose on the woman's face. That was something else I didn't notice for years, omitting the nose. As a second choice, I could have called my business No Nose Cartoons. But that has a suggestive sound — no-no's — as if my humor is tabboo or reliably off-color. Which it sometimes is, but not often enough to warrant a spot on my business card.

More than words can say. If you're lucky in love, have a fine day. And if you're enjoying the solitude of being single, have a fine day, as well.

This was also the start of an idea that never went far. t occurred to me that frogs knew nothing about music.  When they sang, they were really burping. They assumed that every human song was also a burp. I used the idea several times, but it was a quiet and modest thing; a burp supressed.

When you're granted your heart's desire, there's often a downside.

Safe sex is always advised.

The original for this is over at facebook, the Thin Green Line page. But here's the rewrite.

There's a carnival of rewriting going on right now. Characters coming into focus as I learn more about them, one joke at a time.

Steampunk is many things. Here's one that's not usually mentioned: doing things the hard way. Every time I see a steampunk this or steampunk that, I'm thinking that steam is rarely the easiest way to get something done.*

Legos are the same. It's not the destination, it's the journey. On a road paved with lego bricks.

The now-iconic term, Legopunk**, occured to me this morning while I was looking at Richard Mueller's photos of his custom-made Lego clock, complete with counter weight and escapement. I'm pretty sure Richard has a clock in his house somewhere. But legopunk, like steampunk, doesn't need a reason beyond itself.

Richard Mueller, by the way, is the clever guy who set aside his Legos for a few months and built my site; something else that shares the Legopunk aesthetic of savoring the cluttered journey to a well-ordered destination.

*though steampunk, of course, is more than steam. It's brass and copper and glass, polished to a high efficiency.

**coined by me at 11:51 AM, EST

This item isn't shown to scale. I understand Mark Anderson has to climb a ladder to polish that cyclopean eye. And that's when the robot is kneeling.

A robot like this has many uses. Cleaning gutters, for one. Conquering the last bastion of humanity, for another. Click on my index page to see what Mark uses it for.

Yee-ha.

Here's the start:

  Amanda had a face like a pig. [Really? Is her neighbor Dr. Moreau? You're writing for a fantasy audience. Readers may take this literally —Ed.] She'd heard this all her life. School kids made oinking noises on the playground, and softer ones in the classroom. Thirty years later the guys at work were more discrete. If they passed her in the hall they would step aside widely, as if making room for a couple. If she approached co-workers at the coffee machine their laughter would stop until she left. Sometimes it resumed with a snort that reminded her of elementary school, but it wasn't necessarily an oink. 
     She shrugged and bent closer to the bathroom mirror to finish her makeup. There were worse things than being fat and ignored. Usually she wasn't. Scores of diets and she still couldn't disappear.

Rather than using Spot's DNA, however, I'll be using a print-on-demand service. I'll keep you updated as I look into publishing a third Spot book, collecting strips from the third year. (cloning news courtesy of American Scientist.)

I don't know how other cartoonists do this, but I develop my characters from the joke in, and then from the character out.

That is, in this strip we have a punchline. But like the native americans who would use all parts of the punchline, I like to use the joke for building character (and once I know the character, I build the jokes from that.) So Rabbit is vain, concerned about losing his looks. And he has a good reason to worry if he believes that his cuteness protects him.

I didn't know this until I wrote the joke.

Robots. (via American Scientist.)

There are many winter days when I stick my face in front of a lamp, eyes closed, and pretend I'm elsewhere, sitting on a beach, listening to the waves, with a lamp in my face.

His writing can tip a butterfly's wing to better catch the light. It can whip up a storm that would upset a dinosaur. Larger than life, true to life, Lansdale can write both, often simultaneously.

Craig speculates that after a lifetime of cult adoration, Lansdale may be on the verge of hitting the mainstream audience. Most likely with a kick to the head.

Diane Harmon, a classmate from high school and stage band, found this newspaper clipping of the most powerful brass section in the history of Jazz (which highlights the great advantage of photography over video — it's hard to dispute the caption if you weren't there. And if you were within earshot, and the trumpets sounded like the scattered bang of a rifle range, what you heard wasn't what we felt — legs braced, pushing air through the horn, we played with the passion of the MPBSHJ, and that's what you see.)

Some faces are made for radio. Some bands are meant for photo albums.

I don't know what the other guys were thinking, but I was probably praying that my blood blister wouldn't explode. Playing a trumpet with a blood blister on your lip is like driving a car with a flat.

Time, it is fleeting and occasionally mean-spirited.

My side burns are clearly straining to become a beard. A fitting compliment to my technique as I strained to hit a middle C.

The photo reminds me of a performer offstage, awaiting his cue.

(photo courtesy of The Inoculated Mind.)

I've been meaning to write about this show for a long time. I've put it off because it ties my tongue and knots my fingers when I try to convey my enthusiasm for This Week In Science. You're looking at Dr. Kirstin Sanford and (non-Dr.) Justin Jackson. Sanford is the producer, Jackson the co-host. I've been listening to TWIS for the last few years, usually when I'm washing dishes, folding clothes, or raking leaves; any chore that I might ignore were it not for the company of a TWIS episode.

I found this picture at The Inoculated Mind, and I've booted the show's logo from my iPod in favor of their grins. Those smiles are perfect icons. Science is not deadpan.

Sanford is possibly a team of clones, or quintuplets. I've seen her everywhere online — her nom de video is Dr. Kikki — interviewing, explaining, entertaining. I've read that she can spin a burning Hulu Hoop without injury, and I'm pretty sure she could walk on hot coals if asked.  Jackson, if I'm not mistaken, sells cars, upsetting the stereotype.  If I lived in the area, and didn't work at home, and didn't hate driving, I'd buy a car from this guy. Aside from TWIS, his greatest contribution to science is the coining of Climyidia, a word of many spellings, that describes the ongoing illness of our biosphere. It even has a theme song.

Sanford is smart, sharp, and photogenic. You can see her here, here, here, and here. Jackson, who I've rarely seen, proves to be equally screen friendly. In past episodes I've learned that Jackson shies from the camera, which is disappointing in the age of YouTube. Because Jackson is funny. The sort of funny that invites theft, if you're a cartoonist looking for ideas.

TWIS has interviews, science-inspired music, and the feel of a coffee shop jolt without the caffeine. Sanford and Jackson frequently consider the many ways that the world might end — stagnant oceans, Antarctica melting like cubes in a warm drink — and the inevitable robot uprising and World Domination that will keep us distracted until then.

I'm not sure if world domination is a TWIS goal, but it's on its way. And to paraphrase Kent Brockman, I welcome our TWIS overlords.

This is what I showed to Richard Mueller. I asked for a website design that would mimic my actual desk.

Luckily, Richard took that request with a grain of salt, and created a site that looked haphazard, but wasn't.

And, yes, I'm wobbling on my office chair while taking this picture. I not actually seven feet tall.

There are two types of cartoonist blogs (which isn't true, but that's how you start off this style of blinkered observation): cartoonists who blog to be noticed (that's me), and cartoonists who blog but don't need to. Stephan Pastis, who is already well-noticed, has started a blog.  

If you tire easily, and despair of wading through acres of backlog, this is a good time to start reading his blog. The archive is only one post.

This is from the black and white years, the early Nineties, when I drew with a dip pen on plate finish Bristol. I was young and full of vigor. I was balding, not bald. India Ink was cheap and pen nibs were plentiful. They may have grown on trees. I approached my cartoons like a carpenter paid by the nail. When the ink dried, the dense lines would have stood on their own if you pried off the paper. My cartoons were skeletal but solid houses. India Ink art is built to last.

At the time I was hoping to syndicate a single-panel feature. I must have reasoned that crosshatching was the key to a contract.* I planned to call the feature Off the Mark,** until I discovered I wasn't the only Mark with the same idea.

Now I draw with ink that fades before the day is out, and my art is as permanent as a light switch in the ON position.

*Or in this case, inelegant crosshatching. The stretch mark cartoon would work as a poster, but it looks muddy when reduced for newsprint.

**Undaunted, and with typical genius, I renamed the panel On the Mark.

I have a dozen incomplete stories, waiting for that improbable day when I finish them. I say improbable, rather than impossible, because I occasionally do type the last period and get it in the mail. Here's the start of one that was finished, submitted, rejected, and put in line for a rewrite.

                                          Nature Loves a Vacuum
                                                                by Mark Heath

     Being a Rhomboid Smart Series floor vacuum, I don't get out much. I bike to the park on Sundays, my day off, enjoying the sun with the other appliances, or sitting in the shade of a refrigerator while it hums and meditates. I can hold a charge for thirty minutes, which gives me an hour with my spare battery. Luckily, the park is only a fifteen minute bike ride, and mostly downhill.

     After a quick clean up of crumbs and spilled cereal, snorting up a few of Mary's discarded socks as an incentive to pick up after herself, I snap on my auxiliary legs and wheel my bike out of the garage. The playing card pinned to the strut flicks against the spokes. My bike's a shiny red trike with an extra wide banana seat. Perfect for those of us with large canisters. The bike's thirty years old, but in mint condition, seemingly fresh from its box. A leather pouch strapped to the frame holds my backup battery, with just enough room for my paints and my totem, a hand broom with a faded Hardware Store brand on the handle. I tie a bag of white bread to the left handlebar.  

     As an example for Mary, my owner's eight year old daughter, who's watching me from the front door with Mr. Toothy in her arms, I make a show of strapping on my bike helmet. It's a Vetta that looks like a bowling ball, and doesn't sit especially well on my head since I don't have one. It rides the dome of my back. I wear it because it looks cool, crazy, or dangerous. I like to be noticed. But If I took a spill the helmet would crack before I did.

     "Can I ride your bike when you get back?" Mary asks, walking up to the bike, scooching to examine the playing card on the front wheel. She snaps it with a finger. It makes a little bird wing noise. She looks disappointed.

     "You're too little."
     "Can I ride with you?"
     "You're too big." I swing on to the seat. "See? No room. Sorry."

     Mary straightens and squeezes Mr. Toothy. The toy dinosaur squeaks. It has a vocabulary of three thousand words, but it only speaks when Mary's asleep, whispering subliminal messages into her ear. Be a good little girl, Mary. Obey. Behave. "Can I ride you when you get back?"

     "Absolutely."

     She smiles, and my factory response takes over. "You can ride me now if you want."

     I jump off my bike and take giant steps into the house. I kick off my legs and wait for Mary in the living room. She'll use a couch pillow for a saddle and ride me into walls, up the stairs, kicking her heels against my sides. With luck she won't hit my Reset button. Or The Little Death, in Appliance Speak.

     Mary's a good kid, but I don't think Mr. Toothy's messages are getting through. Humans and machines are complicated affairs, and recalls aren't uncommon. Me, for example. I was sold as a vacuum and playwright. I'm designed to clean the house and write short plays that feature my owner's children. But the programming didn't stick. I'd rather paint. My owners ignored the recall because I paint pictures of Mary. Usually riding a pony. But in my spare time I paint landscapes. I sell them on ebay. I'm known as the indoor appliance who loves nature. I've been told that my trees look like show room models, real but artificial. Draw what you know, I tell buyers. But I'm not satisfied. I want to paint nature as it looks from the outside, not the inside.

     Another thirty seconds elapse, and it occurs to me that Mary's probably wheeling my bike down Mechanic Street, Mr. Toothy propped on the seat. As my advertising claims, I'm smart. But that's Vacuum Smart.

