Category Archives: cartoons

February 17, 2023 · 2:21 am

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

It is, of course, one of the most powerful, masterful, and best-known pieces of music ever written.

Mozart completed the “little serenade” in Vienna in 1787, but it wasn’t published until 1827, long after Mozart’s untimely death.

The Serenade is incorrectly translated into English as “A Little Night Music”. But this is and always has been the way I prefer to think of it. A creation of Mozart written shortly before he hopped aboard the ferryman’s boat and rode off into the eternal night. It is the artifact that proves the art of the master who even has the word “art” as a part of his name. A little music to play on after the master is gone to prove his universal connection to the great silent symphony that is everything in the universe singing silently together.

It is basically what I myself am laboring now to do. I have been dancing along the edge of the abyss of poverty, suffering, and death since I left my teaching job in 2014. I will soon be taking my own trip into night aboard the ferryman’s dreaded boat. And I feel the need to put my own art out there in novel and cartoon form before that happens.

I am not saying that I am a master on the level of a Mozart. My name is not Mickart. But I do have a “key’ in the name Mickey. And it will hopefully unlock something worthwhile for my family and all those I loved and leave behind me. And hopefully, it will provide a little night music to help soothe the next in line behind me at the ferryman’s dock.

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Filed under artwork, cartoons, classical music, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, Hidden Kingdom, magic, metaphor, music, Paffooney

Tagged as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Mozart

December 2, 2022 · 4:46 am

Toonerville, a Place I Once Lived In

There is a place so like the place where my heart and mind were born that I feel as if I have always lived there. That place is a cartoon panel that ran in newspapers throughout the country from 1913 to 1955 (a year before I was born in Mason City, Iowa). It was called Toonerville Folks and was centered around the famous Toonerville Trolley.

Fontaine Fox was born near Louisville Kentucky in 1884. Louisville, of course is one of the two cities that claims to be the inspiration for Toonerville. Apparently the old Brook Street Line Trolley in Louisville was always run-down, operating on balls of twine and bailing wire for repair parts. The people of Pelham, New York, however, point to a trolley ride Fox took in 1909 on Pelham’s rickety little trolley car with a highly enterprising and gossip-dealing old reprobate for a conductor. No matter which it was, Fox’s cartoon mastery took over and created Toonerville, where you find the famous trolley that “meets all trains”.

I didn’t learn of the comic strip’s existence until I was in college, but once I found it (yes, I am the type of idiot who researches old comics in university libraries), I couldn’t get enough of it. Characters like the Conductor, the Powerful (physically) Katrinka, and the terrible-tempered Mr. Bang can charm the neck hair off of any Midwestern farm-town boy who is too stupid to regret being born in the boring old rural Midwest.

I fancied myself to be just like the infamous Mickey (himself) McGuire. After all, we have the same first name… and I always lick any bully or boob who wants to put up a fight (at least in my daydreams).

So, this is my tribute to the cartoonist who probably did more to warp my personality and make me funny (well, at least easy to laugh at! ) than any other influence. All of the cartoons in this post can be credited to Fontaine Fox. And all the people in them can be blamed on Toonerville, the town I used to live in, though I never really knew it until far too late.

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Filed under art my Grandpa loved, artists I admire, cartoons, Toonerville

Tagged as art criticism, artwork, cartoons, Fontaine Fox, humor, Toonerville, Trolley

November 23, 2022 · 2:30 am

Toons Are Easy

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November 21, 2022 · 5:51 am

Mickian Fantasy Art

There is a reason why anything in my artwork starting with a rabbit is assumed to be autobiographical. I raised rabbits as a 4-H project from about the age of 10 and we kept rabbits in pens until I was finishing my undergraduate degree. (Rabbit chores fell to my little brother when I was away from home.) In many ways, I was a rabbit-man. My personal avatar as a school teacher was Reluctant Rabbit.

The panda known as Mandy in my cartoon world is an avatar of my wife, an immigrant from the Pandalore Islands.

There is often an exaggerated sense of adventure in my cartoonally weird Paffoonies, the very name of which is a fantasy word.

I have been known to actually believe gingerbread can be magical enough for gingerbread men to come to life once baked. It is the reason I bite the legs off first, so they can’t run away.

I have been known to see elves, fairies, and numerous other things that aren’t really there. In fact, a whole secret hidden kingdom of them inhabited the schoolyard in Iowa where I attended grades K through 6. They were all mostly three inches tall. The biggest ones, like dragons reaching only about six inches tall at their largest.

Of course I am afraid of death, evil, and… (shudder) mummies.

I think of art and story-telling as a form of music. I am a troubadour whose songs (like this one) are often completely silent.

My fantasy art tends to be more “comic book” than “art gallery”.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, cartoons, cartoony Paffooney, colored pencil, humor, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, surrealism

November 17, 2022 · 4:25 am

Winsor McCay

One work of comic strip art stands alone as having earned the artist, Winsor McCay, a full-fledged exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Little Nemo in Slumberland is a one-of-a-kind achievement in fantasy art.

