Don Rosa

Don Rosa is a cartoonist, well known for his Donald Duck comic books. His stories have a worldwide following and are highly regarded. He produced extremely detailed drawings and his plotting was equally extravagant.

He has written an heartfelt essay about his retirement from drawing linked here. In it he discusses his love of what he got to do for a living, and at the same time the costs it has had on him emotionally, physically and monetarily, working in a system where he earns not a single penny for any reprints or reuse of his work.

Below are two quotes which will resonate for many cartoonists, illustrators and writers I know.

“This is one of the personal problems I brought into my comics career — too much enthusiasm. It’s an aspect of my personality that I don’t know how to do anything without letting it consume me.”

“I don’t know if you have a similar expression in your countries, but I am what is referred to here as a workaholic. I am incapable of relaxing. Inactivity makes me feel nervous and somehow “guilty”.”

Read Full Post »

Animation Monday

To continue a discussion from last week, there have been quite a few feature films based on picture books. At first this seems an odd combination. A picture book is constructed to be short, clean, almost zen like. These days picture books books longer than 900 words are rare.

Some picture books are high concept and speak a cinematic language. For instance, as was brought up in the discussion, Chris Van Allusburg books have been turned into live action feature films. Jumanji (Jumanji 2 which was not based on a book, but an extension of the film), The Polar Express and Zathura are big spectacle, Hollywood films. Am I forgetting one?

Visit Chris Van Allusburg’s site here.

And Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things are was another live action adaptation in the past few years.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was an animated feature that differed greatly from the picture book by Judi and Ron Barrett. But they kept the million dollar idea, food falling from the sky.

Then you have The Dr. Seuss film library. The Lorax is the most recent animated adaptation, but I haven’t seen it yet. So I can’t make fun of it or tell you how wonderful it is. Each time they released a trailer it looked better to me. But they were making Seuss films way back in 1953. The 5,000 fingers of Dr. T is not based on a book (I don’t believe) but The good Dr. wrote the film himself. I’ve never made it through a whole screening. He was wise to stick with picture books.

For many, including myself, the best adaptation of Seuss is still the Chuck Jones directed, animated TV special from 1966. That Grinch is the one and only Grinch to me. I am too scared by the posters to watch the Jim Carey version.

Looking at even smaller scale origins for feature films you can find many films and TV shows/specials based on comic strips. The comic strip Peanuts by Charles Schulz has been turned into numerous films and of course the TV specials still air and draw huge ratings. They also adapted Li’l Abner into a film and a broadway play. The list of adapted comic strips is pretty long from Little Orphan Annie to Garfield.

Titles like Prince Valiant (film released in 1954) stayed in the public eye all the way from the golden age of comic strips to the 1970′s.

And the list of comic books turned into films or TV shows…well you can research that yourself! 

So feature films have looked for inspiration from picture books, comic strips, graphic novels and of course comic books for a long time. It shouldn’t be a surprise to see them continuing to do it. And these days having a title with some preexisting market awareness probably trumps a lot of original but unexposed ideas in Hollywood.

Read Full Post »

Halloween humor…

Happy almost Halloween!

Maybe this cartoon is too subtle…a few people I’ve shown it to mentioned that it took them a moment to get it. Let me know if you think it’s an issue. I thought it was pretty clear. But then again, I think vampires trying to order ice cream is funny anyway…

Read Full Post »

Sign Dining in Oregon

The New York Times had an OP-ART piece by Ben Schott that examined the hand signals used by a famous restauranteur in New York’s Stork Club. He updates it with hand signals utilized at a modern day restaurant, Eleven Madison Park. It’s a beautifully designed and oddly hypnotic page.

I reproduced the piece here (as well as linking to it in the passage above).

My memories of the subtle body language used in the restaurants I worked in are below.

Read Full Post »

Comic Strip Pages of America – rejoice!

I haven’t been too kind to comic strips. I love the art form, have read them all my life (produced a few mediocre ones) but I have come to dislike the current state of most newspaper comic pages. A big part of this is that they continue to run amazingly old and outdated material. Strips repurposed with new artists and writers, strips from dead people, strips that have been running for 90 years.

Let me make myself clear. I very much love and appreciate old comic strips. I have collections of almost all of them including Dick Calkins oddly lovable Buck Rogers interpretation (I grew up reading that giant tan collection of Buck Rogers Strips). I loved Prince Valiant when drawn by Hal Foster, I was amazed as anyone by Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon (at times almost too elegant to work on a comics page). I can even read the occasional collection of  Li’l Abner, though it hasn’t aged well. I still refer to Walt Kelly’s masterpiece Pogo and that’s not even listing the modern strips I enjoyed like Calvin and Hobbs, Peanuts (when it ran the first time) and Hagar (15 years ago). And today we have a few real winners (LOVE Cul de Sac).

