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Way back in 1989, I joined up with other local cartoonists in a group formed by the few professionals in the area. Over the years, we did a couple of self-promotional comic books.
Earlier today, random circumstances and a few random clicks on my Wacom tablet (which gets a little squirrelly sometimes and clicks where I don’t intend) threw this into the corner of my vision. It’s our second promo comic! Still available on Lulu.com. In it, I teamed up with Adam Shaw to illustrate a translation I had made of Der Erlkönig. Not your typical comic book fare, I suppose, but it was fun. There’s a lot of other cool stuff in there, too.
Feel free to click on it and see if you’d like to add to your grand collection of Cravens Obscure Cartooning. You might even find a link to an earlier promo comic where I illustrated a thing called Flapdoodle. I liked it very much. I think the kindle version is free.
If you really want a challenge, you could try to find some of the old Caliber and Malibu comics I worked on. I spotted one for sale a while back. It’s an old Caliber Presents anthology with a Fugitive story in it. I did the cover, which was terrible, I think. Ah, youth. The Fugitive stuff was fun. It was a futuristic detective chasing an insane serial murderer through old TV shows. I can’t remember how many episodes we did, but there was a Rocky & Bullwinkle one, and Lassie, and Hogan’s Heroes, and Bewitched, and MTV, and Gilligan’s Island, and even Sesame Street that was a comment on the passing of Jim Henson. For Malibu, I worked on a Planet Of The Apes annual/anthology. It was fun, too. The penciller for a lot of that stuff was James Tucker (now of animated Batman fame.) He’s amazing.
On the other hand, if you want something a little fresher… or even more ‘underground’, depending on your definitions, you could go check out the first issue (and associated goods available) of the Ninja comic I worked on. It’s HERE. The site offer is a big ol’ bundle of stuff that gets shipped to you. It’s on the ‘adult’ side, so 18 and older only.
So, there I was, minding my own business, when I’m invited by my kid’s CLUE teacher from a couple of years back to come to the school where she’s teaching now.
And… get this… talk to the CLUE class about Cartooning.
Mind you, these are the smart kids, so heaven only knows why they’d want to know about expressing themselves through illustration…
So, I went, and handed out some handy, if slightly dated, handouts about how many different kinds of cartoonists there are… you can tell the age of the handout because it says something dumb like “CD/DVD covers” instead of “Podcast graphics”
And after I filled the kids with all the cartooning knowledge they could ever need (assuming they’ll ever need any) I left. Which gave Ms. Coates the opportunity to force the poor youngsters to draw EDITORIAL CARTOONS! Yes, the most despised kind of cartooning in repressive societies everywhere. The kinds of cartoons that regularly get Egyptian and Syrian cartoonists jailed and their families threatened.
Can you believe what freedom-loving hooey they let teachers pass on to our treasured offspring? Man, we better hope there’s no reactionary, ego-driven, heavy-handed regime takes root here or those kids are in for it.
Anyhow, here’s some photos!
Memphis Cartoonist Named to Board of National Cartoonist Society (NCS)
Memphis, TN: The National Cartoonist Society (NCS), formed just after WWII by cartoonists returning from USO tours to entertain U.S. troops overseas, has named Memphis-based cartoonist Greg Cravens to their incoming board of directors. The decision comes after Greg was the local coordinator of an NCS/St. Jude event last May. The event brought more than 200 internationally known cartoonists to Memphis to draw for St. Jude patients and to fundraise though a series of cartoon art auctions and live events.
Greg’s artwork is familiar to residents of the Memphis area over the past twenty-five years. He has illustrated advertising for FedEx, The Memphis Flyer, The Peabody, Rock 103, The Grizzlies, Redbirds, Shoney’s, Perkins, The Memphis Zoo, Jack Pirtle’s Chicken, Keras Chevrolet, and hundreds more businesses. Because of his work on the syndicated comic strip The Buckets, he was allowed to join the NCS in 2002, and shortly after was nominated for a Silver Reuben award for his work on the Memphis Flyer.
His duties for the NCS will involve screening new member applications. He will also take on duties for the NCSFoundation, which will involve more work with their children’s hospital program and their “Cartooning For Kids” events. He says, “I’m looking forward to more NCS events at St. Jude, and other children’s hospitals throughout the Southeast. Also, since I’m the only NCS member for a couple of hundred miles in any direction, I’m especially looking forward to seeing more members come here more often.”
Steve McGarry, president of the NCSFoundation, said, “He did a really great job with (NCS/St. Jude) logistics in Memphis and I’m sure we (the NCSF) will keep him busy.”
Information about the National Cartoonist Society can be found at www.reuben.org
Greg’s syndicated comic strip can be seen in newspapers in the U.S., Thailand, Australia, and at www.gocomics.com/thebuckets.
Webcomic Hubris! is at www.hubriscomics.com.
Advertising portfolio is at www.cravenscartoonist.com