     I scramble for my legs just as she reappears with her cowboy hat and boots. Mr. Toothy is missing, sitting this one out.

     An hour later the rodeo ends when Mary turns on the television. I vacuum the dirt she tramped in with her boots and I'm free to hit the road. I give the TV a respectful nod, it nods back, content with its nature documentaries.

     After sucking in nail clippings and dust and other detritus, it's good to be outside, pretending to breathe fresh air, racing down the long hill to Terlson Park. I imagine the wind pushing a smile into my face, blowing away the goofy decal applied at the factory. Instead of coasting I peddle like mad and picture myself flying off the road, racing like a comet until I burst out of the box we all live in.

"My first contact with that fabled and archaic humor-generating contraption known as Dr. Mueller’s Panoptical Cartoon Engine occurred some years ago at a rural auction in Chepachet, Rhode Island.  (The literarily minded among my readers will surely recall that Chepachet particularly impressed the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft as redolent of the most “antient” New England vibes.  But I make no explicit links between Lovecraft’s subjective characterization of the queer village and my discovery of Dr. Mueller’s device there.)"

Like all of the best histories, it's not so much true as truthy.

Jan Eliot — creator of Stone Soup — explains why Val and Joan have the same last name. A nice bit of history that was new to me, even though I'm married to Mary Kennedy, not Mary Heath.

Hard to buy ghosts. For both consumer and skeptic.

But then I got a fan letter: soap water is poisonous to frogs. Kids reading the strip might take their pet frogs and dump them into the sink.  Spot shouldn't do that.

The strip was fifteen days old. I was 44 going on 13. I was in the grip of anxiety, imagining that every false move in writing the strip would lead to cancellation. I was open to suggestions.  I was a sucking wound of openness. My confidence bled like a heart attack survivor doped with Plavix and pricked by a pin.

As soon as I could, I moved Spot from the sink.

I'm not certain, I'll have to check, but I think I even wrote a strip that served as a Kids, Don't Do This At Home.

Here's what I should have done. I should have put Spot in the thick of it, engulfed him in suds, dressed him up in bubbles like that kid in the old Mr. Bubble commercial. Spot's a talking frog. The power of speech is only possible with artistic license. Maybe Karl would start using New and Improved Dawn, Now Safe for Frogs, with that fresh pond scent. Who knows?

Now, according to my self-applied therapy program, I shouldn't use the word should.* It leads to regret and occasionally anger. So I won't dwell on this, beyond offering advice to new cartoonists:

If you ever create a strip about a frog that lives in a kitchen sink, keep it there. You won't regret it.

*D'oh.

Leaving the can would work in reverse. Given time, he'd likely swell into a globe-stradling giant. Which for a lot of us he has.

See here for the version that ran in the papers.

The bear characters in Thin Green Line, — The Strip That Might Never Be — believe that they are the inevitable inheritors of the earth, once humans become extinct. They keep a constant eye on Ranger Green's health. Every sniffle is a potentially fatal disease, the harbinger of a pandemic.

I've already posted some roughs, but they were actually roughs in Sunday clothing. This rough is more typical, the Saturday Morning Look of sweat pants and day-old beard.

And if you buy a few cartoons between birth and death, all the better.

But thanks to a gremlin, a glitch, a ghost in the machine, I'm left to admit that my site is Under Construction. If you're confronted by a window asking for username and password, seemingly as merciless as a bouncer at a club, my apologies.  Just shut the window. I'm scrambling to find my hard hat.

Play cartoonist. How could you improve this cartoon by at least fifty percent?

I'm working on several picture book ideas, and this is one of them. If it weren't for it's visibility, you could call it the Missing Link between my strips and illustration. But there it is. I cut and paste the Headless Snowman series from the strip and moved the pieces around. I dropped subplots, some jokes, and stuck to the essential story — that a Headless Snowman is hunting for a replacement head, starting with Karl's.

I haven't decided if the story should be told more as a young reader graphic novel, or a picture book with a low speech balloon count. I'd like to do both.

I've found the solution, thanks to Zeno's Paradox, the notion of traveling from Point A to Point B by midpoints, until progress is paradoxically stalled and still moving.

With every sip, I only sip half. Then half of that with my next sip. And so on.

I've been nursing the same cup of coffee since last Friday.

My apologies for a slightly uncooperative website today. My hosting company is having problems. If I can help you directly, please email me.

You may remember this as Rorschach Cartoon #4. It was a drawing I unearthed, minus the caption, which I couldn't remember. But a few days it returned, in more or less one piece. This might not be the exact caption I had in mind, but it feels right.

My tip of the hat to those who emailed close-but-not-quite captions.

Not only is it the January 6 strip, it's the first week of Spot. If you start reading now, you're set for nearly five years. That's time travel of another sort.

         "So this operating system. Does it tell you to do things?"

If you don't get the joke, click over to Mark Anderson's blog for the finished project. Being borderline insane when it comes to plastic knobbed bricks, he's been recreating his single panel cartoons as Lego tableaux. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a locked room in his house with a full-size mock-up of his wife and two kids.

This one is brilliant. The lamp. The clock. The coffee table (maybe version 2.0 will have a Lego disguised as a box of tissues.)

Look at the psychiatrist in the finished sculpture. That's either inspired by Mike Lynch, Mark Heath, or George Lucas. I'd love to see the original cartoon.

If I thought Legos were something more than an obstacle to kick through in my Godzilla suit, I'd buy one of these things.

Mark isn't selling these, as far as I know, but this would make a fine gift for a Lego fanatic with a more understandable love of cartoons. For proof of authenticity, he could sell these along with the 2D cartoons that inspired them.

If this doesn't appear on boingboing, then I haven't grasped the essense of boingboing.

You're a fan of Mick Stevens. Of course you are. Every one is. Along with a handful of others, he's set the style for a generation or two. And now he has a new website, which hosts his blog; a mix of Lewis Carroll, and drunken sobriety. Run forth and marvel.

If you're aspiring to be a cartoonist, or you're a jaded cartoonist grown weary of the usual cartoon wheels, I'd like to recommend Dr. Mueller's Cartoon Engine.

Ignore the cartoon results — unless you're looking to buy a cartoon; then by all means give them your full attention — and consider the three words that spin into the windows. Give them a glance and see if a cartoon idea doesn't sprout in the brain loam.

Also, if you're a writer of fiction looking for inspiration, you could do worse than writing the novel or short story that compliments "Painting Selfish Monroe."

Oh. Yeah. I forgot that part. Or, to be more vague, I had a personal distraction that sent me onto the wrong tracks (I'm a bit like Thomas the Tank Engine, without the gravitas.)

I'm back on track now, I'm looking at the stack as I type — that's how good a typist I am — and everyone who heard from me will be receiving a copy in due haste, with my apologies.

These are strips and panels that ended in 2008

FARLEY
by Phil Frank
February 18, 1985 - January 2, 2008*
San Francisco Chronicle
* reprints since April 15, 2007

LUCKY COW
by Mark Pett
April 21, 2008 - February 2, 2008
Universal Press Syndicate

[I think Lucky Cow launched in 2003 —mh]

THEY'LL DO IT EVERY TIME
by Jimmy Hatlo and Bob Dunn and Al Scaduto
February 5, 1929 - February 3, 2008
King Features Syndicate

THE PERRY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP
by Nicholas Gurewitch
September 16, 2003 - February ??, 2008
alternative weekly
self syndicated
[first appeared in 2001 in The Daily Orange of Syracuse Univ.]

HUTCH OWEN
by Tom Hart
August 14, 2006 - March 7, 2008
NYC Metro
[first appeared ?1993?1994? as/in a comic book]

THE HUMBLE STUMBLE
by Roy Schneider
August 15, 2005 - March 9, 2008
United Feature Syndicate

STORMFIELD
by Wes Alexander
April ??, 2003 - March 10, 2008
weekly
DBR Media

THE GOLDEN YEARS
by Bill Murray
November 14, 2005 - March 24, 2008
weekly
DBR Media

JET NEWS
by Bill Murray
early 21st Century - March 24, 2008
weekly
DBR Media

MARVIN THE CALF
by Ralph Hagen
November 14, 2005 - March 24, 2008
weekly
DBR Media

SCREAMS
by Guy Gilchrist and Ralph Hagen
ca. 2001 - March 24, 2008
weekly
DBR Media

RETRO GEEK
by Steve Dickenson and Todd Clark
January 7, 2008 - March 30, 2008
Tribune Media Services

SOMEWHAT COUNTY
by Scott Bullock
ca. 1998 - April 20, 2008
Sunday only
Summit (Colo) Daily News

DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR
by Alison Bechdel
1985 - May 14, 2008
alternative weekly
self syndicated
[first appeared in the New York City monthly WomanNews in 1983]

PRETEENA
by Allison Barrows
April 23, 2008 - May 18, 2008
Universal Press Syndicate

DENVER SQUARE
by Ed  Stein
January 12, 1997 - May 21, 2008
Rocky Mountain News

OUT OF THE GENE POOL
by Matt Janz
January 6, 2002 - June 22, 2008
retitled "Single and Looking" July 30, 2007 - demise
Washington Post Writers Group

SPOT THE FROG
by Mark Heath
January 5, 2004 - July 5, 2008
United Feature Syndicate

REDEYE
by Gordon Bess and Bill Yates and Mel Casson
September 11, 1967 - July 13, 2008*
King Features Syndicate
*I don't know if KFS and papers continued with reprints

GEEZER
by Kevin Stark
early 2001 - August 3, 2008
daily only
Pauls Valley (Okla) Daily Democrat

DIESEL SWEETIES
by Rich Stevens
January 8, 2007* - August 10, 2008
United Feature Syndicate
*some papers began running it on January 1, 2007
[webcomic before, during and after syndicate run]

CLEAR BLUE WATER
by Karen Montague-Reyes
May 3, 2004 - September 28, 2008
Universal Press Syndicate
[continued as a webcomic October 17, 2008 - ]

OPUS
by Berke Breathed
November 23, 2003 - November 2, 2008
Sunday only
Washington Post Writers Group

ACTION GEEK
by Doug Chapel
October 16, 2003 - December 25, 2008
Worcester (Mass) Magazine

BALDERDASH
by David Lee Bilbrey
?early 1985? - December 30, 2008
weekly panel
Bowling Green (Ohio) Sentinel-Tribune

WHISKEY! TANGO! FOXTROT!
by Tom Pappalardo
January 17, 2007 - December 30, 2008
weekly strip
Valley (Mass) Advocate

RACS contributors help me with all the data,
but a special thanks to Charles Brubaker for
the end dates to the DBR Media strips/panels.

Winter is a hard time to work. We lower the heat in the house, and I fire up a heater in my office with the door closed. Belle curls into a ball in the living room, not minding the cold, but Willy is less hardy, despite his ferocious demeanor. So he's with me in the office all day.

We knew he was a lap dog when we adopted him, but the lap is rarely sufficient. Like an adventurer who can't resist scaling a mountain peak, Willy prefers to climb up the doughy edifice as high as possible.

That's why it's hard to work and move about when the temperature drops. I'll eventually deposit him in the chair behind me, but he is warm, and I'm pretty sure my beard achieves a Vulcan mindmeld with Willy's fur that is soothing.

I should probably look into a special hat with a flat crown, suited for small dogs.

First off, just to get it out of the way, the best feature is a link to nobrowcartoons. You'll find it on his blog. More sites should offer it.