(And by the way it tells me something that I still consider Peanuts a modern comic strip)

But too much of most comics pages are given over to work that should have retired years ago. By clinging to the ancient hits, the newspapers killed off generations of good new work. And then you have things like Garfield, which are not so much a strip as a marketing exercise (Garfield should pay newspapers to run it, as it is only an ad for merchandise and media. It’s quality as a comic strip is nill).

So I am quite happy to read that they are retiring that golden oldie, who hit it’s stride during and after the Great Depression, Little Orphan Annie. Harold Gray’s original strip was on the delightful side, at least when he wasn’t rebuking New Deal politics. It was good in 1924, great in 1933 or so, and since…well. I’ll say no more.

The newspaper comics page epitomize the newspaper industry. By doing so little for so long, by refusing to change with the times in any way, they have allowed the art form of syndicated comic strips to mostly die. They helped kill the baby they delivered. Most popular culture art forms change with the times. The comics page is still mostly holding onto a collection of work that would interest only a comics art collector or nostalgia hound.

There is no doubting that Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson did the right thing. He retired, he retired the strip. Making room for new material. If only a few more creators would have done that instead of milking the form for every last cent, the comics may have had a future.

Read Full Post »

Bill Watterson Interview

A new interview (short interview) with Bill Watterson by John Campanelli at the Cleveland Plain Dealer site.

Read Full Post »

Something a little different…

I’ll return to regular programming in a day or so…or after comic-con. The Health Care ‘debate’ really confuses me, as it seems to be a lot of smoke and mirrors to defend particular players in an industry that is ripe for profit growth. Here’s some thoughts on the issue, I don’t know the answers, I don’t have a PHD in Health Economics and Societal Impact of Medical Industry Profits and Free Market Nirvana after all. Click on the images to see them larger and actually legible.

Read Full Post »

Willamette Writers

I’ve been invited to speak at the Salem Willamette Writers chapter on May 14th. I’ll be talking about writing for children across media. What does that mean? Good question! I created the title of the talk, now I better develop the content.

Actually I have  strong opinions about the quality and variety of content available for children. And I take the subject pretty seriously. Anything that can help introduce kids to reading and thinking before the video game companies get their claws into them is a worthwhile cause. I’m starting to think TV is better than video games. There’s a topic to get emails about.

Of course I always read about how video games help with eye-hand-coordination. I think it was Mark Evanier that once wrote about this subject – that he was unaware of children being so bad with eye-hand coordination they needed all the ‘help’ that video games were offering. The immersive nature of video games is addictive. It’s got width but little depth. That’s true of 99% of all action films made as well. So it’s not like it’s a new issue in mass entertainment. Of course having access to video games every minute of every day, no matter where you are, adds a new dimension. My Dad reminds me when he was young people were out in force fighting against the evil of Pinball machines. They were, apparently, laying waste to the youth of his generation. The more things change…

That was a tangent. But a pretty interesting topic in itself. At the meeting on May 14th I plan on discussing how I developed my graphic novel and how it ended up at  Chronicle Books. What went into the initial materials for the editor and what didn’t. I’ll  discuss the picture book I just illustrated for Tricycle Press and a new picture book I am developing. I’ll also get into how production of TV animation for kids works. How concepts are developed and what the process looks like for writers in that part of the industry. I also look forward to answering questions from the audience. I’ll bring along a collection of show-and-tells.

You can read about the event here and if you find yourself looking for something to do on May 14th, and aren’t too far from Salem, Oregon – stop by.

Read Full Post »

Comic Strips – Better or Worse?

The comic strip debate continues.

One of my favorite strips of all time has been Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse. It’s been running a story structure for, what, 29 years now? I read it when I was a kid, a teen, in college and now as a father. That’s a pretty good sign that the strip has legs.

But, she’s retired and the syndicate worked out some kind of deal with her to rerun old strips, add in some new art from time to time, and maybe new copy as well. It’s as if George Lucas has taken over comic strips now and we are going to get the ‘revised’ versions with better special effects…but it was the story I cared about Goerge!

Anyway.

I’m not happy about this because (as you know  I ramble on about this quite often)  I think this type of behavior really screws up the entire medium of comic strips. An art form badly in need of a kick in the pants instead gets – more of the same. Reruns of old strips and artists replacing old dead artists, and kids taking the strips from dad ETC.

