When last I was cartooning about Fantastica, I had fallen into a dream about pirates and had been taken prisoner…
On that cliffhanger note… To be continued…
Tag Archives: cartoon
Dr. Evil’s Removable Brain
Last time, after months of me waiting to play with my X-Box Baseball ’04, Captain Carl Action and the Action Super-hero-guy Team had actually found where in the Library Dr. Evil and his minions had been hiding.
It took an unbelievably long time for my Library to be liberated, but finally liberation was just around the corner…
So Dr. Evil threw a monkey wrench into the liberation plans with a carefully timed real-identity mix-up ploy.
Captain Carl had to stop and think for a moment… something that he only did when forced to do it,,, because, well, thinking is something that hurts quit a bit when you have a hollow plastic head with only a plastic armature for a brain.
Max Steele, the most practical member of the Hero-Guy Action Team, put Dr. Evil/Ming the Merciless down on the Dr. Evil mint-in-box box and began to saw with his Captain Action Lightning Blade.
Max sawed and whacked and hacked and smacked, and nothing seemed to even put a dent in the non-removable brain of Dr. Evil/Ming the Merciless.
Soon the Action Hero-Guy Team had to give up. The dumb plastic brain was all one piece with the rest of the plastic head and was not coming out. Dr. Evil/Ming the Merciless was simply NOT the answer.
Captain Carl was fed up. He couldn’t take any more of this thinking… There was only one thing left to do.
So Dr. Evil removed his removable brain and handed it to Carl, allowing me to repeat enough silly phrases and stupid words to get to the 500 mark for today.
Filed under action figures, cartoons, humor
Visiting Tellosia
In the novel I recently entered in the Chanticleer Reviews YA Novel-Writing contest, I used the fairy kingdom of Tellosia to be the land of the little people integrated into hometown Iowa. As part of my cartoon stories page, I intend to take up the tale of The Hidden Kingdom once again and expand and complete it. I will post it as a web comic on Word Press. I know I can’t make money giving it away for free… but I hope to have my stories and cartoons read a little bit more through the buzz I hope this generates. And perhaps Petit Zam can come up with some fairy magic that will help… so I can cast a spell on you.
Here is installment one of The Hidden Kingdom;
Grandpa Futty Drives Again
In Fontaine Fox’s Toonerville Trolley comics there is one old flivver-driving fool named Grandpa Futty. He is the slowest driver on the road. Rarely does he go over the breakneck speed of two miles per hour. He is so overly cautious, that if there are two lanes going his way, he takes the middle of the road and effectively moseys along in his putter-banger taking up both lanes. What is that you say, young whipper-snapper? You don’t know what a putter-banger is? Great galloping goat galoshes! It’s a car, dang it! You see them all over the metroplex. They are so ancient that when you start it up with the hand crank, the engine coughs and the muffler falls off in back. They were purchased as a used car two decades ago. The only thing more miraculous than the fact that the car still runs is the fact that the old goat driving it is still alive (though the local police routinely have to stop him to check and see if his heart is actually still beating. If it isn’t they have to fight with him about dropping him off at the nearest funeral home.)
So, if you haven’t guessed already, this post is about the generically named drivers I refer to as a Grampa Futty, and they are the exact opposite of the Texas Killer Grandmas I wrote about yesterday. Believe it or not, I think I have graduated into the Grandpa Futty class of driver. I can still see more than three feet in front of my car, but I do have a dumpy-lumpy body that hobbles around with a cane, and I do smell like Ben Gay Ointment and Vick’s Vapo-rub. (…And no, you can’t say Ben Queer Ointment and have it mean the same thing, young whipper-snapper! That joke is nearly as old as I am!) I am not entirely in that category of driver, though, because I still curse them with gusto and interjections like “dang it!” whenever I am behind one of that breed. And besides, the last time the cop stopped me to check my heartbeat, it was going strong.
Grandpa Futtys are a real road hazard in the obstacle-filled world of Texas city driving… if it were a video game like Super Mario Brothers, they would not be Bowser, but rather that annoying Koopa Troopa that you just can’t bounce on hard enough to get past. They are in the way, endearingly cute in an ugly-old-fart sort of manner, and potentially deadly as they put you in line for the easy kill by the nearest Texas Killer Granny. So I am seriously studying now how to avoid Grandpa Futty on the road next time I see him, and I am definitely studying how not to become him.
Cartoonist Super Powers
I call myself a cartoonist because I draw stuff and use it for crap that makes a point about stuff or makes people laugh at other stuff… and maybe qualifies as a super power.
I really am not always sure about the super power stuff… but my dog and I got into an argument yesterday about doggy duties. I was insisting that a dog should earn her keep. Work for her food and the obedience of all the humans in the house when it comes to following her commands about taking her for walks, picking up her poop in the park, and allowing her to chew up my car keys without punishing her because they smell like me, and make her think about me, and so she has to chew the electronic automatic un-locker-thingy until it is in plastic shards because… well, she loves me so much. I wasn’t asking for much. I just ask that she help the security in the household by eating any burglars that come in to steal our precious stuff (precious in the sense of sentimental value only… unless thieves have developed a market for VHS tapes and television sets fifteen years out-of-date.) So she was sulking.
