Carter Strikes Again

Ah, The Onion.

"Carter is one of the worst enemies the forces of destruction have known since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his non-violent rampages of the '50s and '60s," Simmons said. "Even today, in his capacity as an ex-president, [Carter] continues his pursuit of non-aggression. He must be stopped now, before another terrible war is avoided and more lives are saved."

and

On behalf of the Bush administration, Vice-President Dick Cheney expressed regret over Carter's alleged crimes.

"We are all aware of the missteps that occurred during the placid days of the Carter administration," Cheney said. "It was simply a matter of bringing the justice to light. Thankfully, the process has begun, and this chapter in our nation's history is finally being brought to a close."

Free Ice Cream Day

The weather for Portland is: High of 52, currently raining.

This did not stop me and my friend Jody from going to the nearest Ben & Jerry's to get our FREE ICE CREAM. That's right, friends. Today is free scoop day at Ben & Jerry's ice cream shops.

Why are you sitting at your computer? Go, go now.

brush with greatness

Part of the reason for self-publishing collections of Falling Rock at this time was to have them ready for the Stumptown Comics Fest, which happened over the weekend. I went last year with Dancing with Jack Ketch and it was good to have something to trade. Instead of telling people about a website and hoping they'd eventually check it, you have a physical thing to give to them and say, "read this." Since I have two years' worth of comic strips, I chose some of my favorites and put them into the two collections, The Great Wave of Falling Rock and Owl and Other Comics.

Stumptown is the best. You get a wide range of cartoonists and publishers. Anywhere from photocopied zines to the hardbound "art books" from Fantagraphics. I took twenty copies of each of my comics with the goal of not returning with any of them. I achieved that goal.

My friend and fellow Oberlin alum Alec Longstreth got to be the Stumptown Welcoming Committee, which seemed to suit him just fine. He was literally the first person I saw when I entered the big room. His table was right in front. He told me that was just a fluke, but I have a feeling the organizers knew he'd be a good person to have close to the entrance. If you have not checked out his Phase 7 comics, do so now. He does a mixture of autobiographical stories and made-up ones (though, like any good writer, he blurs the fiction/non-fiction line when he sees fit).

A Portland cartoonist and Xeric Award winner, Aron Nels Steinke, was showing off his latest book, The Super Crazy Cat Dance. It's a mixture of comic and children's story, and it's pocket-sized! He regularly does a series called Big Plans. He also has a story in the current issue of the comic anthology Papercutter.

The story, about the moment he realized he had to be a cartoonist, is both funny and meaningful. Why do any of us decide to do what we do? In his case, a series of blows to the head. It resonated with me because my own epiphany - "I must be a cartoonist" - was similarly gruesome. In his case, it took a series of blows to the head. In mine, my hand got mangled in a conveyer belt when I was in kindergarten.

The convention seemed to me even more successful than last year. There were rows of tables and the room literally hummed with conversation. I did a lot of trading and now have a stack of great comics I must read.

Stumptown was able to get a couple of cartoonist superstars: Nicholas Gurewitch and Craig Thompson.

Nicholas is the perpetrator of the extremely funny and disturbing Perry Bible Fellowship, a weekly comic strip whose style changes depending on the story being told. He's a versatile cartoonist. I was beginning to think he didn't exist at all, that there was a robot making those funny strips. When I first saw original art for the PBF, there was not a trace of pre-production. No stray pencil lines, no blue pencil. I couldn't even detect the use of white-out. Then, at Stumptown, his table was unmanned for the first few hours I was there. It was only after lunch that I met him. Watching him slowly write in my name and inscription in his book, I realized why his comics look so pristine: the man is the most deliberate cartoonist I've met.

