Category Archives: cartoons

May 13, 2016 · 3:51 pm

Secrets of the Muck Cave

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I recently revealed the existence of a new superhero in Dallas, the Magnificent Muck Man, master of muck and mud and maddening stench. Remember, his superpower is the ability to produce smells so awful they paralyze, neutralize, and even euthanize every opponent.

Now, every superhero needs his secret lair. Batman has the Batcave. Superman has the Fortress of Solitude. The Avengers have Avenger’s Mansion… oh, uh, maybe they’re not all secret. But, anyway, Muck Man has the Muck Cave. Yes, it is based on my house. I am old. I have six incurable diseases. So cleaning is difficult. And I don’t always smell that good myself. But I am not trying to claim I am Muck Man’s secret identity. The fool almost revealed his secret identity by smelling bad in an elevator… so I have to be more careful not to out him.

Anyway, the Muck Cave is Muck Man’s secret lair and base of operations. It is a normal-looking residential suburban house, on the outside. Inside, it is a hideous maze of garbage piles, discarded soiled laundry, random dog poo from Muck Dog, and a layer of wetness from incessantly overflowing toilets. Okay, there is another secret out. Muck Man has kids at home. How else do you explain how an ordinary house becomes an unnatural flowing fountain of filth?

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Muck Man is not alone in his fight against evil. He has a couple of sidekicks that haven’t left the Muck Cave in disgust yet. They are teenage swashbuckling Mucklets that aspire to one day become Teen Titans. In fact, Muck Woman has a huge crush on Robin, such a huge crush that she refused to take the name that Dad… uh, Muck Man… suggested. She did not want to be called Muck GIRL. She did not particularly want to hang out with trained muck-rats either, but for a chance to hang out with Boy Wonders on weekends, well…

Muck Lad, however, likes his name… almost as much as he likes living in the Muck Cave. Teenage boys and filth-laden rooms in the Muck Cave are simply made for each other. And Muck Lad can’t wait to use his patented stink-saber on evil. It’s like a Star Wars light saber, except it creates a blade of solid stink that can cut through anything.

As the new superhero team prepares to get into crime fighting, I have it on good authority that they plan to go see the new Marvel movie Captain America: Civil War tonight. I believe they plan to take notes on how it all works.

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Filed under artwork, Avengers, cartoons, comic book heroes, daughters, family, goofiness, humor, kids, Paffooney

Tagged as family, house cleaning, humor, Muck Man, satire, superheroes

May 11, 2016 · 6:07 pm

An Original Superhero

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I love Marvel Comics, and, as a result, I am also falling in love with the Marvel Superhero movies. I spent this morning drooling over the Flash TV series which has that wonderful comic book wiseacre flavor. And I decided that Dallas needs its own superhero.

So, using the toxic pollution in the city air and the natural ability of the human body to adapt to anything, Muck Man is born. Yes, Muck Man, the toxic hero who smells so bad that bad guys don’t have a chance. Severe odor is his super power. He can remove his shoes and take down a regiment of evil villain minions with a wave of foot-fungus incredo-stink. He can radiate infected ear-wax smells through the earwax antennas on his helmet. And, of course, he can go fully nuclear with a Muck Man power fart.

The Magnificent Muck Man has a secret identity too. He is a mild-mannered retired school teacher by day, pursuing a mundane and forgettable career as a writer until the city is threatened by a super villain. And he is coming.

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Behold, the Angry Orange King. He is tramping toward us in Angry Tramp Boots looking to tramp all over the basic human rights of people he doesn’t like. Especially poor people he doesn’t like. He gives rude finger gestures to the masses with the fingers of his tiny, tiny hands. And he likes to build gigantic things and make other people pay for them. He has recently defeated the homegrown lizard-man super villain that represents our state. He used his super villain power to hang insulting nicknames on people, and we all know that nicknames can be fatal, especially to lizard-people. Many would argue that the Angry Orange King hasn’t won total victory yet. He still has to defeat one more opponent before the frightened nation turns the keys to the kingdom over to him. But there is no guarantee that he will be beaten, as no other contender has beaten him yet, despite everything the wise monkeys claim to be true.

