Anyone who’s read a lot of Hubris, or even The Buckets knows that my favorite form of humor is when characters get upset about behavior that they themselves exhibit. Of course, if the characters seem to be doing it sarcastically, does that ADD a layer to the gag, or remove one? Oh, the existential angst of writing humor. Time to do a fart joke next.
Posts Tagged ‘Greg Cravens’
I’ve got this framed thing on the wall which looks like a shrine to my own ego. (Not true, of course. This website is the shrine to my own ego.)
Anyhow, this framed thing is, in fact, a teaching aid that grew into the idea for a cartoon art show.
The thing started life as the pile of stuff I showed at the beginning of cartooning classes. It’s the process by which comic strips can be efficiently produced. If you have to produce one for each day of the year, efficiency plays a part in whether you can entertain people properly. If you make your 365 cartoons inefficiently, it’s possible that you’ll start missing more deadlines than I do, and the final product won’t be as funny as comic strips have a reputation for.
It’s pure coincidence that I produce Hubris in the same way I do The Buckets.
The top panel (and I apologize for the color and photo quality. The thing’s behind glass, on the wall, and a lot of it’s in pencil. Plus I was using a crap camera.) is torn out of a sketchbook. It’s got the germ of three or four things that finally made it into strips, and a lot of lines and words that have had no value since. There are also some studies of hands, and a scribble that had been a phone number. Cool, right?
The next panel is a neat sheet that I print out. It’s got the outside dimensions of a Sunday comic printed on it. There are lettering guides printed on the sheet, so I can letter away to my heart’s content. Then erase it all when I realize that I hadn’t spent enough time on the script before I started lettering. It also has marks for quartered panels and for thirds, just in case I need those. They’re printed in blue and red, respectively. On this particular sheet, you can (nearly) see where I worked out the characters, the size of the panels, and all the usual junk.
The following panel is, of course, the final inks, which are done on a nice heavy sheet of paper cut to size and placed on a light table over the penciled page.
The last panel is the way the whole thing printed in the Sunday papers. Fun, huh?
Overlaying the whole photo is a reflection of me holding a camera. Unlike the funny stories that crop up on the internet, I am clothed while I took the photo. In men’s clothing. A whole set of them. Thank you.
Nearly time to get everyone running and jumping. Just had to throw Hubris another curveball first. So… Who IS going to be the medical expert at the OutdoorFest?
There’s always more Tom Foolery.
by Greg Cravens on May 1, 2012 at 4:53 amIt’s been a while since you’ve seen some Tom Foolery, or even more Tom Foolery… Well, we can fix that.
click on the cartoons to embiggen them.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before… more than ten times… but I occasionally do some fun covers for the local Free Paper. Here’s the latest:
Therm-a-Rest. Mmmmmm. One of the best purchases you can make for your camping trips. Other than, y’know… food. and sleeping bags. And those little powdered donuts. No… no. The Therm-a-Rest is better than the little powdered donuts.
Okay, so, ages ago when I first saw ‘self-inflating camping mattress’, I was hooked. What? No sitting around blowing up a sleeping pad? My dad had to do that. I recall a camping trip to Cumberland Caverns. My dad, sitting in a cave with what amounted to a heavy duty pool float, his mouth on a stem that was, frankly, made for attaching a bicycle pump, and blowing for all he was worth. This would have been 1973, and the air mattress was a big rubber thing with a polyester/nylon cloth glued to it. Real tough stuff… and heavy as lead, probably. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t drag the damned thing down into the bowels of the earth. Dad did, though. And blowing it up was, I’m sure, a complete chore for a smoker. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t dizzy myself horking a lung into the damned thing. Dad did, though.
I only remember us having two of those things. I don’t remember whether my brother and I got them to sleep on, or what other arrangements were made. It’s possible that Dad also dragged blankets and other heavy things down into Cumberland Caverns, and he got one of the coveted air mattresses. No idea about that. Too long ago.
Also too long ago, my wife and I purchased two Therm-a-Rest mattresses. We were newly married and camping with friends and doing fun things and I considered them a luxury, because all my college camping had been done rough and uncomfortable. But now older, wiser and with a wife to please, we got these wonderful high-tech sleeping pads that, if you opened their valves and left them to themselves, would eventually fill up with some air.
Honestly? Good purchase. They’re only an inch or so thick, but that’s padding, and they keep the cold of the ground from becoming the cold of your butt. And lightweight- or as lightweight as things were twenty years ago. Remember, say, cell phones, or heaven help us, computer monitors and TVs.
We had kids, and didn’t camp so much. When the kids were old enough, we’d take them along and suddenly there was math involved. ”Two sleeping pads divided by three people… oh, four now…” Didn’t add up, you see.
Somewhen around then, my wife had acquired for herself a giant gooshy, squooshy sort of a Wal-Mart kind of sleeping pad. It, like the Therm-a-Rests, came rolled up and seemingly ready to head out into the wilderness, but it was a little on the sizey size. Took up a LOT of room, compared to the Therm-a-Rests. That’s okay. If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, as the saying goes.
And me? I got a smaller Therm-a-Rest. It’s length was the same as our ancient patched old Therm-a-Rests, but the width was termed ‘BackPacker’. And it may be a little thinner. Nevertheless, It seemed like a hot deal. The technology had improved a great deal! My new day-glo (is that still a term?) mat was easily packed and easily blown up.
* A side note here about Therm-a-Rests. You should store them filled and flat, it seems. I’ve usually stored mine deflated and rolled up. The more you do that, the more you’re going to have to refer to the beginning of this story and my Dad busting a lung trying to inflate air pads while complaining about air pads and needing a smoke. They need some inflating after being trained to be unflated. Word to the wise. Or at least to the wiser-than-me*
Now, a few weeks ago, my wife had to have a new sleeping pad. Her giant squashy thing finally went to the great Storage Shed in the Sky. The little quilted circles that went up and down the pad started to pop loose when you inflated it. The first couple to let go were at one end, so that end became the ‘pillow’, and so it gained a little time. Then it started popping in the middle. Suddenly the pad itself was like sleeping on gently rolling ground. And putting pressure on it could result in new hillocks and hummocks being suddenly precipitated. And what puts pressure on a sleeping pad? That’s right. Lying down on it. Pow! Oof! Not the best way to sleep.
So back to the Outdoor Store! My wife picked out a new pad that is the same width as my backpacker size, but it’s thicker. It’s nearly two inches, I think. Very luxurious. It’s light. It packs down very nicely. It has a sort of rubber-coated valve. We’ll see how that weathers. It’s already irretrievably dirty, after three campouts.
So my kids have inherited these giant old Therm-a-Rests but will no doubt want new ones one day… or, more likely, they’ll abscond with my day-glo pad and their mother’s new pad. After all, to the kids, there’s FOUR pads in the house and they’ll only need TWO. That’s easy math, right?
Someone kick that darned cat out of the cradle.
Wanna shop you a Therm-a-Rest? Click on the air mattress below. Tell ‘em Hubris sent ya. That always baffles ‘em.

Conflict of interest? Ha. That, thinks Paste, is for lesser mortals.
So, the pieces of the story are filtering together. Hope you’re enjoying seeing the puzzle fall into place. Then, once we have the puzzle all finished, we’re gonna blow it up, set fire to it, film the whole thing happening and then do slo-mo replays. Backward.



