He's refurbished his BIO (a portrait of the artist as a young man with a coffee table). He elaborates on the Willy Wonka-style wonders that follow when you request a CUSTOM cartoon.*  You can buy his cartoon collections with the ease of PayPal. And you can incorporate his cartoons into your HTML, Facebook, and possibly your DNA. I'm guessing it's an easter egg option.

And first and last it's a quick easy read when you're looking for cartoons on any topic  — though, sadly, if you do a search for Mark Heath, you won't find my cartoons — every drawing linked to every other drawing by subject and topic and general description.

Seven Degress of Mark Anderson.

Today is the official launch. Click over. Marvel at the wonders of Web 2.0. And if you're lucky, he'll take down his trombone and play a little Tommy Dorsey.

If not, you can always run Mr. Dorsey as a word search. After umpity-ump years online, that's sort of sentimental.

*Though there is no actual chocolate, Andertoons has been known to send holiday chocolate to his customers.

You can assume that my resolutions involve general self-improvement, and an acceptance for the things that resist improvement.

This was the last of the Misfit series, but a year later, I realize that the back-stabbing tugboat is still there. I forgot all about it. I wonder what became of it once I turned my back.

I'm hoping that in 2009 I sell a picture book or two. Here's another manuscript I've been tweaking for several years.

And by the way, is there a simple way to cut and paste text from google docs that doesn't go kablooey when pasted into a blog? I've had to reformat the code for this story several times, and finally rewrite it, when I could be outside spreading holiday joy in the manner of Scrooge, post-ghosts.

If We Had Two Cats

by Mark Heath

 

"If we had two cats," I said to my sister, who was patting our cat, Olaf, "we could both pat a cat."

"Good idea," Nancy said. She grabbed a can of cat foot and ran outside. A cat followed her back in. She put the smelly can and the cat on my lap.

After the cat licked the can clean, it settled down.

On Nancy's lap with Olaf.

"If we had three cats," I said, "we could both pat a cat."

This time Nancy ran outside with a box of tuna-flavored Tasty Treats. She came back with a dozen cats at her heels. She put a bowl of Treats on my lap. The cats jumped up, emptied the bowl, and settled down.

Guess where?

"Maybe your lap isn't soft enough," Nancy said. She stacked a dozen pillows on my knees. The cats only looked interested when the pile wobbled and fell over.

Nancy rounded up flower pots. "Catnip," she said. A few cats crept close, but I sneezed and scared them away. "I guess you're allergic," she said.

Nancy gave me cat toys to play with. The cats looked bored. I felt the same way.

Nancy dug out my Halloween bat costume. I put on the big-eared mask and squeaked like a mouse. "Come and get me," I said. They didn't.

Nancy put on her coat and grabbed her purse. "I'll be right back."

An hour later the front door banged open. Nancy led our new cat inside on a leash.

"H-here, Kitty," I said.

Nancy sat down in her empty chair. Olaf and the others were missing. "The Zoo calls her Tiger," Nancy said, patting her lap. "Come here, Tiger!"

Tiger leaped and landed on my sister's lap.

And my lap.

And most of the furniture.

[picture the tiger sprawled over the couch and the chair and much of the room]

"Good kitty," Nancy said, patting Tiger's head.

"Goof kiffee," I said, Tiger's tail patting me.

"Now we both have a cat on our laps," Nancy said.

[picture the tail batting the kid around.]

"If we had two tigers," I said, "we could both pat the head."

 

            

I expected a droll story in the manner of America's Stephen Leacock, but instead I read a tale more suited to Poe.

As I read my blood slowed in the approved manner. My neck hairs stood like exclamation points.

I'll admit that the start is a quiet one. The tension is mild, even pleasant — a young boy opens his Christmas stocking — but soon the anticipation yanks tight like a knot about the throat.

Thanks to Hope evicerated, Trust knee-capped, Innocence blindfolded and tossed in a car and driven to an abandoned warehouse and hung by chains while mercilessly tickled, the child is pushed to the edge of sanity. Another few inches and he'll trip into madness. There's no doubt about it.

The story ends when he greets his parents in the morning, and before I even read the words, I know his greeting will be spoken with a bloody axe.

UPDATE: The seventh time was the charm. In honor of my victory, the full-size image is more full-size than usual.

courtesy of Rod McKie.

But I do like the Island of Misfit Toys. And like most viewers, I've long wondered what was wrong with the little doll. It looks like a doll.  It can cry like a doll (do dolls cry anymore? Along with wetting their diapers, that used to be a selling point.)

The truth came to me, 40 years later, as my truths do.

Not in this particular strip, but it starts here. More to come.

New Hampshire cartoonist Stephanie Piro lost electricity for a few days. This isn't unusual if you live in rural NH. There are many trees that ignore the Weeble Philosophy (of wobbling, but never falling), and moody branches that leap to their demise with the first coat of ice, taking out power lines along the way, a murder-suicide.

She survived the lack of power and wrote about it here. It's a primer, and an excellent argument for living with lots of warm cats.

My only disappointment, as a reader, is that her power returned too quickly. There's a panel showing grocery store shoppers, some of whom have zombie eyes. They're the ones still without power. They're the ones living the slow cold undeath of zero electricity. I love fantasy. For a moment, as a selfish reader, I was hoping that Stephanie and her husband would transform in the cold dark like winter potatoes, becoming something other than human, a shuffling vegetative existence.

I figure this would have happened around day three.

One of the plot points in her story is the lack of batteries. But I'd like to offer this story of consolation:

Years ago, we lost power in the home we rented. And by we, I mean a pre-Mary we. We didn't have a woodstove. But we had two cats, plenty of candles, and a book lamp. My common law wife (a romantic phrase that describes our relationship perfectly) fled the house for work in town, where the power was still on. I was trapped by my job description of Stay At Home Cartoonist.

I holed up in the bedroom with a Gothic assembly of candles on the dresser. I sealed myself inside many blankets. The cats settled in like caulking in the cracks. With stiff icy fingers I shoved batteries into my book lamp, clipped it to the book, and settled in.

I remember congratulating myself on my cleverness. My pioneer wiles.

And then I felt a drop of water on my right thumb.

The roof was leaking.

I stared at the ceiling for a minute or so before realizing two things: the ceiling was water-tight. And the drops were burning.

My lamp was leaking battery acid. 

Apparently, if you put the batteries in backwards, this is what happens.

It took a surprising quantity of blistering drops before I reacted. I glowered at the lamp, thinking, lamps don't leak. What's happening? Even while watching my lamp leak.

My reassuring moral for Stephanie. Sometimes you're better off without batteries.

When I started my 25 year plan to sell to The New Yorker in 1983*, Bill Woodman was one of the cartoonists I admired. Mike Lynch offers a primer on the whimsical might that is Woodman.

*Soon to be revised as my 26 year plan.

Nik offers this touching tribute to Big Foot's latest rise and fall.

Notice anything amiss? I had Karl's daughter appear so infrequently in the strip that I could refer to her by almost any name without raising an eyebrow. Her name is Kay, not Ellen. I often forgot myself.

He's posted a troubling card  —  if you're a child reading this, please run away —  with provocative and disturbing comments. Theft, Murder, the downside to an unrestrained oligarchy. It's all there, in black and white and blood red.

He recommends skiing.

The drawback to his cure is that I don't ski.  I don't like moving fast or falling. I don't like broken bones, which would only make the season more confining.

The best cure is sunlight. You can get it from a lamp, which requires faith and imagination. I've read that a good spectrum lamp is so persuasive that you can shine it on the backside of your knees and still feel the cheer. I doubt I have the legs for that sort of thing. They're pale as birch trees in the snow. Even in August. I suspect my pigment reflects light.

My only remedy, when the gray mood has fallen along with the barometer, is to throw open the curtains and hope for the best. 

This morning the wind was a thundering steam train. Cold rain was the cinder.  A rotten way to start the day. But now the sky is clearing, the train's dopplered on, and the gloom is lifting from my brain. 

Make the sky blue enough and I'm drunk with good spirits. I might even try skiing. 

I know I appear to have a simple drawing style, but behind the scenes it's more elaborate than you might think. For example, I drew Spot the Frog with a fixed-width nib, but I went over every line to give it the illusion of something more flexible. With Thin Green Line I'm staying with the monoline.

I'm also trying to draw cuter. Not that Spot and Buddy were hard-edged creatures of the street. But I'm playing with the idea that wild animals with a cuddly demeanor are funny when their personalities are less than cuddly. You can't tell it from this strip, but the rabbit and porcupine are tough characters.

Thin Green Line is built on the scaffolding of two puns.

1. Thin Green Line is meant to suggest the Thin Blue Line of law enforcement between rule and unrule. The frogs and the other characters are on the front line, environmentally speaking.

2. And, yes, you knew this was coming. There's a guy named Green, and here he is, looking nothing like Karl without the mustache.

Three dailies. Featuring frogs. By the guy who drew a strip about frogs that didn't do all that well. Is he insane? In a rut? A criminal who can never abandon his crime?

All three may be true, but I have a fourth reason. Thin Green Line is a strip about the environment, the effect of humans on the natural world. Thanks to their position in the food chain, and a skin as porous as a good paper towel, frogs are in the forefront when it comes to spying and revealing environmental distress. They're the canaries in the mine shaft. The thin green line between nature and those who consider themselves above nature.

I have other animals in mind, but a strip like this needs its frogs. Even if the frogs don't want to be there.

THIN GREEN LINE

I feel more like an animal than Willy likely does.

On the chance that anyone is interested in this, I'll be posting roughs of the new strip, with this disclaimer: nothing's final, the words may change, the art will change, most of the characters don't have names yet, I think I know the premise but I expect it will become clearer after the first 60 strips or so.

And yes, against all reason, as a slap in the face of all that's creative, two of the characters are frogs.

THIN GREEN LINE

This is the Amazon product review for the new but still impending graphic novel (April 2009) by Brian Fies:

Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, the long-awaited follow-up to Mom's Cancer, is a unique graphic novel that tells the story of a young boy and his relationship with his father. Spanning the period from the 1939 New York World's Fair to the last Apollo space mission in 1975, it is told through the eyes of a boy as he grows up in an era that was optimistic and ambitious, fueled by industry, engines, electricity, rockets, and the atom bomb. An insightful look at relationships and the promise of the future, award-winning author Brian Fies presents his story in a way that only comics and graphic novels can.  Interspersed with the comic book adventures of Commander Cap Crater (created by Fies to mirror the styles of the comics and the time periods he is depicting), and mixing art and historical photographs, this groundbreaking graphic novel is a lively trip through a half century of technological evolution. It is also a perceptive look at the changing moods of our nation-and the enduring promise of the future.

Can you imagine writing something that would inspire this praise? I can easier imagine myself riding a backyard rocket to the moon. Luckily,  I don't need to imagine the words, or the rocket. Like the Future as seen from the Fifties, Brian's already made the trip and planted his flag.

I'm excited about this book. Someone should call Tom Hanks for the inevitable film. I haven't seen more than the cover, but I have a feeling the father role might be a well-tailored fit. He already has the space suit.*

*If the father imagines himself in space, or if the son imagines his father in space, or if the son imagines that his father is Commander Cap Crater. Or even if the father is never the Cap, and never appears in a space suit, just knowing that Tom Hanks has a pressure suit hanging in his closet** and could wear it to the set —  on the remote but still possible chance that the studio loses life-support — makes him the perfect choice.

**I'm just assuming.

The announcers stop jabbering.