So the confrontation is set to happen. Blow-hard insult master against the world’s greatest source of stinky justice. Who will win? Nobody knows for sure. But for me, I tend to side with goodness over evil.

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Filed under Avengers, cartoons, characters, comic book heroes, conspiracy theory, humor, Paffooney, satire

Tagged as comic book heroes, comic books, humor, satire, super villains

May 8, 2016 · 5:25 pm

Hidden Kingdom : Chapter Two

I have been working on my graphic novel, Hidden Kingdom. It is a fairy tale about the struggles in the fairy kingdom that shares the world with us. You can find everything I have done on this project in my vault Visiting Tellosia, the Hidden Kingdom.

Here is Chapter Two;

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And here is the page I finished yesterday;

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There is still a lot of work to do on this, but I am making progress!

Animal Town in Daylight

This is a place I explore in cartoons and daydreams. It is a little town known as Animal Town for fairly obvious reasons. It is populated by silly anthropomorphic animals who wear clothes and keep naked people as pets.

Animal Town is one of the all-time silliest places to visit in the cartoon dreamland of Fantastica.

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Mandy Panda and little brother Dandy are my constant companions and guides when I tour the dangerous streets of wild Animal Town. In my cartoons, Mandy is an immigrant from the Pandalore Islands. She is also the cartoon version of my wife.

Three of the Town’s most important head monkeys.

It was Mandy who introduced me to the government officials who run Animal Town. Judge Moosewinkle is the head of the Animal Town court system. He is a hanging judge, so I am very careful about littering and loitering when I am in town.

Constable Geoffrey Giraffe does all the arresting and police work. He used to work in a toy store, but quit his job there when he couldn’t get them to stop writing the R backwards on all their signs. Grammar infractions annoy him more than any other crime.

Linus the Kitten-Hearted is the mayor of Animal Town. They wanted to crown him as king, but he always says that’s only for when he’s in the jungle. In town he prefers to be a democratically elected leader. Of course, if you refuse to vote for him, he might eat you.

Most of my dreams in Animal Town are about the school there.

Yes, this is a yearbook picture from Animal Town Elementary School.

Miss Ancient’s Class of 5th graders is usually rather rowdy and difficult. You may have noticed there is a bare bear in the old buzzard’s class. The fact is, the bears in Animal Town are all naturists and refuse to wear clothes. This disturbs poor Miss
Ancient greatly, and it is therefore a real godsend that a fig leaf just happened to be drifting down through the air at the time this picture was made. Bobby Bare is not shy, but some things are better not put into a cartoon.

Yes, this is another yearbook picture. And I am in it twice, since Mr. Reluctant Rabbit is also me.

As a visitor to Animal Town, Cissy Bare took me to Mr. Rabbit’s class as her pet for show and tell. She is also a bare bear, and she also benefited from a passing leaf at picture time. You may notice students putting rabbit ears behind each other’s heads in pictures… something that human children do too in real life. But when I study this picture, I can’t help but think that maybe Mr. Rabbit started it. Now, Animal Town is located in Fantastica, a part of the Dreamlands. So that sort of explains how I ended up in school naked. My dreams are like that. You are in school in the middle of lessons before you realize that haven’t got a single stitch of clothing on.

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When I am inevitably charged with public indecency for being in school naked, I can turn to Animal Town lawyer Woolbinkle Moosewinkle. He is totally incompetent and not very bright, but unlike most of the animals, he is friendly and on my side. Spot Firedog is a Dalmatian who knows how to use a newspaper. He is a reporter, publisher, and all-around good dog. He wrote an expose on me being naked in the Animal Town Elementary school.

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Big Bull Beefalo runs the local hamburger emporium, which might seem like collusion to cannabalism, but Bull is a very gentle and very large soul. He is himself a vegetarian, but he is a gifted fry cook and chef. I can go to his restaurant when I get out of jail, though hopefully not as food.

So, Animal Town is a very different kind of place. It is the result of dreams and goofiness and uncontrolled spurts of cartoonist creativity. It is a cartoon sort of place where spontaneous and random humor happens.

