Heeeey, this ‘Naming Rights’ thing has promise… What if you guys woke up one day and were reading “WalMart Presents Greg Cravens’ comic strip, “Buying Stuff Is Fun” brought to you by MeUndies” one day? Ooooh, all that WalMart money, and corporate humor, filtered through committee… what FUN!
Remember being a kid in elementary school? They’d try to get you to write stories, sometimes in little books made from folding over some ‘typing paper’ (now ‘copier paper’) and using a sheet of construction paper for a cover. Well, I remember it, and that’s what we’re talking about today. I remember some girl being very proud of her story about a bunch of kids who solve mysteries. She asked two or three people to sketch up their idea for the cover of her book, and she’d decide who’d draw the cover.
In case you hadn’t surmised already, I, like some of you were, perhaps, was the “class artist”. For those of you who were NOT the class artist, it’s a heavy burden. Well, no, it’s not. It’s an ego trip is what.
For the aforementioned Mystery Kids cover illustration, which featured a cave in the title I can’t recall, I drew a mysterious looking cave. I had been to quite a few caves. Carlsbad Caverns, Ruby Falls Cave, Mammoth Cave, and I’d even camped out in Cumberland Caverns with the Indian Guides Father/Son group. I knew me my caves, you betcha. The cave I drew was at the bottom of a large rock wall with creepers all over it. There were bones and stuff in front of the rocky black hole that was the entrance to the mysterious cave. Being the class artist, I was confident that my sketch would be prized above all others, exciting comment about how perceptive and well-schooled I was in both mystery and caveishness.
The writer picked a different sketch by a friend of hers. This friend had drawn what looked like a muddy igloo with, I swear to you, footprints all around the entrance. It wasn’t a cave! It was a lumpen mound with a hole in it! And how the hell did those footprints get up and around the sides of the hole? Some guy lying on his back sticking his giant feet all around the door to his stupid mud igloo? Idiotic.
So, while drawing this week’s cartoons (and the extras) I have continually flashed back to fourth grade and being snubbed for my cave art, which is not to be confused with art in a cave. You can’t go home again, but by Golly, it’ll sure as heck stay in the back of your head for your whole life.
I’ve also flashed back to a lot of smaller caves and water-cut spots I’ve been to since 4th grade, but that’s a whole ‘nother set of silly stories.
If you can’t give your Professional Opinion in good conscience, how would you feel about giving your Opinion of Profession? Oops. Too late. Lowell offered his Fact of Profession. Never mind.
More importantly, here’s an extra cartoon for you this week! I’ve owed you guys a couple of extra for a few months, since some folks hit the Tip Jar a while back. Sorry it took so long. The windup to this story arc has been building for a long time, though, and since the scripts were writ, and the art got done (somehow) you get TWO new freebees this week. And MY conscience is better.
And here we are with the phone conversations again. If you watch Bond movies and all that, phone calls are dynamic things, made just before, and cut off during, explosions or something. Maybe I need more explosions. I’ve already said that I love the original Bob Newhart comedy routines where he supplies half of a conversation (Phone call, intercom on a submarine, whatever) and you get to fill in the action. But Bob didn’t draw those bits. They were audio humor. I gotta keep these characters off the phone.
Some of you who’ve been kind enough to drop a buck or three into the tip jar, and then provide me a mailing address that I didn’t subsequently mislay, are receiving a few of the new Hubris stickers. (Sorry for the delays. Some of you have been waiting almost a year, I think.) If you donated to the cause and you haven’t received stickers, let me know. There’s a ‘contact’ button and an ’email’ button for your convenience.
And, of course, the tip jar is still there when you click the ‘You & Hubris’ button over there on the left hand side of the screen. Make sure you leave me your mailing address if you donate.
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