Okay, Ed, here you go.
For anyone who doesn’t read the comments under the cartoons, Ed suggested I send Hubris skydiving. I’ve shied away from it so far because I haven’t been skydiving myself, and I don’t like to misrepresent how things should look or do superficial humor about a fun sport- anyone can do superficial gags about a subject. I prefer to dig deeper. The folks who read my family-based strip The Buckets might say I occasionally wander too deep and pass by the poor folks who haven’t raised kids themselves.
Long story only slightly shorter- This cartoon was probably sketched up in 2002 or 2003 as part of a package to show a particular editor how many directions the strip could go. It sat sketched until now. I think it may be shallow- meaning there may be a dozen similar cartoons done over the years, familiar to skydivers as the sort of cartoon that only skims the surface of their hobby without saying anything interesting.
I’ll let Ed say how well I did. Ed- please forgive the fact that there’s no interior of the plane- I needed to isolate the characters’ feet visually, so I purposely didn’t clutter that area. As for any research I did into the harness or the landing gear, the goggles or the jumpsuits… I have no memory of it, so I may have done none. I dunno.
I figure next summer, I should skydive a time or two, then we’ll send Hubris up again. Til then, if you have an interesting point to make about skydiving, let me know it- I’ll see if I can make a funny out of it.
They’re going to miss the dropzone. Great cartoon Greg, very funny.
After you skydive, you’ll have enough material for a series of cartoons.
From the prejump instruction, the nervous jitters as you board the plane, to the what the hell was I thinking, before you go out the door.
You can even joke with the instructors. I asked if I should tip the person that packed the parachute. Well, you tip the pizza guy, and your life isn’t in his hands.
Thank you, for running this cartoon. It’s cool that you take suggestions from comics fans. Even ones that like superficial humor.
Thank you again.
Skydiving isn’t something I do often. It was just something I wanted to check off of my bucket list. I made my first jump when I turned 40, I jumped again at 45 and 50, Next up 55.
I’ve known a couple of hardcore jumpers- One’s a cartoonist, too! Jack Cassady (whose link is to the left over there) Another was a client, with whom I had a joking competition about whose hobby was better, his skydiving or my kayaking. And a young kayaking hotshot I know started skydiving a while back. Maybe he can tell me where the best place is to go for jumping. I know one more guy whose bucket list included skydiving, so he did it recently- Tim Oliphant, yet another cartoonist (weird how I know so many of those. ‘Bout time I did something that crazy… and did some more in-depth cartoons about it.
Greg – when ever you’re ready to jump, I’ll take the plunge with you man! I’ve always wanted to sky dive… I’m just too chicken sh*t!!!
Awesome cartoon though, and I appreciate your hard work, and your listening to your fans.
Next up: spelunking in Ontario’s “Rattlesnake Point”.
Ooooh, SchpeeeeLooooonkin’. I love it. But don’t you know NOT to crawl into any dark thing with the name ‘Rattlesnake’ in it?
Greg, hahahaha I tend to agree with you, but it was freakin’ AMAZING to do. Also, I didn’t see any rattle snakes in the 10 hours I was in the conservatory area.
On my Grand Canyon tour, my buddy Mike wanted to see a Grand Canyon rattlesnake- they’re supposed to be pink, and there’s a lotta jokes there, but them’re for later y’unnerstand. After two weeks out there, we finally got to see one. We had to poke our heads into a cave-ish sort of crack in the rock, which I wasn’t fond of, but I’m glad to have seen the thing.