When the burglar came in… burglars always come in when they have something going for them like the dog sulking… the dog didn’t eat him. So he came upstairs to the room where I was working on cartoons.
“Gee, you have a lot a worthless crap,” the burglar said.
Startled by the fact that the burglar thought all my worthless crap was nothing more than worthless crap, I turned to my drawing table and quickly drew a gun.
“Okay, you have the drop on me,” said the burglar, using an old TV cliche. When he raised his hands over his head, I could clearly see that he had boobs. He was a she!
“You are a woman!” I said, displaying my quick and wily wit… rather slowly.
“Don’t shoot!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t shoot a woman. It ain’t the honorable thing to do. Now take off all your clothes. We will make a little whoopee and then I will let you go.”
“But I’m not a woman! I am a guy burglar who likes to wear dresses and fake boobs. Besides, this is open-carry Texas where every house has an NRA member with semi-automatic weapons and a law that allows you to shoot anyone of any age if they step on your property… but they generally don’t shoot women.”
I didn’t believe her… so I took the eraser end of my pencil and erased her clothes. She was, in fact, a man!
“I don’t believe this,” I said. “Do you get away with this trick often?”
“I never seem to get away with it,” he said sadly. “In fact, there was a house full of Bubbas that I tried to rob unsuccessfully two months ago… and now the pregnancy test kit says I’m pregnant.”
I gave him all the money I had (about $0.37), some spare clothes I had meant to give to Goodwill, and sent him on his way.
The dog bit him on the way out.
Filed under humor, Paffooney, pen and ink
Comic Strips Can Make Me Cry
I have been a cartoon nut for a long, long time. I think it goes back to a time before I really have memories. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know who Cat in the Hat was, or that Pogo was a possum and Albert was an alligator, or that Daisy Mae constantly had to chase Lil’ Abner afore they could git hitched. And I have always known that cartoons and comic strip characters weren’t real. But there were a few times in life when comic strips made me cry. Am I really that much of pansy that I wilt in the face of cartoon tragedy? Yes. Whole-heartedly!
Take for instance Tom Batiuk’s long-running spoof of teenagers and life in high school, Funky Winkerbean. One of the first things that makes this comic special is that the characters have lives that expand into the deepening depths behind the daily gag and four-panel strip. They grow and age. Les Moore (the geeky kid with the dark hair and nerd glasses, the character I most identified with) grew up to become an English teacher in the same high school where he had to deal with the issue of teen pregnancy. Lisa, the girl he liked, was pregnant. Les helped her go through the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption, and then eventually married Lisa. Les would go on to raise his daughter with Lisa and then have to live with the fact that the child Lisa gave away wanted to find his real mother.
The strip added layer after layer to the over-all story, making me feel like I knew these people. Funky turned his after-school job at Montoni’s Pizza into a partnership and a career as a restaurateur. Les would. like me, become a teacher and a writer. Crazy would go on to be a postman and… well, Crazy. And then the story added more layers by not always being funny. I cried when Wally Winkerbean stepped on the mine in Afghanistan and I thought he was dead. I cried again when Wally’s wife, Becky, moved on and married again. And then, there was what happened with Lisa…
The artist himself had a bout with cancer. He. like me, was turned into a cancer survivor. It chills the bones and changes you on the inside to have a doctor tell you that you have cancer and it is malignant. And it became a part of the story. Lisa became first a breast cancer survivor, and then… sadly… a victim. She died of cancer. Her husband, Les, took up the cause and started the Lisa’s Legacy Walk for the Cure which he pursued religiously every October. And Tom Batiuk made it real. You can donate real money to the real Lisa’s Legacy Fund. It is a cancer fund and fund-raising event that honors the struggle and death of a fictional character. It makes me cry again at this moment. They are real people to me, too, Tom.
…And it doesn’t end with Funky Winkerbean. Today’s re-blog of Stories From Around the World’s post does an absolutely wonderful job of encapsulating the essence of Lynn Johnston’s family comedy strip For Better or for Worse. This engaging story of a family who also grows up, changes, and shifts from one generation to the next also tore my heart out with the un-funny episode where the dog, Farley, saves youngest daughter April from drowning and then expires from the effort, dying a hero’s death. Another memory that causes me tears even today.
I do not regret reading comic strips. My life is richer for all the second-hand and third-hand experiences they have given me. Not just Popeye and Pogo and Beetle Baily making me laugh, but comic strips that make me weep as well.
Filed under cartoons, comic strips, humor
More Powerful than a Locomotive
There is an old saying… “What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.”
I have an addendum to add… “If what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, then I must be Superman!”
Lying here now in pain after having surgery this morning, that is exactly what I have been telling myself. No more Kryptonite today, thank you.