Craig Thompson is the cartoonist behind Good-bye, Chunky Rice, Blankets, and Carnet de Voyage. His comics are swirly, sweeping, and full of emotion. He's been working on a huge adventure called Habibi for years now. I was glad to meet him. His comics seem so confessional it felt strange to meet the man; the character of himself seems so fully realized I began to believe that the character was the real thing. He has been living in Portland for quite a while: "old man Portland" even though he's not old. Craig was generous; even with the long line to get his autograph, he took the time to chat with each person.

So that was Stumptown.

That afternoon I went for a run. I was doing laps at the high school near our apartment and I noticed something peculiar. A line of people snaking from the high school, down the block, and around a corner.

I finally asked someone what all the hubbub was about. "Bill Clinton's here. Or he will be in a half hour," she said.

I ran a few more laps but decided not to hang around. I did get to hear a crazy person railing against Bill and Hillary. Really screeching. He got booed by the crowd. No word as yet whether he was Ralph Nader.

Obama-o-Rama

BREAKING NEWS ON THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN OF BARACK OBAMA:
I made a shirt.

Here's how it went down. Designer Eric Skillman made an awesome image of Barack Obama and posted high resolution files of it on his blog. He offered it up free to anyone, so long as they emailed him back a picture of how the design was put to use. I took it over to Cafe Press, picked out a blue long sleeve shirt, and had it printed up.

It is now in my weekly rotation of shirts. I try to wear it where I know the most people will see me. Anything for the Cause.

Not only that, but when I sent him a picture of me in the shirt, he posted it right here, for God and everybody to see. Obama Nation indeed.

I will now leave the forum open for comparisons between Barack Obama and that other senator from Illinois, Abraham something-or-other.

They're here

Both books have now arrived from the printers'. I started making shipments yesterday, so check those mailboxes. For those of you not yet on the bandwagon, I haven't yet set up an ordering form on my website, but you can email me and request yours.

There are two books:

The Great Wave of Falling Rock, 7" x10", 50 comics. $4

Owl and Other Comics, 5.5"x6.5", 19 comics. $2

I'm going to be at Stumptown Comics Fest this weekend. I didn't get a table, but if you see me wandering around say hello. I'll try not to act surprised that someone reads my blog.

Libraries

I've always liked libraries. My first job was to volunteer at the University of Arizona Music Library. My friend's mom worked there at the time; she's librarian for life (in spirit if not in actual occupation). At the Music Library, I sorted and copied donated musical manuscripts for special collections. Since then I've worked at two other libraries. Something about being surrounded by books has always appealed to me. My apartment is certainly turning into a library.

It is with great pride, then, to have my own comics available at the library. Two of my comic books can be checked out of my college library. One is a story I wrote using characters from my college comic strip, Atticus and Glen. It surprised me to find out a copy had been entered into their collection. It was not I who donated Atticus and Glen; I received an email from the library thanking me for my donation. Then I checked my name in the catalog. Sure enough, there it was.

The second is Dancing with Jack Ketch: The Life of Jackson Donfaire, Notorious Pirate. I sent this one in and received a nice letter in return thanking me for my donation; it came with a a tax deduction form. (For the record, I didn't do it for the tax deduction.)

I also made sure to submit Jack Ketch to the Portland public library system. They have a zine collection, proving libraries are still relevant in today's wonky and quickly-changing publishing world. I'm happy to report Jack Ketch will soon join this ambitious collection.

Besides the thrill of being able to look up my own name at a library's catalog, I feel honored to be a part of an institution that promotes literacy and curiosity. Libraries are truly the knowledge base for any society; without them, we would all be worse off.

Book Covers

These are the covers to the two new Welcome to Falling Rock National Park book collections. Ordering details coming soon.

BOOKS!

Hello friends of Falling Rock. I've been working hard to bring you two book collections of Welcome to Falling Rock National Park. One got back from the printer's on Friday and the second will (hopefully) print tomorrow.

This is the first time I've collected my comic strip in bound form. Yes! No searching for a newspaper, no typing my name into the vast spaces of the Innertube. You will soon be able to read Falling Rock as never before: with staples.