Silence. 

"She refused the reward?"

"I would have taken it."

"I might have skimmed something out of the bag."

Incredulous, they resume playing more songs of the season. I'm guessing a few celebrated the satisfaction of giving. I can't say. I turned it off.

And now, just to show that I'm a hypocrite, years ago, on Christmas Eve, Mary and I were walking the icy streets of Providence, RI, when I found a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk. I looked around, pretended to tie a shoe lace*, and grabbed it. I felt bad for the person who lost it, and great for the person who found it. 

Ethics. As slippery as a Christmas Eve sidewalk.

*A fine bit of acting, since my boots favored buckles.

As I type in the living room, a Dickensian blaze is rushing up the throat of the chimney, filling the belly of the hearth.

I love fires. I never knew. I've lived with wood stoves before, but they're (mostly) airtight machines with little holes for air. They're meant to run with the door closed, the inferno locked out of sight. We could occasionally leave the door open, with a wire grate in place, but it's an uncomfortable feeling. Wood stoves don't want to be open. It's not in their nature. Tight and hot is the motto, heat is the mission.

For another, the stove had to be maintained at a precise level to warm the house. It's a serious job. No time for the whimsy of sprinkling chemical dust on the flames to turn them purple and green, or toasting a marshmallow, the most leisurely of the food crafts. A wood stove is a non-autonomous robot, demanding constant instruction and adjustment; otherwise it grinds to a halt like an ill-used Tin Man, cold with rust, or turns red-hot like a bucket of molten steel (though modern wood stoves are wired with circuits and tiny brains, I hear, and will tend to themselves.)

The fireplace, on the otherhand, provides warmth, not heat, if you get the difference. We have an oil furnace to handle the busy work of pumping hot water through the pipes and rooms. The fireplace is cinema, a 3-D film with a smoke machine in the back, and rumbling bass speakers with the sharp high treble for exploding sap.

And the picture quality is excellent. I'll assume it's high-def.

I'd burn wood constantly, if we had a greater supply. But we bought one cord as an afterthought, not supposing that several cords would have fit in the fireplace by the end of winter.

True, some of our furniture is wood, so the fireplace doesn't have to go dark when the cord is gone. But now that my addiction is born, next year we'll stock accordingly. 

Listen:

The rumbling roar of wood burning like the roar in your heart.

Breathe in:

The dizzy scent of destruction flying up the chimney and into the icy night, promising salvation. 

For several years we had a fake wood stove that found its glow with a light bulb, and we savored the illumination, firing up our imaginations.

If I thought I'd survive the experience, I'd toss it into the fireplace. 

If I had the nerve to take a photo of my office and show it to you, as it routinely stands (or more properly slouches), you'd see the perfect embodiment of who I am. Richard Mueller and I designed nobrowcartoons.com to reflect the feng shui of creative disorder. It's messy, distracting, and occasionally vexing. But it's where I live and work and beat entropy with a stick with each cartoon I finish.

I gave someone a pig for Christmas*, courtesy of Heifer International. I like to imagine that it's name is Wilbur. 

Helping out our fellow passengers on the planet is always a good thing, but Patrick Rothfuss has assembled his own Team Heifer, with added incentives:

1. Through December 11, he'll match every dollar you donate.

2. For every ten dollars, you'll earn a ticket in the grand lottery bowl he's stuffed with literary tantalization. Early manuscripts. Signed books. And a vast library of Subterranean Press titles. I already own several, and they're masterworks, sublime pairings of writer and illustrator. James Blaylock. Tim Powers. Joe Lansdale. And more. Here's the complete list. 

If you've ever sung Old MacDonald's Farm as a kid, and swooned with giddy delight as that parade of noisy animals got longer and longer, here's your chance to get in line with the honk/baa/quack of your choice. 

And speaking of Subterranean Press, one of its authors has a new book. Cherie Priest's new novel, Fathom, is coming out this week. Another weird and wonderful writer who won't disappoint lovers of the strange and familiar, the curly helix of dream and reality, and owner of a new and dazzling pair of glasses. It's available for pre-order, according to Amazon, but I received an email letting me know that my pre-order has evolved into an order, and it's on its way. 

*Would someone please turn that line into a holiday song? I need a melody to drown out the horrible I Want a Hippo for Christmas, or whatever it's called,  inadvertantly poured into my ear from the car radio. 

I started thinking about a new strip a few minutes after I ended Spot the Frog. I had the mistaken impression that I needed to strike while the iron was hot — though Spot the Frog, of course, was never hot, in the way of Lio and Cul De Sac. I thought I had to create a new strip with the efficiency and speed of Athena stepping fully grown from the brow of Zeus, a clown's nose tied to her face, a supply of banana peels slung over her shoulder.

I hastily drew up a few dozen samples of a strip and showed them to United Media, which politely declined the ravings of a mad man desperate to maintain the quasi-reality of being syndicated.  They requested a more thoughtful presentation.

One with a point. And specific characters. What was the strip about? Who was it about? What are the relationships?

And while I was catching my second wind, considering these things, I had a clear and sudden insight, a bolt from the blue, a straight shot from Zeus:

I didn't want to create another strip.

I was wrung out from Spot, a twisting rag in the wind of lost clients and the lack of new ones, of working on a strip that seemed largely ignored (for example, I had several people request a free copy of It's Hard to Comb With a Grass Toupee, who said they had never heard of my strip, but they loved comics. Think about that. That's how successful my strip was. People who loved comics enough to be readers of The Comics Reporter, or Mark Anderson's and Mike Lynch's blogs, had never spotted my strip after nearly five years of syndication.)

I've always needed an audience. Some artists are satisfied with creation and an audience of one. They confide to interviewers that the money is an afterthought. I'm not one of those artists. Cartooning is a business. A good job — much better than retail clerk, which appears half a dozen times under Cartoonist on my resume, if I were the sort of person to have a resume, which I'm not — but one that exists to pay my bills, and stroke my ego as a cat needs to be stroked and noticed.

So I've spent the last six months not working on the new strip idea — restocking my depleted ego, confidence, ideas. And this week I reconsidered the new strip idea and still liked it. I had some more ideas. The characters were closer to being characters, not props. I saw holes in the concept. I saw plugs for the holes.

I'm working on roughs right now. If I can come up with 60 strips that feel substantial, solid, hefty, I'll roll the dice again and see if a syndicate is interested.

I'm calling it Thin Green Line.

This is my first published cartoon. It ran in a local paper. The editor was a friend.  If this wasn't a scanned image, you'd be looking at yellowed and specked newsprint, as fragile and slight as a skin cell, a bit of dandruff I refuse to brush from my brain. I love this cast off bit of art.

Like any good cartoon, the picture speaks for itself:  I'm a lousy cartoon.

I had an early technique of omitting those things I wasn't comfortable drawing. I wasn't sure how to fit the farmer on the left into the picture, so I stopped at his chest. A seamless and perfect solution, I thought. I still use the technique — how often did you see a car in Spot the Frog? Even better, how often did you notice not seeing a car? Draw what you know is my lazy motto.

Here's what I remember about this cartoon:

I don't remember thinking, who am I kidding?  I wouldn't be surprised to find a record of my early magazine submissions with this calm notation: sent to New Yorker 8/10/83.* But that's the way of romance, when you're struck blind by love. I was 21 or so when I fell head over heels for Mort Gerberg's cartooning book. Everything I drew looked good to my eye, as if filmed through a soft focus lens. I wasn't delusional. I knew I could improve — in time I would learn to draw a farmer in the company of a decalcified cow; a hope that hasn't diminished — but it would be in the manner of a fine wine that improves with age. 

Glamor is magic. Illusion. It beckons, lures, keeps you drawing, improving. Eventually the magic wears thin and abrades and you're facing the reality of earning a career, competing with professionals, surviving rejection. But with luck your skill has sharpened to replace the prescription of your rose-colored glasses.

Love is blind for a reason.

*if it further read,  sold New Yorker 8/29/83, that would surprise me.

So, until my supply runs out, anyone who would like a free copy of It's Hard to Comb a Grass Toupee, postage paid, with my thanks, let me know.  Without readers, a cartoonist is only one hand clapping. Or drawing. Either way it's a lonely noise.

Update:  Many thanks to all who volunteered their homes for Grass Toupee. My closet is now empty of books with my name on it. I'll reply to the sundry emails and get the books in the mail, with my apologies to those who sent requests just a bit late. I clearly need to stock a bigger closet.

I sit down to the computer, literally aglow, and visit nobrowcartoons.com, where my antique cartoon engine clicks a gear and offers a two word match: FAT and BALD.

I don't click GO, on the chance that the cartoon will be a picture of me sitting at the computer.

It's Saturday morning. Let's see how long I can keep the fire going.

Wired/Geek Dad has a nice list of holiday films that don't usually appear on lists of holiday films. The Ref sounds like a good one. I tried to watch Bad Santa, but I wasn't bad enough to finish it. Or the film wasn't good enough. Or both.

One of the new perks at comics.com is the ghostly magnifying glass floating on the right of each strip. A click produces a larger image, reducing eyestrain and uncertainty.

Today's strip reveals that Spot's design isn't especially frog-like, and with the application of a sock and a marker, he validate's his name. The normal-sized image works well enough, I think. But the sock is more clearly a sock when you enlarge it. Sort of. Now that I look at it, I could have done better. But such are deadlines.

It's like sitting in your living room, content with the world, when someone knocks on the front door. The sound waves knock the blinders from your eyes and you see that the house is a squalid craft project of dirty clothes, dishes, and books.* You scramble to clean before opening the door, composing excuses in your head (we just moved in and we haven't had time to unpack, or we're moving out and we're still packing...).

But the truth can't be hid. Not with the door open, while you stand there with last week's socks in your hand, old newspapers under your arm, and empty pint containers of Ben & Jerry's here and there like buckets set out to catch rain from a leaky roof.

That's how I'm feeling about my picture book.

It's embarrassing to expose how uncertain my writing is. If I had a finished book, it would be different. I don't mind showing my worst cartoons because they're compensated by my best cartoons. The reader knows that I'll sweep the mess into shape. But there's no guarantee that I'll finish my picture book with anything more than sweeping it under the rug.

I'll leave what I've posted, to inspire anyone with the thought, I could do better than that, and keep the book's evolution private until its up on two feet and strolling onto dry land.

*Not that the books are dirty in the prurient sense. As far as I know. I haven't read them all.

Do you see a possible caption? Something about house cleaning, perhaps, or maybe a new coffee blend? Who knows? If you do, let me know. You'll earn 25% of any sale if I use it, and a 100% credit as a gagwriter. Yee-ha.

Once you start work on the dummy, it's like stepping into an alternate reality. Words that seemed perfect and essential turn to smoke. And words you'd never considered rise from the ground like the monoliths at Stonehenge.

Here's the third rewrite, with another seven or right to come, I'm guessing. Words in brackets are replaced by pictures.

SHOE PUDDLE

The sign said it was the best ice cream in the world. But I’ll never know.

[kid trips, spills ice cream]

The best ice cream in the world started to melt into a puddle.

The puddle didn’t look that special.

Until I saw a man walking toward it.

Unfortunately, he stepped over it.

Everyone did.

Only one person splashed through it.

But it wasn’t that fun.

[person was wearing boots and didn't get wet]

That’s when I noticed the shoes hurrying up and down the sidewalk.

I’d never stopped to notice them before.

Some were airy.

Some were hairy.

Some were funny.

Some were runny.