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Filed under cartoons, cartoony Paffooney, characters, comic strips, humor, Paffooney, pen and ink, Uncategorized

Tagged as Animal Town, cartoons, Dreamlands, Fantastica, humor, paffooney

April 22, 2016 · 3:28 pm

Doodle Day

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If you do art, then you also doodle. Really! No matter how hard you may try to keep it a secret, you doodle, and people all know it. So, since the secret is out… Here are some of my doodles. This jester-sort-of-half-white-clown was a doodle yesterday while watching TV… something I do with my hands while my mind is doing something else.

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Here’s another doodle… same day, different piece of paper, different TV show.

But not all doodles are meandering swirls and girls. I have a whole book of home-made cartoons that start with a blank page and end up with a page that furthers whatever curious cartoon story I am trying to make. Here are a few examples of that.

Now, I know your doodles probably look nothing like mine. My doodles are seriously demented. I have doodled enough that I have seriously worry about going blind. And my doodles are influenced by a lifetime of bad arty-habits. But they do give me practice. They also help me think. They relieve stress. And they make an easy and somewhat racy post.

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Filed under artwork, cartoons, doodle, humor, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as art practice, cartoons, doodles, humor, paffooney

April 13, 2016 · 2:55 pm

Pen and Ink

4th Dimension

Simple lines and line-drawn figures can contain the wisdom of the world. It is a simple faith that can turn one into a cartoonist, a comic book artist, or an illustrator. It is an almost god-like power. You can make fools and geeks and little girls with fourth dimensional hoola-hoops come to life.

It has been said by some who’ve seen my line drawings, my pen-and-ink cartoons, that I am good at it. But what do they know? I’ve shown you in this blog some of the real greats. Wally Wood and Milt Caniff and Cliff Sterret and George Herriman and Charles Shultz are all better than I am. But I am at least smart enough to have learned things from them.

Elf on Patrol

Black and white lines and shapes can convey feeling in almost the same way that words can. You can express feelings of melancholy, fatigue, or joy. You can create a sense of adventure, or make someone laugh with a clever reversal of expectations.

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So there you have it. I am not really that good… not a master of the art. But I know it. I can appreciate it when I see it. And there are things I can use it to accomplish.

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Filed under artwork, cartoons, illustrations, pen and ink, pen and ink paffoonies

Tagged as cartoons, drawing, Paffoonies, pen and ink drawing

March 30, 2016 · 3:07 pm

New Pirate Picture

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I continue to believe bankers, health insurance companies, and corporate leaders are all pirates. The gentleman of the sea dressed all in red in this picture is Black Timothy, bombastic and barely comprehensible leader of the pirates of Fantastica.

The truth is I am a bit of a cartoonist. Don’t worry. It is not a completely horrible and detestable thing to be. Not like being a pirate… or a banker… or worse, a pirate banker. It leads me to do cartoons like you will find in my vault, here…

The Atlas of Fantastica, Chapter 1

It is a basically incurable disease, and yet… I can live with it. It will not kill me like some of my other incurable diseases eventually will.

So today’s post, keeping alive an unbroken string of daily posts that now goes back 16 months, is a picture post. I hope you like it, but if you don’t, another one will come along soon enough.

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Filed under artwork, cartoons, cartoony Paffooney, Paffooney, Pirates, Uncategorized

Tagged as bankers, cartoons, Fantastica, humor, Pirates, satire

March 18, 2016 · 3:06 pm

Mickey Draws Mickey

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I learned to draw comics by copying the comics. So how many times has Mickey actually drawn Mickey? More than I can count. I hate throwing a drawing away, even if I did it when I was ten. But I cannot find all the drawings I have done of Mickey Mouse. I know some have been given away, some have gotten lost, and some may have even gone up in flames in the garbage barrel out back of the house in the 1960’s. I have posted pictures of Mickey before. Remember this one?

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But I can basically do Mickey without looking at any references. I can do him well enough that people often say, “You didn’t really draw that, did you?” That’s why I included the simple pen and ink stage of today’s Mickey. You can see it is really me drawing it. But the absolute truth is, I draw Mickey because in so many ways I am Mickey. Yes, I’m a talking mouse that drives a car and owns a dog. And even though Disney sues right and left for any imagined copyright infringement, I can safely post this here because it is fan art… and I don’t get paid anything for this goofy blog anyway. It is homage, not theft of intellectual property.