This would be OK if papers offered an ever growing number of pages of comics. But they don’t. The fact that so many strips refuse to die means good, new, exciting strips have nowhere to go. It’s a bad thing for cartoonists, for newspapers and for the reading public. Innovation comes when new people pick-up an art form. Pixar to Disney in the 1990′s. When Peanuts (the comic strip) started running in papers compared to the long-in-the-tooth story strips. If you want new, exciting comic strips, that means – we need to SEE new, exciting comic strips.

There is one newish strip I actually look forward to reading. Richard Thompson’s Cul De Sac. What if this great new strip ends up in only 25 papers because old strips never die? People don’t get to see it. Readers never exposed to it. Not because so many GREAT strips are running, but because so many formerly great strips just won’t go away. I hope that Cul De Sac is getting out there and finding a home.But if it isn’t, well, we know why. All those strips from the 1930′s – still running!

Is the comic strip reading public going to have only antiques to read? With all these old strips hanging around, how do new cartoonists have a chance of getting their work seen and get paid? I mean, the web has some nice offerings, but for the most part the money isn’t their for people to spend full time doing a strip for their website.

I guess the syndicates have the most to lose if this kind of behavior is curtailed. They can keep thee revenue streams alive, strips they developed 30 years ago that do nothing but bring in profit. If they actually had to compete in the market with new ideas and fresh strips, oh my god…another syndicate MIGHT get that spot on the page.

Papers are blind to the damage, and thus they continue their dog paddle into the deep end of the irrelevant pool of media. Having given-up, for the most part, on having real, local news to pull readers in, they buy mostly AP and syndicated materials and reprint 100 year old comics. Yeah, that’s a sure way to stay relevant.

Anyway, I’ll miss For Better or For Worse. Great strip, one of the greatest. I’ll look in on it and see what I think. I have a feeling it will be like having endless leftovers. Pork Roast again…I mean, it WAS great last night, but again? And again? And again?

Read Full Post »

newspapers should get paid to run comic strips

I know more than a few cartoonists read his blog and we exchange emails. So what I am going to propose here is not me trying to undermine the comic strip business. It’s just…an idea. Really a question. Maybe it’s dumb…

Why shouldn’t newspapers be collecting fees from syndicates for continuing to expose comic strip in their pages? The strip is really an entertainment brand and the newspapers are paying to expose this brand to a given population on a daily basis.

Considering that newspapers are having a hard time making money, advertising is shrinking (I guess the comic strips being in a paper doesn’t stop advertisers from finding other venues to spend in). So why should a newspaper PAY to continue to expose a brand, like say, Garfield? A strip like Garfield is a media empire, and it makes millions. Papers pay to expose that brand to readers on a daily basis. Garfield is an ad for the Garfield Brand and I think papers should charge for that space, just as they would any other advertiser. In the old days newspapers would have biding wars for a comic strip because it drew readers. That is not true anymore and papers need to change their thinking.

I recently read that Garfield (can’t be killed with stakes, silver bullets or garlic. Cats really do have 9 lives) is headed back on-air on cartoon network to inflict pain on minors and adults who watch cartoons. It got me to thinking…Garfield runs in like 200 bazillion papers in this country…well, there aren’t 200 bazillion papers LEFT in this country, as they are going out of business and going bankrupt. But it still runs in lots. Basically the strip is a daily ad for the Garfield Entertainment Brand. Right? Every day Garfield gets infront of, some number of eyes (quickly dwindling numbers of eyes) and collects money from the newspaper because of it.

But the days of people actually buying a paper for a comic strip are done. I would think any poll you do would show very few people (2%, .5% ?) buy a paper BECAUSE of a particular comic strip. In this crazy, 24-7 multimedia age, newspapers are enjoying an aging and declining readership and thus ad sales are falling. They need new revenue sources.

Meanwhile strips use the exposure of the newspaper to build a media empire. Peanuts did it, Popeye did it 80 years ago and countless other strips jumped from the comics pages to other media. But newspapers can no longer afford to be a free media building platform, while enjoying none of the ancillary revenue. If Garfield wasn’t running daily in newspapers, would the brand be as valuable? Would they get the chance to make fine films and TV and, god knows, probably video games? Yet, the newspapers pay for the privilege to run the comic strip. The papers should fight for a revenue share or at least a fee that correspondences to an ad. Or, they won’t run the strips. What’s going to happen? Will millions of people drop the newspaper? Heck, I’m not sure millions of people even GET newspapers anymore. But that strip is functioning as an ad. And if a newspaper actually values its readers, I would think they would charge for access to them.

So, it’s just an idea for a new age of dying newspapers and evolving media. BTW, I would consider paying a few bucks a year to NOT have Garfield in my paper…

Read Full Post »