The first book is called The Great Wave of Falling Rock (after that Hokusai print). It is long format, 7 x 10. It contains 50 sparkly comics. The second book is the pocket-sized Owl and Other Comics (after Mr. Ginsberg's Howl).

I will have a link up on my website for purchase very soon. If you just can't wait, email me and I will send them to you. They will also be available at Powell's City of Books right here in Portland, Oregon (again, more detailed links to follow).

These are exciting times for the residents of Falling Rock National Park. But please, do not feed the animals.

Love the Friday Robot You're With

This robot reminds me of one of those Maine mosquitoes.

top of the charts

I'd like to live alone in the desert

I'd like to be like Georgia O'Keefe

So begins Warren Zevon's "Splendid Isolation," the most-played song on my ipod. Why does this song have the highest play count of them all? In a machine that contains over 8,000 tracks - almost 40 gigabytes' worth of music - why does a non-hit by an artist best known for "Werewolves of London" top them all?

Part of the reason is accessibility. I've had all my Beatles and Bob Dylan CDs for years and played the heck out of them. When I finally migrated to ipod, the need to listen to any one song by either of those artists had mellowed. I still love it when "Come Together" or "Visions of Johanna" come up on shuffle, but I rarely seek them out. The songs I listen to most on my ipod were purchased after I began listening to it more than CDs. The only place I can hear them is there.

As for the song itself, "Splendid Isolation" is a perfect mix of happy beat and wry humor. Zevon was a master at writing meaningful songs that were funny. "Like Michael Jackson in Disneyland/Don't have to share it with nobody else/Lock the gate Goofy, take my hand/And lead me through this world of self." In the end, the song seems to be a simple break-up story, with the narrator saying he wants to be alone when he's really just sad. The long lyrical lead-up keeps you guessing.

All this is a long way of saying that I'm totally happy with my current "favorite" song. If somebody were to ask me about it (which they won't have to now, after reading this blog), I would proudly tell them.

This small bit of credibility is totally canceled out by the 1452 Hannah Montana bootlegs I've got on there, though.

the color of light

Running or biking on the bike path in Boulder, Colorado is kind of like eating a deep-dish pizza in Chicago or looking at that arch in St. Louis: you have to do it at least once when you're there. I lived in Boulder for about 4 years, which meant lots of runs on the famous path that follows the Boulder creek, winds its way past the University of Colorado campus, and even heads into the mountains toward everybody's favorite hippy town, Nederland.

I ran almost the whole year round, save a few weeks when ice and sub-freezing temperatures made running less like fun and more like an endurance prize. This allowed me to savor the differences in the seasons, and particularly notice the changing light.

There is nothing like the light in Boulder. In the late afternoons it will cut between the mountains and create long shadows over parts of the town. In the mornings, the plains to the east leave no obstructions to the sun, making a bright welcome to the day.

My favorite time of year is the fall, as the brutal summer gives way to cooler evenings and longer shadows. On the bike path, in a late afternoon in October, I would often feel the kind of happiness that could also be sadness. Happy at how perfect things are, but melancholy because you are aware of the passage of time and how nothing remains the same forever.

I used to think it felt like the end of the world. Not in a disastrous way or a whimper, either. It felt like a sigh right before falling asleep. I remember feeling it was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever been.

Light is an important part of Boulder, and of all the places I've been to in Colorado, partly because there is so much of it. Add that to the steep, jagged mountains that throw intense shadows across the landscape, and you've got to pay attention to the way light looks. It changes things throughout the day and year. I kept trying to capture moments of it in photos. These two pictures were taken on a dirt road between Crested Butte and Aspen.

This is not to say Colorado has a lock on light. Arizona has light everywhere. Everything is illuminated! The sun washes everything out. I think of the word "blasted." It's strange on a cloudy day, because you can see so much depth. Usually the mountains look almost two dimensional because there is little shadow.

