Category Archives: characters

June 22, 2016 · 2:58 pm

Captain Klunk

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My newest cartoon is a double portrait of Squinteye the Sailor and Captain Klunk the aficionado of horrible-tasting  cereals made from klunkberries.  No… there are no copyright violations here… just satire.

Besides being a cereal aficionado, Captain Klunk is a pirate hunter, at least in his own mind.  Which is ironic since both he and Squinteye, noted pirate hater, live in Fantastica’s Pirates’ Nest.

Pirates nest

Captain Klunk claims to live on Klunkberry Island.  But he doesn’t.  The HMS Sloppy Puppy, his ship, is made of klunkberry cereal nuggets, so it gets soggy and sinks.  He makes up for his lack of ship-ness by being the master of the Science of Boomology.  He gets anyone to their desired destination by loading them into a cannon and shooting them there.  You can sometimes live long enough to try a second trip.

So, that is a brief description of who Captain Klunk really is.  (Oh, yeah, the “C” on the Captain’s cap does not stand for “Captain”.  He is just a Chicago Cubs fan… poor, misguided soul!)

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June 20, 2016 · 5:56 pm

Imaginary People

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It pretty much goes without saying that, since I am an author of fiction, determined to be a storyteller, I spend most of my time talking to people who exist only inside my goofy old head.  Sure, most of the imaginary people I create to keep me company are at least loosely based on real people that I either once knew, or still know.  You can tell that about Millis, the rabbit-man, pictured here on the right, can’t you?  Sure.  I had a New Zealand White pet rabbit that I raised as a 4-H project.  His name was Ember-eyes… because, well, yeah… red eyes.  It just happens that my goofy old memory transformed him into an evolution-enhanced science experiment in my unpublished novel, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius.  But he was a real person once… ’cause rabbits are people too, right?

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Anita Jones, a character from my unpublished novel, Superchicken, is based on a real person too.  I admit, there was a girl in my class from grades K through 6 that I secretly adored and would’ve done anything to be near, though every significant event I remember from my life that involved an encounter with her, involved red-faced embarrassment for me.  That’s why I remember her as having auburn-colored hair.  Charley Brown’s Little Red-Haired Girl… duh!  I would’ve died sooner than tell her how I really felt, even now, but by making her into one of a multitude of imaginary people who inhabit my life, I can be so close to her that sometimes I am actually inside her mind.  There’s a sort of creepy voyeurism-squared sort of thing.

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Dorin Dobbs, the main human character of my published novel, Catch a Falling Star, is an imaginary character based mostly on my eldest son, though, in fact, I started writing that novel five years before he was born.  Like most of the imaginary people in my life, I talk to Dorin repeatedly even when the real Dorin is half a world away in the Marine Corps.  And even though the Dorin I am talking to is not the real Dorin, he is still constantly using language that is extra-salty far beyond his years, and is often defiant of my fatherly wisdom, and always argues for the exact opposite of any opinion I express.  That’s just how it is to be the father of an imaginary son.

Realistically, I have to admit that even the flesh-and-blood people in my life are imaginary.  No one ever actually inhabits another person’s head except through the magic of imagination.  Even though I am talking to you at this moment, you are only an imaginary person to me.  I don’t even know your name as I write this.  And I am the same to you.  You may have read my writing enough to think you know something about me… but you really only know the Mickey in your mind that I have worked at putting there with my words.  And I really have no idea what that imaginary Mickey you have in your head is like.  He is probably really the opposite of who I think I am.

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I am, after all, married to this girl panda, Mandy Panda from the Pandalore Islands, and my three children are all Halfasian part-panda-people.  Yes, this is the imaginary person who is my real-life wife.  The secret is, we only ever know the imaginary people we have in our goofy little heads.  We don’t know the real person behind anyone in our lives, because it is simply not possible to really know how anybody else thinks or feels, even if they write out their lengthy treatise about how all people are imaginary people.  That stuff is just too goofy-dippy to be real.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, characters, goofiness, humor, imagination, Paffooney, rabbit people, strange and wonderful ideas about life

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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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April 30, 2016 · 2:42 pm

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

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.

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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.

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                                                                                                                                                         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.

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                                                                                                                                                   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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August 9, 2015 · 2:21 pm

Timeline – Part 2

Val B22You may remember that yesterday I was giving a run-down of my various Home Town Novel projects according to the order they supposedly happen in real time (measured in years).  Here is what I went over yesterday;

Superchicken, set in 1974, the first Home Town Novel that I completed.

The Baby Werewolf (also possibly titled The Wolf in the Attic), set in the Fall of 1974, not yet completed.

The Forever Boy, set in Spring 1975, not yet written in manuscript form.

Sweet Pickles, set in the Fall of 1974 and Spring of 1975, half written, but possibly too graphic to publish.

Under Blue Glass, set in 1977 and not yet written in manuscript form.

When the Captain Came Calling, is set in 1983-84, the manuscript is currently at 25,000 words and being worked on.

And the novel I am editing for publication this week, Snow Babies, set in the Winter of 1984.  Snow Babies is the story of how the small town survives the raging blizzard and faces the prospect of freezing to death.  Valerie Clarke, in the picture above, is the central character in a large cast trying to avoid being the one the snow spirits have come to claim.

The second generation of Norwall Pirates, the boys’ club of dreamers, goofballs, and liars, have come to be led by a girl, Mary Philips and Valerie is the second girl ever to join the club.

Crooner

Francois
The next novel has undergone two transformations.  It started as a book called Little Boy Crooner.  It is about an orphan from France who comes to live with ne’er-do-well Iowegian relatives.  Homesick and deeply troubled, the boy has discovered a natural talent for karaoke, and has a voice that people come from miles away to hear.  Then, the clowns of the Dreamlands began invading this story and had to be renamed.  It is now called Sing Sad Songs… with Clowns.  I may, however change the name to just Sing Sad Songs.

 

Sing Sad Songs and the next novel in the series, Fools and Their Toys, happen at the same time in 1985-86.  They not only share a setting and many of the same characters, but they share a villain and many of the same plot-shaping events.  They are, however, very different stories.

Fools n Toys

 

Fools and Their Toys is the story of autistic Murray Dawes.  Because he has never really been able to communicate before, his turning point comes when a new member of the family, an adopted little brother, makes for him a ventriloquist’s dummy in the form of a zebra.  He calls it Zearlop and uses it to unleash the hidden intelligence that was there through all those years when other people thought he was retarded.  Unfortunately, just as Murray is blossoming, a serial killer comes along, targeting young boys.  More unfortunately still, some from the area believe Murray may be the killer.

class Miss Mcover

Leadership of the Pirates is passed from Mary to Valerie.  And in 1988 I have set my current contest novel The Magical Miss Morgan.  Valerie passes the leadership of the Pirates to her highly imaginative and extremely annoying cousin Timothy Kellogg.  Tim is a the second most important character in the story of the teacher, Miss Morgan, who loves to teach.  Miss Morgan is the sister of original Pirate wizard, Milt Morgan.  Because of her brother, she inherits responsibility for a local war between good and evil fairies, while at the same time trying to save her job from evil principals, parents, and school board members and teach a lesson or two worth remembering forever.  This full manuscript novel is currently being judged for the contest, and will be submitted for publication after.

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Tim Kellogg is one of two main characters in the next novel, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius.  Orben Wallace, the inventor, is the title character who may have accidentally created a time machine.  The novel is set in the years from 1988 to 1990, and it is about how the genius’ old inventions come back to haunt him as he tries to solve the problem of having invented a time machine, having worked on mysterious government projects, and having helped to fight off an alien invasion.  This novel is also complete and merely awaiting the proper time to get published.

 

Catch a Falling Star is the published novel that started this blog and my dream of making it as a novelist.  It is set in 1990 and tells the story of when the Telleron alien empire of frog-like fin-headed aliens fail to invade Norwall, Iowa because they hadn’t reckoned on meeting the Pirates.See Catch a Falling Star on Amazon here.

My Art 2 of Davalon

I guess I leave it here for today.  It seems there is enough more to fill another blog… Part 3.