Some were skinny.

Some were finny.

Some had wheels.

Some wheels had shoes.

Some were quiet.

Some were a riot.

Some were small.

Some were tall.

And then I saw feet with no shoes at all.

[It's a dog lapping up the puddle.]

I laughed because he looked so happy.

The next shoes I saw were my Mom's.

"How was your ice cream?" she asked.

"The best in the world!"

SHOE PUDDLE

I was about to lick the greatest ice cream of my life—

when I tripped over a dog with hair in its eyes. 

I stayed on my feet. 

But my ice cream didn't.

(It doesn't have feet.)

I heard it scream when it hit the sidewalk.

(Or maybe it was me.)

I watched the greatest ice cream of my life

melt into an everyday puddle.

No one cared.

People walked around it. 

Stepped over it.

And someone splashed through it.

Suddenly I was seeing all kinds of shoes.

They were fancy.

Or  schmancy.

Airy.

Or hairy.

Curly

Or burly.

Some shoes had wheels.

Some wheels had shoes.

Others were quiet.

Some were a riot.

Others were small.

Some were tall.

And then I saw dog feet with no shoes at all.

He didn't jump

run around

or  splash through my puddle.

He licked it

He lapped it

right down to the pavement.

I laughed when he finished. He looked so happy.

The next shoes I saw were grass-stained old sneakers.

"How was your ice cream?" Mom asked.

"The greatest!" I said.

It never went went smoothly. Buddy hated to let go. 

A punchline was generally my destination when I wrote a daily. But my favorite strips were the ones that punched the heart. The characters were real for me, and real characters suffer. This is one of my favorite strips because of the last panel — the cold melancholy of saying goodbye.

Buddy's unrequited love for Marg Helgenberger, as with most things of romance, began with a joke. In this case a CSI joke, february 6, 2004

Sadly, I found this strip courtesy of the search feature at the retooled comics.com site. That's not the sad part. I typed in Marg and Helgenberger and no strips were found. That's the sad part. I was hoping for an easy way to report the number of times I turned Buddy's anguish of the heart into a punchline.

SHOE PUDDLE

I was about to lick my ice cream cone—

when I bumped into a dog

and my cone plopped on the sidewalk.

I watched the ice cream melt into a puddle.

People walked around it.

A few jumped over it.

And one guy splashed through it.

I'd never seen so many shoes.

Some shoes were fancy.

Others were schmancy.

Some shoes were airy.

One pair was hairy.

Another was curly

And one was unfurly.

Some shoes had wheels.

Some wheels had shoes.

Some shoes were quiet.

Some were a riot.

Some shoes were short.

Some shoes were tall.

And then I saw dog feet with no shoes at all.

He didn't jump

run around

or  splash through my puddle.

He licked it

He lapped it

right down to the ground.

I laughed when he finished. He looked so happy.

The next shoes I saw were my mother's sneakers.

"How was your ice cream?" she asked.

"The best!" I said.

I've tried for years to write a picture book, and I've never been satisfied. The words always felt clunky. Like stage directions, instead of a story. Here's another go at it. Feedback appreciated.

SHOE PUDDLE

I had the biggest and best ice cream cone.

But I spilled it on the sidewalk.

The ice cream melted.

People walked around the puddle.

Jumped over the puddle.

Someone with boots splashed through the puddle.

I'd never noticed so many shoes.

Some shoes were fancy.

Funny.

Airy.

Hairy.

Pointy.

Curly.

Some shoes had wheels.

Some wheels had shoes.  [a kid in a wheelchair.]

Some flew by so fast I barely saw shoes. [skateboard.]

Some shoes were quiet.

Loud.

Short.

Tall.

And then I saw dog feet with no shoes at all.

He didn't jump over my puddle.

He didn't walk around it.

He didn't splash through it.

He licked it.

Soon the ice cream was gone and he ate the cone.

I laughed because he looked so happy.

The next shoes I saw were my mother's sneakers.

"How was your ice cream?" she asked.

"The best!" I said.

==================================

By the way, unlike the artwork on my site, this story isn't available for distribution/use.

Storing important information on a sticky makes as much sense as scrawling it on scrap paper and pinning it to a bulletin board. It's convenient, and it might seem fairly secure if you work at home with a work staff of one. But pins come undone, and sometimes, when you're mindlessly rearranging widgets on your desktop. you hit the little X that causes catastrophic failure and the note collapses into itself like a yellow sun grown too large...

The sad thing about this realization is that I rarely learn from my mistakes. I should bookmark this post for the next time I need it.

If you're wondering what it's like to be syndicated — not the dreamy, wish fulfillment part, but the pedal to the metal, the pen to the paper part — listen to the very first word out of Jan Elliot in this video profile. Jan is the charming, wise, and Corgi-loving creator of Stone Soup.

I'm prone to a wee bit of hyperbole and maybe I only think that raking the whole thing would kill me. But that's my best guess. A breathing mammal isn't all that different from a dead leaf, if the breathing expires with a final grim sweep of the rake; suddenly a scythe, cutting my life out from under me.

Which is why we have some guys coming by today in a parade of leaf blowers and mulchers and industrial rakes, while I stay indoors and rake punchlines around my desk.

I've read lackluster announcements for the new Pixar movie, Up, complaining that the premise is too thin, that the story isn't spelled out, that it's a cinematic balloon with unfulfilled promise.

But I've just watched a short trailer, and the movie looks great. I laughed a few times and smiled often. If this were a book, I'd read it, based on the merest of book flap copy: an old man takes a journey without leaving his house, thanks to a gazillion helium balloons. It's like a future episode of Mythbusters; Adam and Jamie, cranky and tired of paying property tax.

The only thing I know for sure without actually knowing is that John Ratzenberger will likely have  a speaking part. Perhaps a passing albatross.

This cartoon only looks like a rorschach. There's a caption. I know there's a caption. I sold this cartoon at the start of the year. But the only copy I have is the art, minus the caption, and I can't remember what it is. I remember some of it. I'm fairly sure that "—she'd swoon for his impact crater demonstration," is how it ends.

Weird how the brain works, and doesn't work.

I have two ways of writing a greeting card. Three, if you count plagiarism.

The first is the retrofitting of a magazine cartoon to fit a greeting. The challenge is to think of a greeting that suits the joke, without feeling like a straightjacket; i.e., forced.

The second way is to start with the sentiment, think of a greeting, and then illustrate it.

[I'm not sure about the greeting. I should post this as a Rorschach cartoon.]

And as I mentioned, the third method is to employ the sincerest form of flattery. Keep an eye out for my new line of Mark Anderson Heath cards.

So what do you see for a caption? When I drew this long ago, I remember it had something to do with the cow that jumps over the moon. Maybe it still does. The bull looks uncomfortable. Maybe he's getting paternity test results.

If I use your idea, you'll earn 25% on any sales, 50% of the credit, and 100% satisfaction in adding another bovine cartoon to the world's supply of post-Far Side cartoons.

Profiles in Insignificance. It looks simultaneously hilarious and sobering. Scott Thill shares a few revelations:

During its first 176 years, the office was vacant for a total of 37 years, thanks to crappy health and other mortally wounding issues. One veep who actually survived to serve was Aaron Burr, but he once hacked a mutinous soldier's arm clean off and remains the only sitting vice president to be charged with murder, as well as the only former vice president to be charged with treason.

Oddly enough, I can think of another vice president who came close with the first, and may still earn the second.

via The Underwire.

It might seem like bad news for the cartoonist who drew Spot the Frog, having the strip blown about like a dandelion weed, taking root where it may, free of charge. But the idea is that word-of-mouth is the most valuable coin, and with luck a more pervasive Spot the Frog will bring attention and income to the guy who drew it, and the syndicate who sold it and continues to offer it.

If only one vote is counted and it's mine. Or if more votes are counted and it's theirs.

My vote may seem a small thing, but on occasion it's the small thing that makes the big news. I plan to incorporate myself as a township before the next election.  Heath's Location.  Pop. 2. We won't be the earliest vote in the nation, but we'll have the shortest line.

If you're feeling apprehensive about tomorrow, take Poor Richard Thompson's advice and pack a lunch. Possibly an overnight bag.

That is, Adam Koford does. And maybe Mark Heath. I'd probably do well to track Ape Lad's footprints. They're everywhere, like Billy's tracks in a Family Circus panel. Flicker. Twitter. YouTube. And for all I know he has stuff in my database.

What do you see when you look at this cartoon?

Or what do you not see?

I find these on occasion — cartoons without a caption. I clearly had a caption in mind when I drew it, since it's finished art, but after drawing and scanning the cartoon, adding a caption in Photoshop, then months later buying a new computer and failing to preserve the finished cartoon file because I'm now focused on drawing Spot the Frog, and five years elapse, the strip ends, I resume single-panel cartooning by hunting through my piles of original art, scanner at the ready, and discover that several lack captions, and it's been so long that I've forgotten what the caption might have been.

I've stared at this Rorschach cartoon for a month now and aside from a few repressed memories that wouldn't interest you, I don't see the caption.

So I'm trying something new and lazy. I'll be posting other Rorschach cartoons. Take a look. Mull them over. If a good caption strikes, let me know. If I use it, and sell it, you'll earn 25% of the sale price. And you'll be free to quit your job and become the gag writer you've always wanted to be.

The cord of wood will be spilled onto our property this afternoon. There is a zillion-to-one chance that every chunk will spontaneously tumble into a perfect stack. It's an infinite universe, after all. In the fullness of Time, anything can happen — indeed, must happen — at least once.

My fingers are crossed.

Candy corn is like the pain of a pulled splinter. As the months go by, you forget the taste, but retain a fondness for the season, the relief of voiding the foreign body.

Some time today, I'll have to eat a piece of candy corn, just to get it out of my system.

In the first year of Spot the Frog I had spot inadvertantly eat the head of a snowman. He spent his remaining years convinced that the Headless Snowman was after him, to replace its missing head with Spot's.

It came to its first culmination on Halloween, 2004.

Apparently not.

But I still like the strip. And I still like Karl the carrot guy; which is why he bears a strong resemblance to another Karl.

Pumpedkin

Picking a pumpkin is easy. A Christmas tree; that's another, sadder story. One year I was frozen with indecision at a Tree Farm, standing in the thick of the trees, as mobile as a pine, having spent the last few hours like an art lover in a museum, and then like an art lover in a burning museum, wondering which painting to save. After awhile the sun set, and with Mary's gentle prodding, I finally chose a silhouette to take home.

I've read many opinions on the matter of zombie popularity. But I think it comes down to the ironic fun of saying braiiiiinsss with a slack-jawed expression — the idea that people with idiot expressions hunger for brains, the very seat of our soul and awareness, as something to eat, rather than cultivate.

Kindertrauma, the site that invites you to reveal your darkest childhood fear — even if it's an old commercial for nasal spray — recommends a pair of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes for this Halloween.

The two: Halloween (available at Hulu), and Fear Itself (available by DVD, fourth season.) These are great episodes.  Like stories told with buffalo parts, no part of the animal is wasted. Every joke reveals character, propels plot, and would probably keep you warm in the winter if skinned and tanned.

As a bonus, I'll recommend Tabula Rasa (season six) as another good episode for Halloween. It doesn't take place on the holiday, but it's about identity, expectations, and the costumes we wear.

And as an additional bonus, Buffy Vs. Dracula (season five.) Dracula might seem to have the advantage, but don't worry; Buffy's seen all the movies.