Winsor McCay lived from his birth in Michigan in 1869 to his finale in Brooklyn in 1934. In that time he created volumes full of his fine-art pages of full-page color newspaper cartoons, most in the four-color process.

As a boy, he pursued art from very early on, before he was twenty creating paintings turned into advertising and circus posters. He spent his early manhood doing amazingly detailed half-page political cartoons built around the editorials of Arthur Brisbane, He then became a staff artist for the Cincinnati Times Star Newspaper, illustrating fires, accidents, meetings, and notable events. He worked in the newspaper business with American artists like Winslow Homer and Frederick Remington who also developed their art skills through newspaper illustration. He moved into newspaper comics with numerous series strips that included Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland. And he followed that massive amount of work up by becoming the “Father of the Animated Cartoon” with Gertie the Dinosaur, with whom he toured the US giving public performances as illustrated in the silent film below;

The truly amazing thing about his great volume of work was the intricate detail of every single panel and page. It represents a fantastic amount of work hours poured into the creation of art with an intense love of drawing. You can see in the many pages of Little Nemo how great he was as a draftsman, doing architectural renderings that rivaled any gifted architect. His fantasy artwork rendered the totally unbelievable and the creatively absurd in ways that made them completely believable.

I bought my copy of Nostalgia Press’s Little Nemo collection in the middle 70’s and have studied it more than the Bible in the intervening years. Winsor McCay taught me many art tricks and design flourishes that I still copy and steal to this very day.

No amount of negative criticism could ever change my faith in the talents of McCay. But since I have never seen a harsh word written against him, I have to think that problem will never come up.

My only regret is that the wonders of Winsor McCay, being over a hundred years old, will not be appreciated by a more modern generation to whom these glorious cartoon artworks are not generally available.

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Tagged as Little Nemo in Slumberland, Winsor McCay

October 19, 2022 · 3:52 am

Ghostly Reflections

I do not believe in ghosts.

So, I am probably the last stupid goomer who should be writing this post. But I do have a lot to say on the subject that will more than fill a 500-word essay.

At my age and level of poor health, I think about ghosts a lot because I may soon be one. In fact, my 2014 novel, Snow Babies has ghosts in it. And some of the characters in it freeze to death and become snow ghosts. But it doesn’t work like that in real-world science. My ghosts are all basically metaphorical and really are more about people and people’s perception of life, love, and each other.

Ghosts really only live in the mind. They are merely memories, un-expectedly recalled people, pains, and moments of pandemonium.

I have recently been watching the new Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House. It creeps me out because it latches on to the idea that ghosts haunt us through the revisitation in our minds of old trauma, old mistakes, old regrets… We are never truly safe from ghosts, no matter how far under the covers we go in our beds, deep in the dark and haunted night. Ghosts are always right there with us because they only live inside us.

I am haunted by ghosts of my own. Besides the ghost dog that mysteriously wanders about our house at night and is seen only out of the corners of our eyes, there is the ghost of the sexual assault I endured at the age of ten by a fifteen-year-old neighbor. That ghost haunts me still, though my attacker has died. I still can’t name him. Not because I fear he can rise up out of the grave to hurt me again, but because of what revealing what he did, and how it would injure his innocent family members who are still alive and still known to my family, will cause more hurt than healing. That is a ghost who will never go away. And he infects my fiction to the point that he is the secret villain of the novel I am now working on. In fact, the next four novels in a row are influenced by him.

But my ghost stories are not horror stories.

I write humorous stories that use ghosts as metaphors, to represent ideas, not to scare the reader. In a true horror story, there has to be that lurking feeling of foreboding, that sense that, no matter what you do, or what the main character you identify with does, things probably won’t turn out all right. Stephen King is a master of that. H.P. Lovecraft is even better.

But as for me, I firmly believe in the power of laughter, and that love can settle all old ghosts back in their graves. I have forgiven the man who sexually tortured me and nearly destroyed me as a child. And I have vowed never to reveal his name to protect those he loved as well as those I love. If he hurt anyone else, they have remained silent for a lifetime too. And I have never been afraid of the ghost dog in our house. He has made me jump in the night more than once, but I don’t fear him. If he were real, he would be the ghost of a beloved pet and a former protector of the house. And besides, he is probably all in my stupid old head thanks to nearly blind eyes when I do not have my glasses on.

I don’t believe in ghosts.

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October 12, 2022 · 2:02 am

Novel Writing in Novel Ways

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There are many ways to tell a story. I have yet to try them all. But I don’t intend to stop trying until I either get a lot nearer, or I am fertilizing the flowers.

So let’s start with the Snoopy way.

We start with a cliche, and goof it up to make it more interesting.

It was a dark and stormy night…

And that was because the lights went out at George’s house while he was arguing with Mabel. There was lightning involved. Mabel got so mad about George watching football that she stabbed the toaster in a fit of uncontrolled anger. Unfortunately, she stabbed it with a metal fork and it was plugged in. Her hair never stood up so high and never glowed that particular color before. Her eyes shown like car headlights. And she was the main reason it went dark.

Okay, maybe not. Let’s try again.

