Here is another comic from my early days as an artist.
It is…(vaguely)… interesting for a few reasons…
My spelling was still atrocious, but my art skills were slowly improving, just from the time I spent doing it. It’s funny how that works.
Each piece of art you undertake reveals a little bit of your soul. You learn about art as art learns about you, sort of. You are reaching inside of yourself and drawing something out… (That was a pun)…
I was beginning to get in touch with my surreal side.
A comic is a wonderful thing, because it doesn’t really have to make any sense.
No one cares if you combine humor with politics and sci fi aliens with animals. There are no rules.
Go ahead, write with cactus letters. No one will hold it against you.
Feel free to slip in some heavy messages camouflaged by the pretty pictures and bright colors. Things that would stand out if you said them in a conversation, and maybe shock your audience, might just make them think, if they don’t know that is what you are trying to make them do… Try reading the Pogo Possum comics of Walt Kelly. I think they are from the 1940s. The political humor is amazing. He is slamming the establishment from the mouths of the cute swamp creatures of Okefenokee swamp. Check it out.
I even threw in a free maze. What do you know?
Just free form it. Let yourself go. Try some optical illusions. And draw lots of inanimate objects. The practice will always pay off.
I said this was interesting for a few reasons. One reason is that I actually finished this project before starting three or four more. Or so I thought, until I noticed that on the last page I promised to do a part two. And I never did. Oh well.
I do like the title. The Comic To End All Comics. Whatever mistakes my parents may have made raising us boys, low self-esteem was not one of them.



















And more improvement. Your drawings are better and the details really catch my attention, like the sailboat and water and then the pillows on p4.
How old were you for this one?
Maybe 15, 16. Not exactly sure…
Dear pmao,
I wish I had your talent for drawing.
Love Dotty xxx
It just goes to show that it’s a lot easier to say things in a cartoon than it would be in “serious” writing. Of course, I’m very serious about whimsy, myself. Hope you’re still drawing in addition to writing. I think that drawing (by hand with real pens or pencils, no less) opens up the mind more than clicking away on the keyboard of a computer. Ok, Ok, I’m doing that now, but if I knew how to put a drawing in my comment I would do that instead.
and I want to see part 2 as well.
I just started with my earliest work because this is sort of a history of my life and how art took it over an destroyed it… sigh… The good news is that I have only been blogging two months or so, so it is not as long as it is going to be.
Art has a way of doing that….
Now I just want to see part two
Heh, “Who gave the authority to those who want to question authority?”
Ja, that was one of my favorite lines, too. That and referring to humans as “fellow prisoners of gravity.”
I don’t know what I like more, the actual sketches or what’s in them. A banana in space? I’m trippin
I grew up in Berkeley in the 60s and 70s. The odds are that I really was trippin’.