Carolita Johnson at Newyorkette has alarming and utterly unsurprising news about voter assistance.

The first thing I did was a Google search of “voting in New York”. I came upon this phone number, listed on a few sites: 1.886.VOTE.NYC
This is the WRONG number. The correct number begins with (866), not (886). See what happens if you dial the (886) number. Imagine what you’d do if you were a less spirited person facing that crazy loop: give up, or perhaps just listen to the conspiracy theories that have begun swirling in your head?

I hear the swirling.

If I wanted to make blog-writing easy, I'd only post links to other artist's sites, and let their art do the talking. And being the lazy guy that I am, I have to wonder why I'm not doing that.

Luckily, I'm not so lazy that I can't make the effort to be lazier, so here's a link to Bryan Ballinger, whose fondness for creatures with lop-sided eyes is akin to my own.

The Headless Snowman was a strip regular that never actually appeared. But there were portents.

Spot explores the dark — or at least the grumpy — side.

Paginated search results.

That's right, search results broken down into pages.

No other online cartoon database offers this amazing feature. *

Coming later!: clickable links.

*edited from the full text: "No other online cartoon database offers this amazing feature on Mark Heath's website, only on theirs."

This isn't a great picture of Willy. To begin with, he's not actually blue sable. And he's only a so-so  cornet player. But he's good company, and that's where he sits when I work.

I haven't heard much about fuzzy logic lately, but maybe I'm not listening at the right windows. When I drew this cartoon years ago, the application of fuzzy logic to artificial intelligence — in a human vein — was urgent news.

And realized that I'd forgotten to title that post as well. (the title provides the link I follow if I need to edit a post — without the title, no link; the post becomes as touchable as a head lopped off and bounced out of reach.) Which is why I'm writing this, making sure that I've given it a title; even though late at night my brain is indistinguishable from a zombie's brain, with its single-minded focus, on  sleep, not dinner, and there's always the chance I'll forgot the title again.

I'll check back in the morning, head in hand.

I'll say this:

(and look away if you haven't seen the film; here comes a plot point)

It's hard to believe that men would turn so feral after a few weeks without sex. Unless they were animals to begin with. I liked the idea that humans and zombies aren't all that different — and that certain humans were worse, more dangerous, less forgiveable — but this point would have been more plausible if the movie had been called 28 Months Later.

I had a storyline never drawn with Buddy either breaking or losing his glasses. He plans to return to the dumpster for another pair, but Lumpy points out that the odds of finding the precise prescription and frame size twice are astronomical, and he might as well get used to living in a blur. I'd then go on for a week or so, exploring the benefits of not seeing clearly. But amazingly, Buddy finds the long-shot glasses, in the same way that Spot often found his rent money behind the couch cushions.

I like this pun because it almost, sorta kinda, makes sense.

I have another version of this cartoon, which also makes a weird sort of sense, with the underwear theorizing on a big bang which follows certain meals, but this is the high brow version.

Meg and Bull were the only characters in the strip to enjoy a connubial relationship. With a mouth like Bull's, discussing their strategies for romance was inevitable. How did they kiss, for example? In one strip Meg reveals a fondness for spelunking. In another it's revealed that Bull's mouth cinches into a kissable pucker when he thinks about lemons.

Bull's mouth wasn't all about amore, of course.

• I wasn't planning to watch the debate last night — I prefer to read the reactions of live bloggers — but after hearing several references to McCain's demeanor, I switched over to Hulu and watched a bit. I don't mean I listened. I watched. The sound often quits on the laptop when I'm broadcasting music with airport express. So I watched their faces.  The unflappable Obama. The flapping McCain. 
• I've been listening to an audiobook of Dracula. I should look up the reader's name. He's excellent, save for his peculiar rendition of American (he's British.) Some parts of the book are surprisingly soppy, reminding me that it's a Victorian book.
• December 4, a new James Blaylock book will be available. A new James Blaylock book. I could repeat that sentence a hundred times and not grow tired of it. It's a one-line book trailer running in my head. I feel the same way when I hear that James Morrow or Tim Powers or Stephen King or Dan Simmons or Joe Lansdale or a dozen more have a new book in the stores. They all have written classics, and you never know if the next book will be another.
• If you look at the Google Earth view of our house, a small open patch in a dense pack of trees, like a spot of mange on an otherwise healthy dog, you can imagine the sense of pestilence inspired by the millions of fallen leaves. I like dead leaves. Their smell of mulch, their stepped-on crackle, their essential cameos in the movie Halloween (the fall leaves were trucked in for the filming and recycled through the movie.) But it's like a snow storm out there. A  shroud of leaves.
• I watched John Carpenter's The Thing last night. Not bad. I think my favorite moment was when the alien's disembodied head grew insect legs and tried to sneak away. The ending didn't make sense for me. It's decided that the monster wants to freeze and hibernate until its rescued. So the humans decide to burn down their camp, which sounds like a Plan B to the alien's Plan A. It would have been wiser to preserve the camp, stay warm, and continue the hunt. As it is, the movie ends with two characters confronting each other, wondering who will become ice-solid first, while the alien — and remember, it only needs a speck of itself to survive — is likely holed up in the cold, waiting for a sequel.
• I kept waiting for last night's debaters to address Joe the Cartoonist. I'm pretty sure I'm making less than $250,000.

This daily was a tip of the hat to a well-remembered Bugs Bunny short, where he and Elmer Fudd exchanged many hats and personalities.

When Spot the Frog launched in January, 2004, I was anxious. How could a cold-blooded creature survive the winter? Spot was famed for its scientific accuracy, so I turned to the sock drawer and found a solution.*

I'm moderately obsessed with hats. I have a large head — the result of admiring Charlie Brown all these years, according to Patricia Storms — and hats come into my life like blind dates. I once had a hat that fit perfectly, but it was lost on a camping trip. I like to imagine that it's lining a bald eagle's nest, for the irony.

The only time I don't feel head-naked is the winter, when I'm free to stretch a wool hat down to my ears. It looks like a body cast of yarn, but it keeps me warm.

I never realized this before, but Buddy's tormented affair with his winter hat feels almost biographical.

*I don't remember where Lumpy got his five pint hat. I'm sure it was scientific.

I drew this about ten years ago, I think. And because it's a pun, you've probably seen the punchline a few times. Or if you haven't, you feel like you have. Deja Cartoon.

Birds aren't frozen in place like a magic trick that you know isn't real. There's no deception. These birds are living in the air as we live on the ground. They eat and preen, seduce and fight, without making that fatal Wile E. Coyote mistake of looking down and realizing that what they do is impossible.

Rick's pictures make me think that birds don't give a lot of thought to the empty spaces they fill. They're too busy with life. Living between branches and fence posts and power lines, speed walking on air,  taking care of business.

And now Rick has a new book.

I've only seen his work through the compromised screen of my computer. In print the images must rise from the page and beat paper wings.

Bonus trivia that may not be true but I think it is, or should be:

In the early days of computing, the phrase "Bugs in the computer" was literal. Errant ants or cockroaches exploring the cavities of large machines.

Dr. Mueller's cartoon engine is spinning its gears and singing the song of steampunk. A press of the button, a clack of the cogs, and it sorts my cartoons with a color-based logic system. I'm not sure I fully understand its design — my grasp of logic is sufficient to outwit  Star Trek computers, and the occasional Slylock Fox riddle — but Dr. Mueller assures me that the green and orange lights have a method to their madness. He invites you to puzzle it out.

I'm also adding Spot material to the general database, heralded by the newly-mobile toy frog. I'll try to post the strips in some sensible order, but thanks to the loopy storylines,  Dr. Mueller's engine may strip a few gears.

If the machine errs on occasion, blame Spot.

The esteemed Dr. Mueller has been burning the gaslight, prying the final kinks out of his cartoon engine.

The original invention, patented in 1863 by his great relative Dr. Richard Mueller, was a steampunkish marvel of gears and wheels-within-wheels.  Few remember it now, but his great-great grandson has recreated the technology with modern tools, something he calls electric-steampunk. 

I'll share more of the details when V 2.0 is uploaded. In the meanwhile please continue to enjoy the fine distraction of V 1.0.

Here's a cartoon I like, but I've gone back and forth between captions: the one you see above, and "You don't know about shrinkage?" I wrote this cartoon when a particular Seinfeld episode was popular. Now I'm not sure who remembers Costanza's line. That's why I changed it.

I'd consider this cartoon another favorite because it features one of my weaknesses. Tiny people. I love tiny characters. Not because of Spot. The other way around. Tiny seems funny to me.  My favorite Charles Addams cartoons are the ones that feature little characters, often with wind-up keys in their backs.

Forbidden Love, the tale of a man, and the elephant he loves.

If you're a movie producer, give me a call.

Don't look up. Look down. And keep an eye on the toy frog.

You might suppose that a finished cartoon is one I liked. And you'd be right,  on a nuts-and-bolts level. If I can't imagine a market for a cartoon, why draw it? It's not an especially artistic viewpoint, it does nothing to further my reputation as an artist willing to starve for his vision.  But it's the compromise I make, balancing my career between clerking in retail and living in an alley.

Years ago I drew cartoons about tole painting for a craft magazine. They had the right slant, and deserved a finish for the chance of a sale. They weren't bad cartoons. All the parts fit. But if I ever compile my favorite cartoons in a book, you're not likely to find "—the Bell Toles for Thee."

Despite the limitations, I can still write cartoons that feel large and unconfined to my mind. I wrote the above cartoon for magazines like Cosmopolitan and New Woman (which tells you how old the cartoon is.) It never sold, but it's definitely a favorite. I love the look on the husband as he flashes on his probable future.

With Nobrow Cartoons, however, I'm trying something different (bowing in the general direction of Mark Anderson, who gave me the idea). Instead of writing cartoons aimed at certain markets, and none other, I'm writing for myself. Many of the cartoons will still suit a market — an office cartoon is a business cartoon by default, and sometimes you need a desk to make your joke — but some of them won't, save for the market of Mark Heath.

Thanks to the internet, the Mark Heath market isn't as limited as it was when I began cartooning in the 80's. The internet is a roomy place with a seemingly infinite audience. No matter how obscure my reference, or rare my topic, I'm not that unique: someone will like it.

To paraphrase Mr. Rogers, we're all unique on the web.

Update: I'm still enjoying the vision of an internet populated with Mark Heath dopplegangers, every one laughing at the same things, a haunting Mitch Miller chorus of guffaws, echoing between the stars, the chortle of the gods. A thousand Mark Heaths buying Mark Heath cartoons ad infinitum until a threshold is crossed and we all implode into a singularity, a black hole where no laughter — not even a titter — can escape the event horizon.

I stopped at page 15, weary from swimming upstream, leaping through waterfalls.

I'm hoping I'll gain my second wind after the site's been online awhile. I'll let you know when I'm further upstream.

During the screaming fall to the ground, I belatedly wondered if people who bookmarked nobrowcartoons.com/test are barred from the blog. If you're still able to read this, please let me know. Mark Anderson noted that he wasn't able to comment at the now-defunct test site.

If you see a zebra, you'll know you're at my new location. If not, but you're still reading this, please go to http://www.nobrowcartoons.com

Many thanks. And tweet.

Update: Consistency is the hobgoblin of little blogs, which is why the comments don't work here on the new site. But a few whacks of the hammer should have it fixed some time today.

Yet another reminder of time's unstoppable, bulbous crawl.

I saw that The Blob was available at Hulu. That's nice, I thought. I wouldn't mind watching an old movie.