When I draw Falling Rock I try to keep that flat desert look. If Ernesto and Carver ever go exploring in the mountains, I'll have to introduce some shadows and depth to the landscapes.

Every place has a different feel, and I'm beginning to suspect it all has to do with light.

cat power, roseland, 4.13.08

"Hello Portland People."

The Roseland Theater could barely contain the awesome might of Cat Power and the Dirty Delta Blues band. It was a spectacle, a force, an unrivaled artistic masterpiece that will undoubtedly become legend in the annals of rock lore.

Roseland Theater has standing room on the main floor and a wraparound balcony. Adrianne and I sat in the first row of the balcony, which gave us a good view not only of the stage but of the crowd below. During the opening act we had a fun time watching various reactions of people in the crowd, but when Chan Marshall and her band entered the stage, there was no denying their godlike rock 'n' roll power.

The opening act was a woman named (I believe) Appaloosa, a singer Adrianne described as "very French." She came on with no instruments, just a little electronic device which she plugged into the speakers. She was blonde and wore a bomber jacket and glittery green dress. She did jumping jacks onstage between outbursts of singing. It was funny, because she took breaks during her songs, not between them. The little device she had played a series of beats; to start a new song she simply pressed a button and the next beat played. She was at times off-key, and had a cavalier attitude. There were a few in the crowd who really dug her. She played to them, smiling and dancing. She sang a couple songs about horses.

There was a long break between Appaloosa and Cat Power. When the lights finally went down, it would not be an exaggeration to say that everybody there was ready to go. Fortunately, Cat delivered the goods. Her greeting, "hello Portland people," received a big cheer which was cut off as the band began to play.

An early highlight was the song "Silver Stallion" off her new album, Jukebox. Many of the songs were from that album, although she did throw in a few from The Greatest and even a terrific cover of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "Tracks of My Tears."

Cat had a great, funny way of dancing around the stage. She didn't play any instruments; she left that to her able band. There were times that she came right out to the edge of the stage and reached out to the audience and times when she slid to the side and let the band bask in the spotlight.

"Would you like something high-end or with sibilance? We've got everything tonight." I heard a few shouts, nothing definitive, and she launched into "Aretha, Sing One For Me."

As for the sound itself, it was a loud muddle, but not in a bad way. As in the album, I think there was a deliberate attempt to ratchet up the reverb and bury her vocals a bit. Cat kept asking "are my vocals too loud?" It was apparent that she enjoyed her band immensely. Her band, four men, made her look even tinier up on stage.

At the end she thanked us. "You guys are so fucking nice," she said. She repeated it, and then played "Lived in Bars."

Photos courtesy chuffpdx's flickr page. We were sitting on the opposite side of the room, but we came down for the encore.

A Remembrance of Friday Robots Past

A collage of sorts, using Friday Robots from the recent past.

Friday Robot: Behind the Scenes

A particularly ugly Friday Robot lets me know about it.

The Boogyman Who Founded Oregon

This post is now on my website.

10 years

I've often thought that Linda McCartney had a good impact on Paul. They were a team; it is an image I have of what marriage ought to be. I read an interview of the two of them from the early 80's. At one point Paul leaves the room. Linda then talks about Paul's relationship with John in much more detail than I've heard Paul himself say. It wasn't anything revelatory, but it felt so real.

Linda died in Tucson, the same year I was a senior in high school. I remember seeing on TV the news trucks parked outside the McCartney home for days. That was the news: the news trucks sitting there on the side of the road. I wished they would have left the family alone.

Today Paul writes about Linda on the tenth anniversary of her death. She was a great lady. She is missed.

Are you there God? It's Me, Friday Robots.

