I can’t recall inking and posting this one. You guys seem to recall everything I’ve ever done effortlessly- does anyone remember this one?
6 Comments
Comic
2378 comics.
Did you ever listen to the comedy albums that made Bob Newhart famous? He had this thing where he’d do half a conversation, and your brain sort of filled in whatever else was needed.
You might also have wondered why I didn’t weigh in so much when everyone was guessing who called Hubris right before lunch. I figured you needed your three guesses.
Today’s cartoon is a case of cross-pollenating. I was writing gags for my newspaper strip The Buckets, and somehow, “Rowed Rage” came up. Well, it’s a bit forced for The Buckets, but by golly it works pretty well here!
Sometimes it’s easiest to draw noise without any sort of written sounds. Weird.
The cartoons are awfully wordy the last couple of days.
I remember being a kid and reading the newspaper comic strips every day. Not all of them. Doonesbury was one I typically didn’t read because it had too many words. I guess if I wasn’t spoiled for choice, I’d have read it no matter what. Back then, I read anything that had a cartoon aspect to it. Ernie Ball Strings & Things catalogs had a cartoon feature in them of an Eagle and his son explaining the guitar business. I didn’t know diddly about guitars and stuff, but by golly, I read and re-read that stuff ’cause it was well-drawn cartoons.
I saw the Ernie Ball material at my dad’s store over the summer holidays when I was too young to be left on my own, both parents were working and anyone else who could look after my brother and me were otherwise occupied. That’s also where I first saw a Doonesbury treasury book. Big thick book full of comic strips. Amazing. One of the guitar teachers had brought it in. I ignored it as long as I could but after a certain point, it was a book full of comic strips. It had to be read, and I had a summer in a store full of stuff I didn’t know diddly about.
And that’s how I lost my fear of “too-wordy” comic strips. The book was the one where, lost in the midst of all the other cartoons, an American couple adopts a Vietnamese baby, who cries about the black specks in her oatmeal ’til it’s pointed out that they’re just raisins. Doonesbury-style, she looks back into the bowl thinking, “I thought that was shrapnel.” The baby’s name was Kim. I’m convinced that she eventually became the Kim that Mike Doonesbury married and started the Mikim company with. That comic strip has been telling stories for a long, long time.
Makes Hubris’ six years and piddly few words seem like a drop in the ol’ bucket.
This one’s weird. This is the original idea page that went to the syndicates. I repurposed the gag in another setting when it ran here on the Hubris site, so it would fit into a storyline. You can tell this version is just a gag-a-day version. The characters’ personalities are well represented, though. And this was when Hubris still held firmly to his name. The gag may have been a little forced when it fell into the storyline, but I think it worked. I doubt any of you looked at it back then and said, “Heeeeey, this is just some joke he wedged into this story!” You tell me.
“Why” is sometimes a question that can shorten the heck out of a conversation. I mean, some of the videos on those old TV shows that were just collections of videos… (and the ones on Facebook now) are things you can’t question if you don’t want the magic taken away. For instance, I watched a video collage (is that what you call those? The ones that have a series of little videos strung together into one larger, funnier video) the other day of people doing face plants in various places.
One of the face plants was a woman going down an escalator and suddenly, whump, she goes down and scatters herself badly by the time she gets to the bottom of the moving stairs. Fine. But then you ask “Why”.
As in, “Why was there someone video-ing this woman (from behind) going down what is apparently an airport escalator?” It’s not security video. There’s no one else in frame. There’s nothing especially engaging about the woman one way or the other. But the video shows us this spectacular stumble and splatter… halfway down the escalator. Why, when the first half of the escalator ride was so uneventful, would someone continue video-ing this person… Unless she and the videographer had agreed beforehand that she would do something interesting on the ride down?
So here WE are with Lowell confronting the question, “Why”.
Let’s see if he can prove the videographer to be essential to the process.
I was going to make some sneaky comment about where the Code is plagiarized from, but you guys know pretty much everything I try here, so I’ll let you reveal it in the comment section.
You know that weird sense of decade that you get as you watch old movies? More and more, you see stuff in movies where you go, “Why didn’t they just pull out a cell phone and…” And then you remember that we, as a species, have not been able to capture random events going on anywhere we like, or call for help while in nearly any place we choose, or google when a movie was made and go “Oh, my God… Was that really THIRTY YEARS ago? I could have sworn this movie was only five years ago.”
So, in a few years this comic will seem so weird. “Why wouldn’t they let people with recording gear around? It’s not like the SmartWalls weren’t recording every event in human history, right? When was this comic made, anyhow?”
… To continue…
We left off the story as I was five hours at the airport trying to get to either San Jose or Monterey. Either would do, but of course there were complications.
So here’s some advice. Ship your caricature stand instead of flying with it. Paper (and a drawing board) is heavy. Easels, even the ones that collapse down for travel, are large. Ship them. It solves a lot of problems. First, it means you can take smaller luggage. I still didn’t want to pack a couple of nice suits in a tiny carry-on, but I COULD have. Secondly, it means that the people who are X-Raying your suitcase don’t see something that looks at a glance like a small Gatling gun. And when that’s beside a double handful of markers, those markers suddenly look suspiciously like high caliber ammunition. Thirdly, it means that, if your flight goes utterly squiffy, you don’t have to worry about getting your stuff at the other end- that’d be the shipper’s problem. Yes, the hotel will charge you to keep them for you until you arrive, but trust me. Sweating it out over hours at an airport is less zen than shipping that stuff on ahead.
Also, I should point out that when two or three gate agents are scrambling around trying to get you to Monterey (with special attention for making sure your luggage gets there too somehow) remind them constantly that it’s Monterey CA, not Monterrey Mexico. If they get a consternated look on their faces and ask another gate agent for help because the flight they try to get you on kicks out of the system every time, you might say something like, “You’re not trying for Monterrey Mexico again, are you?” and they’ll smack their foreheads and say, “Hang on… let me……….” and they’ll be back on track trying to get you where you’re going.
Another thing not to do, in a tizzy about not making your caricaturing event that evening, is text both your client and the Big client that the flight’s already gone bananas and you’re looking for alternative in an attempt to make the event in time. Text your client and leave the Big Client, who is technically NOT your client, out of it until your client handles that. I’m an idiot.
So. They finally scrapped my flight, but I was already pre-booked on two others by the time that was official. Off I went to Dallas for a layover. I would not make that evening’s event, but the following day had two events. I would make those. Surely. Right?
Should I point out now that I have only once had a layover in Texas that didn’t go utterly nutzy-coocoo? I’m talking random hours-long delays, snow delays (which they don’t handle well in Texas), a hurricane, and a guy who had a heart attack and dropped dead sitting next to my wife. Texas layovers are cursed.
But on to Dallas! I had a two hour layover there, which I hoped would be long enough to get me there in time to make the second leg of the flight, and short enough that the world didn’t have time to plan to explode or something.
Ta-daaaaa! I made it. And the next leg of the flight got me to San Jose. I can now answer the song’s question. Yes, I technically DO know the way to San Jose. I don’t like it much, but I know the way. And that’s where the rental car was arranged for, so that’s a plus, right?
And I will continue this story later.