But Steve McQueen isn't in the picture. It's a Blob remake.

I read some of the Hulu comments. "Gotta love those old 80's movies," one wrote.

Now I'm feeling old and a little Blob-like. A remake of the original twenty-year-old Mark Heath.  Not as young, but with better effects.

• Mary said I was talking in my sleep last night. "Listen. Hear it? Put your ear up to the cartoon engine. Hear it?" And then I seemed to realize that Mary wasn't understanding me.  "Forget it. I didn't know you were asleep." Whereupon I rolled over and continued my dream of cartoon engines, cabbages and sealing wax.
• And speaking of cabbage: Yesterday we discovered a huge fungus growing on our lawn. It looks like a brainy cabbage that could serve one hundred. Mary speaks of it now with the haunted look of a Lovecraft character. I've been told to remove it before it gets in the house.
• Nobrowcartoons.com may launch in its relative entirety this week. You'll notice when the toy frog on the page suddenly has company.
• The ten minutes is nearly up, just enough time to explain that I had ten minutes to write because I've ruled that my computer goes offline for an hour at a time, starting at nine. I downloaded a device on the mac that disconnects the internet for the time you set. It keeps me from checking email and the web and frees me to focus on--
• time's up.

And the first one arrived yesterday at 2:30 in the afternoon.

I don't like rejection, but it feels right.

This is my favorite, based on the cover. It's red and green with a timeless tree design -- the sort of thing you'd happily discover every year when cracking the seal on your box of holiday decorations. He also offers books dedicated to cat, dog, and tech cartoons. Not to mention his wry collection of business cartoons, with an irresistable title.

There's a rumor -- possibly unsubstantiated since I just made it up -- that if you rub Anderson's tummy you'll get a special deal, or good luck. I can't remember which. Either way you can't lose.

*Actually, this is an example of a third variety: cartoonsists who go out, travel a certain distance, then go back in.

And just now the sun broke out, taking me with it. Free at last.

I don't like to brag.  It's hard to pull off with a straight face, or a sound conscience. But just this once, I can state with certainty and full braggadocio: my nobrowcartoons.com database has more pointillism cartoons than any other cartoonist with an online database. Anderson. Glasbergan. Goff.

How confident am I? So confident that I haven't checked their sites to see if I'm right.

But if I'm wrong, they know where to find me.

I have three.

Like this one. I'm wondering if the joke's clear. That it's a young Ansel Adams under the camera's dark cloth. Would it work better if it read, Ansel Adams and Gretel?

Opinions welcome.

Now I feel like I'm at a party, hiding in the corner, wishing for a large potted plant to provide ground cover. In case I'm spotted.

Other social news: I met with the expert on the cartoon engine this weekend. I didn't learn much. He was simultaneously expansive and secretive, jotting notes in a dark notebook between sips of his coffee. "I'll have something to show you next week," he said, looking at me from beneath feathered eyebrows that reminded me of Poe's raven. "Something astounding. Perhaps amazing." He leaned closer. "Definitely analog."

The UPS van just pulled into the driveway. Another concession to sociality. I'd better get the door.

If you're a cartoonist, you can guess what this is: an idea generator. Three randomly generated words to inspire a cartoon.

But I'm certain you've never seen one like this. It was sold in the late 1800's as a device for the home. I'm not sure if it was steam-powered or wound like a clock. It might have fit a pocket, or filled a small room, or been available in both sizes. (I've only seen grainy black and white ads; no mention of scale.) I don't know how many sold before the company went bankrupt. All I know is that it was called Dr. Mueller's Cartoon Engine, that it made fresh cartoons affordable for those who couldn't afford magazines, and that I commisioned the great-great grandson of Dr. Mueller to build me one. You'll see it in action when I launch nobrow cartoons.

The history of this marvel is my obsession, and I'm not alone. This afternoon I'm meeting with the foremost historian of panoptic humor machines. He tells me he's unraveled its tangled origin, and that it involves the Catholic Church, Freemasons, and Tom Hanks. 

Or maybe I misheard him. Either way I'll report back.

I know very little about muskrat love, beyond the need for  synthesizer accompaniment. But I'm now an expert on the water shrew variety. Thanks to Dark Roasted Blend.

[the film maker mistakenly attributes the turbine's motion to wind, though it's clearly propelled by the lizard on top.]

Here's a cartoon I drew many years ago. I've never sold it. I think it's funny, but it always comes back, unpublished.

And right now, looking at, I know why.

The King should be naked. It's not enough that his clothes are invisible.

I'm not saying the cartoon will sell without a doubt. But I'd say it's edged closer to crossing that threshold.

When in doubt, naked is always better.

Today my neck has grown thick in the manner of tree trunks, and the towel, if I could find it,  is probably the size of a wash cloth.

But if you've wondered if all cartoonists suffer this fate, rest assured. A few of us still have our secret identities.

*Wearing a costume is the first step toward becoming a cartoonist. Both require you to disappear into a guise, while the real you is anonymous. No one knows who Superman is, and very few people know the identities behind the latest cartoon in Reader's Digest or Forbes.

One of the problems I'm having -- that eludes the tool box of Mr. Mueller -- is my discomfort with the word launch.

Rockets launch. Campaigns launch. Big, shiny, crowd-pleasing things launch.

My site is a host of cartoons and gee-whizzery.  It feels like a tiny stage with wind-up toys, clever constructs of wood,  diversions and play things from an earlier age. It's not so much a launch as a curtain being lifted, an ON switch being thrown.

I have as much ego as any artist, but it's not a comfortable fit on my sleeve, or any other part of my wardrobe. Putting on a new site is like dressing up, calling attention to myself.

There's a reason why I'm a cartoonist, a generally anonymous supplier of magazine-style cartoons. I like being unnoticed. Not my work. I want that to be seen, appreciated, complimented, purchased. But I'm happy to stay in the background, dressed completely in black like those puppeteers on a dark stage, dancing around with rods and strings, bringing all attention to the work, not themselves.

My solution is to wear a pitch-black body suit with a hood, standing by the wall switch, finger poised to bring things to light.

So let me rephrase:  the ON switch is getting closer,  and I'm feeling naked in my full-body leotard. I'll be glad when the switch is thrown and I can dash off-stage and back to the shadows, writing my blog posts in the glow of a pen light.

I love Ernesto, the supremely confident and possibly imaginary acquaintance of Petey.  That's one of the things that makes Cul De Sac a great strip. From the Uh-Oh Baby to the put-upon Hamster, every character is more than a facade, a hook for a punchline.

Any character could fill a book. And on occasion it's a group effort.

...Am I really boldly going? Or just boldly running away — from the memory — of Uncle Frank? Every time. I beam down. To a planet. I hope that the pattern buffer. Filters out all the memories of Uncle Frank — reassembling me on the planet's surface — with my demons left behind. If only...

Pretty funny. I wouldn't be surprised if filtering out bad memories was in the transporter specs. Those machines are great multi-taskers.

It's felt a bit like a pregnancy, the gestation of nobrowcartoons. I've suffered mornings of upset, evenings of unease, and the insatiable desire for ice cream; my typical behavior, but this time inspired by my impending site.

If you've given birth, you may be thinking, "Ha. Once again a man -- who can not possibly know what it feels like to give birth -- misappropriates the metaphor." And you would be right. Doubly so, because I'm definitely the father in this relationship, while Richard Mueller, the designer, is the maternal half. He's the one carrying the site to term, not me. He's the one suffering the cramps and mind-bloating of writing code and keeping the site healthy while it grows. I stand off to the side, pacing, kibitzing, spilling ice cream.

But the contractions are close, and I have a feeling that the site will be crowning any day now. It won't be finished growing -- Richard refers to Phase II modifications with the passion of someone who's cracked the human genome and is ready to improve it -- but it's lungs will breathe electronic ether and let out a squall the search engines can hear.

I won't pass out cigars, but for the first five people to be on hand in the comments section on its birthday, I'll mail out a signed copy of the latest Spot the Frog book. If you still have the need to curl the book tight and set it afire on the furthest end, you have my blessing.

Sometimes a series began with a sight gag. Pun intended.

If you're reading Spot the Frog at comics.com -- and thank you if you are -- you'll notice that the strip appears to take place in Australia, where summer is winter. It actually takes place in a generic New England. But the calendar has been adjusted for RST, Reprint Strip Time. Spot ended in July, and after a respecful mourning, began again the next day.

Happy Groundhog's Day.

I'd explain it, but you know the Cartoonist's Rule: never explain. We're mysterious like that.

Every once in awhile I'll draw a caricature. It generally relies heavily on my identifying the subject in the punchline.

James Randi is a famed skeptic/investigator of all things paranormal. As another famous skeptic once said, Extraordinary claims require  extraordinary proof. If you can read minds, see the future, et al., it's not enough to tell your best friend, or members of the WCRMSFS (We Can Read Minds and See the Future Society.) You need to win over the skeptic, in the same way that a sunset persuades disbelievers of night. You need to show your ability to anyone who makes the request -- say a magician with a sharp eye and mind -- under conditions that don't allow for misdirection, expectation, and spooky music.

Randi is willing to make it worth your while with his long-standing Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, to prove your mettle with bending spoons, speaking to the dead, whatever's most convenient for you.

The prize has been around since the mid-sixties.  Sadly, my only supernatural talent is to distrust the supernatural. If there's a prize for that, Randi's already won it.

My computer is haunted this morning. A ghost looms behind the glass face of my iMac. It's shaped like that protoplasmic alien I used to see on an old Saturday morning cartoon called The Herculoids. The name escapes me. Was it Bleep? And luckily the spectre is shrinking...very...slowly...but will it expire before it seeps into electronics and takes the computer with it?

The haunt is fog on the underside of the glass. It's mentioned many times when I google iMac and condensation. Apple will take it into their shop and fix it, but I suspect the fix is pulling out the glass and giving it a swipe.

We had a swampy stretch of weather in the summer that didn't produce this inconvenience. But it was in the nineties then, and I had my office fans spinning without a break. We're at the tail-end of a humid weekend, with milder temperatures, and the office fan was turned off at night. That might be the problem. Perhaps the water of the undead will lose its animation and return to the air.

[the above photo, by the way, isn't my computer. That one suggests a peak in the Rockies. Mine is soft and curvy and almost loveable; the Casper of screen ghosts.]

Update: The ghost has left the building.

I feel exhausted just looking at this cartoon with it's thousand lines. Even more tiring to my memory: I drew it with a dip pen. I've become a slacker in my old age.

I watched the first episode of Fringe and didn't care for it. I felt like I was seeing every strut and beam of a house, instead of a home. Plot point, plot point, setup, plot point. Surprise (that didn't feel like a surprise because reanimation was mentioned earlier in the show.) The actors are fine, but the stereotypes are more mono than stereo. One of the problems of watching the work of an established writer is that you look for certain things. If you're a fan of Alias, you'll feel right at home. Or at house.

[I'm pretty sure I read that Fringe wasn't meant to be an X-files knockoff. So why does this hand appear in the show's opening titles? Isn't there a similar hand at the start of the X-files? Even the litany of subjects to be explored by the series is X-filish.]

[I also didn't care for the real-world fonts. I don't mind being told that I'm looking at Boston, but a 3-D model of the word BOSTON looming like a park sculpture distracted me, brought me out of the story. I tried to ignore them, but the camera wouldn't let me. Don't look at the word, I told myself. Just look away. But that's hard to do when the camera lingers on the logo, zooms in on the logo and threads the needle of the giant O in BOSTON, passing through to the other side.