It was a dork and smarmy knight…

Sir Jiggs Giggly was a knight from King Percy’s Royal Court, but his manners were so bad that he drove all the women away from the court. The other knights all decided that their choices were limited. Either they had to reform Sir Jiggs, or they all had to become gay. So, they went to the wizard. The wizard’s name was Wizzyfritz. And Wizzyfritz had a boy working for him who also happened to be his legal ward. So Wizzyfritz the wizard assigned his Wizzyfritz ward to be the watcher over the wastrel Jiggs. And so, well… that wizard ward was a dork.

Yeah, not this one either.

It was a stark and dormy night…

At Tilbury College in the women’s dormitory, there was a party. There was lots of beer. And the local fraternity decided that when they attended the party, they would show up as streakers and be stark naked. Unfortunately, the Sigma Frakka Pi fraternity were all skinny geeks who wore glasses and had no body hair. So a large number of women in that dorm died laughing.

Nope, that isn’t it either.

Hmmm…. maybe there’s a good reason this particular story-telling method is always shown in a cartoon as part of a joke.

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October 4, 2022 · 3:47 pm

Transportation by Imagination

How does one use the mind to move from one place to another? Is teleportation by mental ability possible? Can we find new ways to travel using only the mind? New worlds to travel to? Of course! Anything is possible once you realize there are no barriers to human imagination. It is possible to traverse even the beginning and the end of the universe itself.

Case in point, I have as a cartoonist tried to come up with novel ways to travel. In Catch a Falling Star I imagined that an engineering prodigy and a scientific genius used recovered alien technology to turn an 1889 steam locomotive with a pair of Pullman passenger cars into a space vehicle using an old hot air balloon and Yankee ingenuity. They used it to fly to Mars.

A friend who read that book, Stuart R. West, who writes teenage horror story mysteries (Here’s a link to Stuart’s stuff!) suggested an idea for an illustrated children’s book about three kids that feed bubble gum to a goldfish. The goldfish urps up a bubble that ends up carrying them off on an adventure through the sky. I drew a possible illustration for that book and killed the idea completely dead. I have a secret super power for taking cute and funny ideas and turning them into things that are totally unmarketable. I wonder if that makes me a super villain instead of a hero. So, the cartoonist in me had to develop other ways to travel that are even more ridiculous.

In Clowntown, a part of my Atlas of Fantastica cartoon, you travel the downtown Clowntown skyway by being flipped and flung along the Clowntown Trapeze-way. It makes for a harrowing ride and it’s really heck to use for trips to the grocery store or coming home again with packages to carry.

Travelling in the part of Fantastica dominated by pirates is even worse. Traveling by the science of Boomology means getting shot out of a cannon naked to get wherever you need to go. It is not something I would want to try in real life, but the cartoon me seems to not enjoy it with only minor bumps and bruises.

So, travelling by means of the mind alone, through imagination, is quite possible… and probably infinitely unwise.

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Tagged as cartoons, humor, mind powers, Paffoonies, science fiction, travel technology

October 3, 2022 · 3:38 am

I Go Pogo!

I gave you fair warning. Pogo has been coming to Mickey’s Catch a Falling Star Blog for a while now. So, if you intended to avoid it, TOO BAD! You are here now in Okefenokee Swamp with Pogo and the gang, and subject to Mickey’s blog post about Walt Kelly and his creations.

Walt Kelly began his cartoon hall-of-fame career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios. If you watch the credits in Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo, you will see Walt listed as an animator and Disney artist. In fact, he had almost as much influence on the Disney graphic style as Disney had on him. He resigned in 1941 to work at Dell Comics where he did projects like the Our Gang comics that you see Mickey smirking at here, the Uncle Wiggly comics, Raggedy Ann and Andy comics, and his very own creations like Pogo, which would go on to a life of its own in syndicated comics. He did not return to work at Disney, but always credited Disney with giving him the cartoon education he would need to reach the stratosphere.

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Walt Kelly’s Earth Day comic

Pogo is an alternate universe that is uniquely Walt Kelly’s own. It expresses a wry philosophy and satirical overview of our society that is desperately needed in this time of destructive conservative politics and deniers of science and good sense.

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Pogo himself is an every-man character that we are supposed to identify with the most. He is not the driver of plots and doings in the swamp, rather the victim and unfortunate experiencer of those unexpectable things. Life in Okefenokee is a long series of random events to make life mostly miserable but always interesting if approached with the right amount of Pogo-ism.

And Pogo was always filled with cute and cuddly as well as ridiculous.

As a boy, I depended on the comic section of the Sunday paper to make sense of the world for me. If I turned out slightly skewed and warped in certain ways, it is owing to the education I myself was given by Pogo, Lil Abner, Dagwood Bumstead, and all the other wizards from the Sunday funnies. There was, of course, probably no bigger influence on my art than the influence of Walt Kelly.

So what more can I say about Walt Kelly? I haven’t yet reached the daily goal of 500 words. And yet, the best way to conclude is to let Walt speak for himself through the beautiful art of Pogo.