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Filed under aliens, characters, clowns, humor, Iowa, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, publishing, Snow Babies, writing humor

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January 1, 2015 · 4:19 pm

Stupid People

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It is generally considered an insult to call someone “stupid”.

Okay, I get that.  I am not without feelings on the subject.   Stupid people have feelings just like I do.  But if I have to live with “nerd”, “geekazoid”, “brainiac”, and “four-eyes”, I am thinking they don’t have to be more sensitive than I am.

Truthfully, life as a mentally gifted person of no color is a bit of trial even if people don’t generally understand that.    I have an I.Q. in the range of 155, (calculated from my ACT and SAT scores using standard statistical analysis, give or take 5% for margin of error due to the nature of the calculation… am I scaring you yet?)  I had trouble fitting in with my peers as a child.  I related better to older people rather than my appropriate age group, and until my best friend, a preacher’s kid, moved to town when I was nine, I really had no friends and was routinely picked on and preyed upon by other kids.  It was so bad that I was making C’s and D’s in school primarily because I didn’t want to be identified as smart.  Once the eye doctor hung black horn-rimmed glasses on my face, my fate as a socially doomed uber-nerd was sealed.  And my friend Mark, who would grow up to become an actuary with mathematical gifts, moved away when I was a freshman in high school.  I had to help stupid people with homework and class work… I was required to endure threats, bribes, and tearful pleas to help athletes cheat on tests.  Bullies made me tie their shoes and endure endless jokes about the size of my private parts.  Life was terrible until I decided to go out for high school football.  I was small and thin and probably doomed as I made the team, but I had a secret weapon.  I understood almost instinctually that angles, trajectories, and leverage can make the difference over sheer muscle power.  During one football drill where we had to pick up and carry our partner for five yards, I was matched with the big offensive tight end, George Merlock, who outweighed me by almost a hundred pounds and was literally Incredible Hulk-like in football pads.  I simply used my shoulder on the proper spot under his armpit and lifted with my legs.  I picked him up and carried him for twenty yards when some of the other players who were bigger and stronger than me couldn’t even lift him.  After that moment, I was never bullied again.  For one thing, I impressed George so much that he would’ve killed them for even looking at me cross-eyed.  Life got better.  A cheerleader asked me out on a date (though I said no because I thought they were still making fun of me… which I later learned I was mistaken about and I had accidentally hurt her feelings).

So what does that whole long-winded whiffle-story of my misspent youth have to do with stupid people?  Well, I am one.  (Doesn’t the cheerleader thing prove that?)  Smart people can be stupid more often than your average ordinary Joe.   A character like Sheldon Cooper on Big Bang Theory is funny because his intelligence and his social abilities are so wildly mismatched that he often makes totally stupid geekazoid mistakes.

Harker

But there are also stupid people who are actually not smart.  Writing humor has taught me to draw upon the experiences of people I have known who were less than knowledgeable.  People with lower than normal I.Q.’s.  Life has taught me to value and even love people like that.  In my novel Snow Babies, at least one of the clown characters is a stupid person.   Harker Dawes is an inept businessman in the process of destroying a successful business that he bought from one of the town’s most beloved and respected elders.  He immobilizes himself with super glue.   He gets nailed to a poster board with a nail gun.  Accidents and near-fatal pratfalls are his trademark.  And yet, he is a sympathetic and loveable character.  He is generous to a fault.  He has a simple, good heart.  Practically everything he does is a mistake, and yet, people grow fond of him and help him out because they appreciate his innate goodness and value as a person.

So, I really think calling someone stupid can be a sort of compliment.  Forrest Gump calls himself stupid, but that character from Winston Groom’s novels and the award-winning movie of the same name is really a very wise and lovely man, though he is not smart.  I have to say that I really no longer resent being called stupid, because no matter how smart I actually am, stupid is sort of a compliment.  (But how about climate-change deniers, Texas politicians, and anybody who believes what they say on Fox News, you say?  They are not stupid.  That is willful ignorance.  It may take a whole other post to make that difference clear.)

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