Later on they had an overhead shot of a place-name logo, floating over the city like a mothership. The next shot was aimed at the sky, shooting past a corner of the logo, because it was still there, it didn't go away. It was as real as the buildings. I kept wondering why the helicopters flying by didn't swing around to investigate what was clearly an alien craft disguised as a billboard.]

Yesterday I dodged the bullet. I had WRITE IDEAS scheduled on my calendar, but I had a chance to work on my website, adding pages and copy, so I left the cap on my pen, the pen in my holster.

Today, I won't be so lucky.

Putting the nib to the paper is where the rubber meets the road. It's where ideas gain traction or skid off the pavement.

It's actually my favorite part of cartooning. I stretch out on the couch, put on some music, and fall asleep. Inbetween naps I write down ideas. It's an agreeable way to pass a morning.

But it's been a long time since I wrote anything, aside from an emailing  brainstorm with my cartoon compatriot Benita Epstein. A brainstorm is a collaborative back-and-forth, offering ideas that inspire other ideas, a game of literary ping-pong until the emails are too tangled to easily read and little plastic balls are bouncing like punchlines delivered by a moose.

Writing ideas on my own, however, willing myself into that dream space between nothing and something, is simultaneously enticing and forboding. Enticing because it's a pleasure; even better if I have snacks on hand. Forboding because I have this imp in my brain that likes to remind me that I should be working. And working should be hard, a run along a precipice, a glance out the airplane window when the lightning flashes and you see the gremlin from that Twilight Zone episode tearing off the engine.

If you're on a couch at the time, it's a nightmare at 2 feet. I'd better spread some pillows.

You know that feeling you get when someone directs your attention to a blot of some distant lunch on your chin? Thanks to the keen eye of Rick Lieder, I've just discovered that the contact link on my old blog led to an even older email address, no longer functioning. And the email address at spotthefrog.net was also misspelled, corrupted, defunct.

I have a third email address at mark@markheath.com. It works, but I rarely visit markheath.com. I spent a few hours last night clicking through the various Spot the Frog emails, months delayed.

If I were smarter, I could pass this off as the misstep of an absent-minded genius. But that explanation would only be half right.

Yesterday's calendar was true to itself. I accomplished everything it suggested. Despite the heavy rain beyond the window, it was sunny in my office.

Today, however, the weather is a weird unscheduled eclipse, and the calendar's been thrown in the dark. Richard the Web Guy has given me the means to construct web pages for nobrowcartoons.com, and I'm having at it.

This is odd, and typical, if something odd can be typical. In a previous post I inserted an image, a thumbnail, that led to a full-size pop-up when clicked. I didn't do it in my sleep. I didn't do it with instruction. I just did it. But for some reason my mind is blank, and I can't fathom the method for turning this image into something larger. My apologies.

On the other hand, if you ever read Spot the Frog in your local paper, this should seem familiar.

Update: some wee progress. Clicking on the image opens up a new window with the larger image. Yee-ha. But what I'm aiming for is a window that's precisely the same size as the image. But for the moment I'm glad I got the window open.

At the close of my first calendar-using day, chaos theory was well represented. I checked into the online database thing, decided to sign up, but discovered a problem with my bank account, which required an hour or so of being on the phone, and then rejiggering paypal, and then having to wait a few days before I could use it. I did find a few markets. And then I was told that my shopping cart for nobrowcartoons.com was coming together, so I spent a few hours uploading more cartoons to the gallery. When the day closed, I had the feeling that I was in the ballpark, with a series of foul balls, and a trip to first base.

Today, according to the desktop calendar, is September 9, Tuesday, so we'll see how I do with getting batches together. If I stay in the park, maybe I'll hit a few singles or get a walk.*

*I'm not a sports fan, but I love metaphors.

Behold. Your mother was right. A single-panel cartoon brought to life, courtesy of Nataliya Peregudova. I grabbed this picture from an issue of Drexter magazine.

Update: There's an awkward quality to my watermelon cartoon. The doctor is holding a clipboard. It seems extraneous. It's making you restless. Why is it there? you're wondering. Later, in bed, you're tossing and turning, mumbling in your sleep. But in the morning, this morning, you return to the blog and read the answer. I drew a clipboard because the first caption read, "Your tests are back. Stop swallowing the seeds."

Sometimes I'll draw a cartoon with one idea in mind, and then change it, and then change it again, until I feel like I've been blindfolded and spun and left staggering in the dark.

This one started with this caption/title: Ned discoveres the difference between Tubing and Tiring. Then I changed it to what you see. And then I wondered if I should add a runner's number and a trimmer build to the character and call it: Ironman Tubing.

It's a rare event when I write a cartoon that goes smoothly, without change, from idea to finish.

Sadly, this is me. I'd sign up in a second. I'm a hypnotized chicken when it comes to book clubs.

Today's a big day.

I'm using a calendar.

You'd be amazed, if you didn't know me, how little I use a calendar. I'm lucky if I know the date. And I'm doubly-lucky if I plan my day with any accuracy. I think I have a touch of ADD. I'm easily distracted, and the only way I get things done is to focus like a macro lens where flies have hair and smooth glass has bumps. This gets the job done when I'm focused on the right thing. But it's easy to crank in my focus on the wrong thing. It's not intentional. I never notice until a few hours have gone by and I'm suddenly running behind schedule. If I had one to begin with. For example, I might start my day by updating the blog. And updating the blog. And updating the blog. Until I've added ten entries and it's noon.

So this is the week. The day. This Monday -- and I know it's Monday, September 8, because I'm looking at my Google calendar -- I began anew.

Maybe. We'll see how it goes.

But here's what I've done to start. I've set up Google calendar with certain designations for each Day. Monday is FIND MARKETS. Tuesday is SUBMIT BATCHES. Wednesday is WRITE/DRAW.

Beneath each category I have suggestions. For example, under FIND MARKETS I wrote, check out online database with names and addresses of magazines. Under Tuesday, I wrote, Discover, Wired, BBC, Woman's World, Popular Science.

On each day, of course, I'll veer a bit. But these are my targets. I'll let you know if I hit any.

[Another introduction of the calendar into my life. Richard Mueller, aka 3232 Design, installed an updating desk calendar on my home page. It's there for three reasons: one, it offers a blog teaser, a lure to the blog proper; two, it gives the home page a sense of daily change; and three, for one generally clueless cartoonist, it provides the date.]

Maybe you don't believe in reincarnation.

Maybe you don't believe that being dead beforehand isn't necessary.*

And maybe you don't believe that Jerry Lewis -- even though he recently appeared on his annual telethon -- has been reincarnated as a talking goat.

But you will. via Weird Universe.

UPDATE:

For those of you with refined sensibilities, you should know that in the course of the video, a certain attribute common to mail goats is commented upon. Having visited an agricultural fair recently, I can confirm that a goat's scrotum is a hefty burden. Picture a very successful prospector, and the sack of gold hung from his belt.

*Mary doesn't think this sentence is clear. It does have the feeling of a double negative. So let me rephrase: you don't need to be dead to be reincarnated.

I know what you're thinking. You can't take your eyes off the toy frog. It's like the very still guy in a Martial Arts movie. You know he'll prove a powerhouse in some way. But how? And when?

If you're a Spot the Frog reader, several ideas might come to mind. In the past Spot has practiced the martial art of Origami. He's fought headless snowmen with a garden hose. He's battled Giant Mud Men in the manner of the A-team, converting a boot into a tank.

But my favorite defense is the one he first used. The Puffer Fish defense. It appeared in my original submission to the syndicate. And I liked it so much I used it repeatedly, though not for its intended purpose. I liked seeing my frogs fully inflated at 32 psi. Humor-wise, they got better mileage.

I know how Bat-Van feels. My ears are still intact, but I cut off my previous blog with the same abruptness. It's sitting abandoned on the floor, looking forlorn. Should I take it back? Can I take it back? Is there a way to import the posts from the old blog to this one, reforming a whole? Or am I destined to contemplate the detritus of rash acts?

Here's another variation on the copyright theme. The second half of the line is smaller and more compressed. At the moment it doesn't look too distracting. I wouldn't be surprised if the guys falling into the tank failed to notice the copyright symbol, even though it's right over their heads.

By the way, if you're using Photoshop on a mac, hitting the Option Key and the G key yields a copyright symbol. The world's full of wonders.

This one is literally a small cartoon. The copyright information stands by like a billboard. Too large? It might not be so dominant beside a larger cartoon.

100% Dark god free. As far as I know.

All praise Cthulhu, the misspelled deity who allows us to comment.

If you're not familiar with the chap, here's a candid snapshot:

Sorry. Wrong picture.

That's better. Relatively speaking.

Welcome to the new blog.

You'll note that it's slightly off-balance and incomplete -- no links, no comments -- but I'm ready to begin the climb up the Google Rank mountain at my new url. So here I am, and here we are.

As for the look of the website, it's inspired by what inspires me every day: the chaos of my desk.

Chaos? you say. A logo? A toy frog? A desk calendar that's up to date?**

To which I say, there's more to come. The desk looks orderly now, but order never lasts. It's designed to fail.

Design to Fail. That would be an honest name for most businesses. Lawns grow back. Pipes reclog (human and otherwise.) Even cartoons can grow out of date.

As Newton said -- a disgruntled cartoonist who turned to math -- Everything breaks.

*Wait a moment. Maybe the comments are working. If you click on the confirmation words, a window descends and tells you what to type. At this point it's not a randomly generated series of letters, unless you appreciate that the word itself represents complete entropy and death for all humans.

**The calendar is there thanks to artistic license. I don't own a desk calendar. I'm not good with machines and their inevitable maintenence. Desk calendars are simple engines that only work if you tear a page every day. I have enough trouble remembering to change my t-shirt, or the oil in the car.

Today I feel like I'm living in a terrarium. The picture window in the office improves the illusion, trapping the swampy heat. Just a few days ago I was breaking out the sweaters and wondering where I'd put the Christmas Tree this year.

Unlike Spot, I don't savor the summer. It's a trial, a stress test of my plumbing and general wiring. If I were a house for sale, I wouldn't pass the inspection. Not that I'm more fit in the fall and winter. But any house looks better when it's wearing a coat.

My website is enjoying a distinction usually reserved for icebergs. You're contemplating the tip, while a huge and complex mass is being assembled out of sight.

Even as I type in the comfort of shirt sleeves and boxer shorts, the steely-eyed Web Guy is under the surface in a high-pressure submersible, casting lamp light into the dark, carving coded runes into the featureless surface with the sub's robotic arms. When he's finished, you'll marvel at the steam-powered idea generator, guaranteed to produce a perfect cartoon every time; you'll gasp at the gassy wonders of the inflatible frog; you'll push your eyebrows clear off your head when you behold the index cards that link every cartoon in my database.

And you'll scream in horror when you push the button that reads DO NOT PUSH.

You've been warned.

Jake the Snail appeared in Spot the Frog as part of my long-running Buddy's Stuck In A Bottle series.

That's right.

Long running. I remember thinking, while penning the third week, is anyone still reading this?

Series can be tricky things, if you’re creating them on the fly. My reasoning at the time: if I don’t know how the series will end, then the reader can’t know. The downside is that occasionally the writer doesn’t know until weeks have gone by. I felt like an avalanche victim squashed by too much plot, pinned by punchlines.

When Buddy finally popped out of the bottle, he wasn't the only one who felt free.