So, here is the final product, drawn this morning, the day after St. Patrick’s day 2016.

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Filed under cartoons, cartoony Paffooney, Disney, humor, Mickey, Paffooney

Tagged as cartoons, drawing Disney, learning to draw, Mickey Mouse, plagiarism

March 16, 2016 · 3:12 pm

The Pirates’ Nest

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Yesterday I completed a drawing that I have been working on for 3 days. This is a background drawing of The Pirates’ Nest on the northern coast of Fantastica. It is where the pirates live and do their banker jobs and sell health insurance. You know, acts of pure evil.

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I intend to use it to cheat when making cartoons. I can draw characters and then place them in the scene with photo-shop. I can put pirates like Black Timothy (seen here all in red) and his pal Scruffy Bill (with two wooden legs, two wooden arms, and a wooden head) into the scene. Or, I could insert some of the pirate leaders like Pirate King Ronny Ray-gun into the scene.

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So, today’s post is one of those lazy posts where I just post something I drew and write some snarky humor-like stuff. But I am thinking I am doing something right. I have set all-time highs for views and visits on this blog in the last seven days, with two days over 100. It is possible that it is just the NSA looking at my conspiracy theory posts, or even the international banking conspiracy watching for me posting stuff like this that calls them pirates and reveals their ultimate evil. But it could also be that some of you actually like the stuff I post while pretending to be an actual author and competent writer. Who knows?

Wally Wood

A self-portrait by Wallace Wood.

I am a bit of a cartoonist for a reason. I started drawing cartoons at the age of five. I read everything in the Sunday funny pages, not just for the jokes. I poured over the drawings and copied some. I drew Dagwood Bumstead and Blondie. I drew Lil’ Abner and Charlie Brown and Pogo. Cartoonists were heroes to me.

But my parents wanted to protect me from the evils of comic books. Superheroes were off limits most of the time. Things that are associated with evil were out of the question. So Daredevil was beyond reach. And Mad Magazine was full of socialist ideas and led kids down the dark path of satire. So the truth is, I didn’t discover Wally Wood until I was in college. His corrupting influence didn’t take hold of me until I was older and full of hormones. Ah, youth and the propensity for sin! Wally taught me that cartoons could be real.

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Wally Wood was one of the original artists working for EC comics who formed Mad Magazine with it’s spoofs and irreverent humor. Wood worked together with the Great Will Eisner on the Spirit. He went on to work for Marvel on the comic book Daredevil where he innovated the red suit and double-D logo, as well as doing the primary story-telling that brought that comic book from the bottom of the Marvel stack to almost the very top. His work on Daredevil resonates even until today where there is now a big controversy that the popular show on Netflix does not list Wood among the creators of Daredevil in their credits. I must remember to complain about that later.

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But the thing that drew me to Wood more than anything was the realistic style that he brought to the unreal realm of cartoons. The man could draw! He did marvelous detail work and was a leader in the development of dynamic composition in an artistic industry that tolerated and even often encouraged really poor-quality drawing. He took the comic book from the age of the glorified stick figure to an age of cinematic scope and know-how. Here it is revealed in his classic break-down of innovative comic-book panels;

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But it is also important to realize that the more power you put into art, the more it can blow up and hurt people. Wood had a dark side that went a bit darker as he went along. He had an issue with the kind of false front comics had to throw up in front after the anti-comics crusade of psychologist Fredric Wertham’s book Seduction of Innocents. He is probably the artist behind the cartoon poster The Disneyland Memorial Orgy. He started his own cartoon studio that produced increasingly erotic and pornographic comics like Sally Forth, Cannon, and Gangbang. He became increasingly ill, lost the sight in one eye, suffered severe headaches, and eventually committed suicide in 1981. With great power comes great responsibility, and we are not all superheroes in the end. But I will always admire and emulate the work of this great artist… and selfishly wish he could’ve lived to create more of the wonderful art he gave us.