I drew this in homage to Lawrence Lee Dirk III’s Grim Bard. Last year at the CCS Telegraph Studio, he would warm up for drawing his comics by making self portraits in the adopted styles of his classmates, or eventually drawing the Bard inhabiting his piers’ comics. Then, I think he got back to doodling super heroes like a good member of the Merry Marvel Marching Society. I gave the image above to Law after he had whipped up this little number:

As a longtime superhero reader, Lawrence is a teasing student of showmanship and merchandising. He loves making peripheral products, like posters and plush dolls, archly posing himself as a snake oil salesman pushing his goods on unsuspecting kids.

I think some of his mocking commercialism rubbed off on my Baby Pat material, which has better allowed me to have my own way with autobiography, and I’d say the babies have been better for it. Memoir is a form I don’t take naturally to. It can feel desperate or needy to me for middle class white kids to slavishly record and draw their own unremarkable existence…but maybe I’d better back off that rant for now. Anyhow, our’s is a time of Self as Product.

So anyway, Lawrence countered with Wilma Whistlepig (of much Farmy Acres fame). And get this, he even cut out little stand legs for her so she could admonish me from next to my drawing table. I couldn’t best it. I haven’t. And then at the end of the year, he gave each of his classmates a mini of his complete, funny, Golden Book-sized The Grim Bard and the Immortal King’s Crescendo. So now I double owe him! I’ve also been having lots of fun following Law’s blog, even though I’ve seen everything he’s posted, just because he’s a delightful writer.

Well, after all this, my boyfriend Ben got a bit jealous and made a mashup with three of his own characters impersonating three of mine–one of whom has not yet even made her debut to the world outside White River Junction. (So look out, cause Anita’s cooommmmmin!!*)

I love Ben and I love his Grump Toast comics. From bottom-left that’s Unfortunate Face as Izzy, Asphalt Monroe as Anita and Pinky Palms as Steve. Ben actually drew this when I was pretty deep down in the dumps, feeling both stretched thin and disappointed in myself.

In particular, I felt like I’d stopped seeing any progress on Petrified Girlfriend. I’m in the middle, which people always say is the hardest part. I’m ready to persevere, now, and this week’s New Yorker profile on Pixar writer-director (/new-delver-into-live-action-adventure) Andrew Stanton was inspiring to me. The article [pay link, sorry], by Tad Friend, compares the Pixar production method with the old Studio System. I love sentimental Old Hollywood stuff, and I love most of Pixar’s movies. I want to keep sight of their spirit of upholding a duty to entertain, and to always edit, revise, and improve.

*To the tune of “Rosalita,” not “Santa Claus.” [BACK]

Here it is, folks. The culmination of a year’s work at the Center for Cartoon Studies. This thesis book wouldn’t be nearly as neat-o without the hard work of my best half, Caitlin. She diligently cross-stitched eight individual covers; three for the thesis committee,* one each for the library, archive and gallery,** one for CCS Director James Sturm and one for my masterful thesis advisor, Brett Warnock. Caitlin zipped through British Period Drama after British Period Drama while she embroidered, and would come home from work, cook, eat, and get right to business. She is a wonder and they look lovely.

The stitching on the front was based mostly some sample alphabets I found online. Thanks to flickr-er “superminx” for posting the inspiration for the shadowed title lettering. The single-thread  “comics by…” part I invented from whole-cloth, after seeing some examples of script and sans-serif lettering styles designed for gridded fabrics using a single thread, as opposed to a series of Xes.

The look of the front cover sorta dictated the design of the pages within. I chose Gotham Condensed Thin as my body type, since it feels like a cousin to that tall, skinny, humanist thread lettering that I made up.

Hicough & Belch in color, as they appear on Top Shelf 2.0.

Here’s a sneak peek at Petrified Girlfriend chapter 3: Invasive Species, which will come out in some form or another some time, I think.

And can’t for-get about the Farrrrm-yy Acres.

– – – –

*President Michelle Ollie, and cartoonist-instructors Alec Longstreth and Jason Lutes. Thanks to Alec for letting me keep his copy, and for looking forward to getting the individual books of the separate projects as they come out. Which, I assure you, he will, or my name isn’t…!

Aaaaahhh…whatever it is.

**Images from the CCS gallery show, featuring both original and finished art by each of the graduates, are up (thanks be to Josh Kramer) at the Summer Showcase blog. Lotssa talent and lotssa interesting work up there, my lovelies. (See if you can’t spot your red-faced Irish host, too. Oh, and his work.)

I confess, it took me a long time to sign on to this project, and even then I dragged my heels. It’s already been done, I said. And, why should we step on the ladies’ toes, I whined. But Josh Kramer can pursuade with a fearsome diligence unheard-of since Henry Clay. So, I contributed to the Beef Steak 2011 calendar. Canto made an impressive list of contributors (with links), and calendars are available from him and from Josh.

Each month pairs up to CCS (and environs) cartoonists drawing each other doing manly jobs. I was matched with Jesse Mead, a funny cartoonist and deft stylist, and we got the month of February. February is ripe with holidays to riff on, but what could be sexier than signing bills in the Oval Office on President’s Day? It must get all hot and steamy every time that quill touches parchment.

I know that maybe it’s unfair to consider the presidency a manly job, but that’s been the precedence so far. Maybe the Tea Baggers will get some sort of momentum behind a female candidate someday. You know, the kind who always talks about motherhood and promises to strip women’s rights in the uterus and at the workplace. The kind we can rally behind for promising to slash funding for needy families, like school lunches, head start and health care. Oh what a day that will be.

And his hands. He has the longest, cartooniest, expressive-est figners I’ve ever seen. Special bonus: they’re actually square at the end! Like a Kirby hand!!

To see my crowning Deitchievement, check out that Visiting Faculty, aight? And by the way, I keep forgetting to mention that Oak & Linden issue # 2 is now available at the shoppe. Keep your inner consciousness alert for #3, dropping in the fall.

James Sturm

James Kochalka

John Porcellino

Allison Bechdel

Dash Shaw

Seth

David Macaulay

And speaking of songs I love so much, I think its hilarious to think about any of the Jim Steinman Meatloaf lyrics literally. Such fraught, overwrought metaphors! Like this one.

Anyhow, I wish everybody could go to cartoon camp. We play soccer on Sundays and we draw comics for homework. There are only three bars in town and one is too snooty (but I work at it, which works out well for tips), and another too scary. So there is one bar filled with cartoonists. Even if it wasn’t for it’s Goldilocks just rightness, I think I would love this place. It’s in a basement and it’s named CJ’s. They do turn the lights on pretty bright for a bar though.

In other news, in cartoon studio, the class, we all wrote down an emotion, an animal and a job and then each got one of each. I got ebullient mouse barber. The consensus was that his ears could be rounder, so as to distinguish him from a gerbil or a Guinea pig. Check check: