I get to see Bill Holbrook now and again. Bill’s one of those superheroes of cartooning- syndicated, and early adapter to webcomics- doing THREE daily comic strips for many years now. I got a bug the other day and doodled up his cute Dethany character dressed up for Gothmas. Here’s the art. And you can click HERE to go to the fan art page on his site!
Here’s the logo for the next Hubris book. Thought you might like to see it.
This past weekend, I was at the Ohio State University Festival of Cartoon Art at their newly built facility, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.
Whew! It was the eleventh tri-ennial Festival, and it was great. The facility has been years in the making, and while there is a little work to be done to finish the building, and there were lots of guys in hard hats working diligently the whole time of the Festival, that’s cool. Very few buildings have been done on time in the history of mankind.
The only real question is- Is it funnier if the building’s not yet finished inside, or would it be funnier if it was? That’s important to that many cartoonists and researchers.
Yes, there were cartooning history researchers there… from at least five countries. Cool, no? Might even be funny, in the right light.
Anyhow, here are some photos I took. If you click on them, you get to see them larger.
There are even some names you might recognize in there. In the third photo down, that’s Mort Walker- who originated ‘Beetle Bailey’ and ‘Hi and Lois’ and whose family continues to do the strips. In the next photo down you have Dan Thompson, Chris Sparks, Norm Feuti, and Mark Parisi. In the following photo, aside from University dignitaries and Philanthropists to whom we owe much, are Jenny Robb and Lucy Caswell, for whom all cartoonists and cartooning academics everywhere have a warm, soft spot in our hearts and lives. They were about to cut the ribbon on the fine new $13,000,000.00 facility. After that, you get to see Dave Kellett and Brendan Burford. Then, the panel of folks who talked about the really terrific new documentary STRIPPED- That’s Dave Kellett again, Fred Schroeder, Dylan Meconis, Hilary Price, and Patrick McDowell.
If you don’t already know all these people, I urge you to bone up on your cartoonin’ knowledge and google ‘em. I deliberately left off the features that most of the cartoonists do and the syndicate that one fella edits in, so you can guess if you have the chops, or you can look ‘em up and expand your world. Discovery Educates.
Did I mention that I got to hang out with cartoonists in Knoxville the other weekend? Here’s Guy Gilchrist- cartoonist, musician, sculptor, public speaker, marketing dude and all-around cool joe. He’s drawing Nancy… ’cause he does the comic strip ‘Nancy’ now. It was originated by Ernie Bushmiller about a bazillion years ago, you young’uns.
The guy in the background is not Guy. It’s Tim Oliphant! Hi, Tim!
So, TSOJ sent in this neat thing- the Invisible Bike Helmet. It’s a little misnamed. I’d have called it the AirHeadBag. But then it wouldn’t sell as well.
Click HERE to watch!