I may have mentioned before on this blog that I have six incurable diseases and am a cancer survivor since 1983. (If I haven’t mentioned it before, then it was only because I mistook complaining loudly and relentlessly about it for mentioning.) I have arthritis, diabetes, COPD, hypertension, psoriasis, and benign prostatic hyperplasia. Two of those diseases ganged up on me recently. I had a sebaceous cyst on my lower back that had gotten infected because psoriasis had flaked skin off the top of it until there was an ulcerated infected hole there and it caused me enough pain to prevent sleeping. (I know you didn’t really want to know about that… but. then, neither did I).
I got the thing surgically excised (whacked off with scalpel and scissors) and had the hole sewn back together with a few butterfly Band Aids slapped on the top. I had been given a topical anesthetic that deadened the nerves while I was being carved up, but wears off shortly after and then all the pain that has been saved up comes rushing back to fill the void. The doctor said I could take aspirin, but I have a big bottle of Aleve next to the bed for arthritis, and my body is so used to the medicine that I might just as easily have taken a sugar pill for the same effect. (Of course then my diabetes would come knocking on my brain.) So, I am in pain.
But less than an hour after surgery, I had to go in to the counselor’s office at school and discuss for 45 minutes the life-and-death future consequences of the schooling of one of three kids. It is no kind of chicken barbecue or country fair to have to explain to a school official everything you have been doing to solve the life-or-death problem for the kiddo while pain medication is wearing off and anesthetic is wearing off and patience is wearing off and mental acuity is disappearing faster than a rabbit-man can teach irony to middle-schoolers…. wait, what? Perhaps I should rest now and let the medicine do its work.
Naw, can’t do that. I’m Superman.
But, wait… wasn’t I Popeye just yesterday? Who the heck am I really? A goofy old writer-guy, most likely.
Expelling Evil (But Only If You Can Overcome Spelling Trouble) Part Two
In the last episode of Expelling Evil, Grammar Nazis, we saw the Captain Action Hero-Action-Guy Team move into Mickey’s Library with the speed of a Republican in Congress when there is legislation to be passed. The heroes were prepared to battle Dr. Evil and evil Dr. Evil’s evil minions. Captain Carl Action had encountered and pacified the evil minion known as the Agent in Red. He found ways to capture and interrogate her that, while not the least bit effective, were something that he really, really enjoyed.
So Carl, taking his time… an entire week if you can believe it! decided to extend his interrogation even longer, in spite of chapped lips and the total absence of lip balm. It was then that Colonel Komma and his evil Grammar Nazis decided to move in and attack the foolish hero-guy with Blitzkrieg word war.
It was true. I went back to that post and looked it up. The word wondrous was spelled w-o-n-d-E-r-o-u-s! Stupid Captain Carl! How could he be so heroically stupid? He let my wonderful, nearly perfect, purple paisley prose get possessed by a common, ordinary spelling demon. The Grammar Nazis had him in an impossible position. And his only response to the terrible situation? He misuses an apostrophe, placing it on a plural noun that is not possessive!
Then, just as Colonel Komma moved in for the editorial kill, Captain Carl came up with the perfect defense. He used his super-power of super stupidity as a shield. He successfully argued that you cannot be defeated by editing of your poor grammar if you don’t understand what they are talking about. Fortunes of war were suddenly reversed!
Captain Carl was not the only Captain Action present. Captain Bill Newguy Action stepped in to disarm the Grammar Nazi with his famous whack-a-doo smacketty-smack punch. The Grammar Nazis were defeated by the hypocrisy of trying to correct English grammar with such a thick accent that they were actually forcing the cartoonist to misspell stuff on purpose to accurately represent the weird sounds in their Grammar Nazi speech balloons.
Colonel Komma was no longer the kapturing konqueror he was hoping to be. Instead he had become the kaptured kook. But Mickey was still no nearer to having his X-Box back for playing EA Sports Baseball ’04. Dr. Evil still had control of that.
Oh, noooooo! Again!
Filed under cartoons, doll collecting, humor, Paffooney
Me, Myself, and It
I think it is provably true that any time an artist creates a work of art, it is actually a self-portrait. Did you see the works of Thomas Kinkade and Paul Detlafsen in my recent posts? Can I not effectively argue that those paintings give you a glimpse of the real person behind the paintbrush? Was Norman Rockwell not the man portrayed in all those lovely down-home, truly American oils he did? Was Theodor Giesel not also Dr. Seuss? Then I look back at some of the goofy pictures that I have created through the years and think, “Oh no! What have I done?” I sometimes think I don’t have to post nude selfies of myself for people to see me naked. Should I really have done that…? …Of course, I should! And that means I have seen William Shakespeare naked too! Good Golly! I have to quit thinking these goofy thoughts!
Filed under cartoons, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney
Can You Draw Happy?
I have had to report racing heartbeats every night since I’ve been wearing the monitor. It has been recording things that I have missed. But do I really have to worry? No. The doctor hasn’t called to say go to the emergency room. I am now waking up every day with more confidence. Yay! I am still not dead! Every day is a blessing. And there is treatment to help non-lethal tachycardia. I have reason to believe I won’t be dead tomorrow too. So I will keep on writing and living and living to write, and to honor that resolution I will share the happy-doodle Paffooney that I doodled this morning after waking up not-dead.
Catch a Falling Star 