Because I couldn't wait

This Falling Rock comic will be published in the coming weeks, but I wanted to give my faithful fans a preview:
I like misrepresenting famous works of art in comic form. If I drew color Sundays for Falling Rock, I would love to make them all panoramas. Patrick McDonnell kind of does this for Mutts; he'll make his Sunday title panel an ode to an artist or individual piece of art. It's a guessing game to figure out who or what he is referencing. A fun little art history class every week! Isn't that why people read the funnies? To learn art history?

I'm working on a Falling Rock project that will hopefully be ready by the end of the month. Stay tuned.

Thoughts on BETSY AND ME

I primarily know Jack Cole's work through the short biographical book "Jack Cole and Plastic Man" by Art Spiegelman. Cole's skillfully drawn elastic crime-fighter stuck with me to the present. It was with interest, then, that I picked up a copy of Betsy and Me, the comic strip Cole drew for a few short months until he took his own life.

In the introduction, Jack Cole comes across as a real artist. His many styles include gag comics, watercolors done for Playboy, the saga of Plastic Man, and finally the restrained comic strip Betsy and Me. Even in the small black & white reproductions, you can tell Cole was able to change his style to suit any occasion.

As is still the case for many a cartoonist, having a syndicated comic strip was Cole's pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow, the gig he strove for his entire professional life. The central question you ask as you read Betsy and Me, then, is why did Cole kill himself so shortly after achieving his dream? The answers, of course, probably have more to do with his private life than the demands and constraints of a daily comic strip. I know the job is hard, but it isn't worth your life. Nevertheless, I looked for clues to his untimely demise in those little panels.

What strikes me most about Betsy and Me is its incredible banality. After such a diverse career, Cole really had to settle. The central characters are a husband, his wife, and their precocious (and of course genius) son. The strip begins with the father narrating his courtship with Betsy. Soon afterwards, she becomes pregnant. Then they buy a car. Then they move out of the city and into the suburbs. I am not making this up.

Our ideals have changed since Betsy and Me graced the newspapers. Looking at a strip drawn in 1958 from the perspective of 2008, it's easy to laugh at how people have changed. I can't help but note, however, that almost all the ideals embodied in Betsy and Me are the complete opposite of my own. It was like I was reading the mirror image of my own aspirations. I can't help but wonder if a cartoonist, even a cartoonist in the 50's, would have wanted something at least similar to what I want today. Have the times changed that much?

Maybe cartooning was simply a job to Cole. He did it well and it paid the bills. From today's perspective, when cartooning jobs are so rare, and paying ones are all but mythical, I find it almost incomprehensible that Cole would idealize the life of a man with nothing interesting going for him.

The art of Betsy and Me is simple, true. In the great comic strip tradition, there is more going on with the drawings than is shown. Much has to be inferred when you have so little space to tell a story. Although backgrounds are all but nonexistent, and the panels are sometimes just talking heads, there is great care invested in defining each character. Betsy's Madonna-like calm is a contrast to Chet's worry. Farley, their son, is pompous and even cynical. Their assortment of married friends may be interchangeable, but they all behave like you would expect from characters in their situations. Cole knew how to infer a lot in a little space.

While it is easy to write off Betsy and Me as a historical curiosity, a footnote to the adventures of Plastic Man, there is still much to learn from it. It is a time capsule for the period. The drawing style is understated and well-executed. Finally, it is the last message from a man who was a notable (if not highly noted) cartoonist.

Cole's final comic strip.

April Fools!

For those of you who are regulars to my website, today's comic may look a bit different to you. That's because my good friend Nate is the artist responsible for the Special Limited April Fool's Day Edition of Falling Rock National Park.

Nate's blog, Stabbone and McGraw, has its own brand of anti-mayonnaise, pro-moustache humor. Today he set that aside to give Falling Rock readers something new.

There are three firsts in today's strip. This marks Nate's first foray into published cartooning (via MCT Campus, all copyrights held by the artist). This is also Richard Nixon's first appearance in a Falling Rock comic. We have mentioned him numerous times in the past, but today he appears in all his body-less glory. Finally, this is the first time I've ever seen Pam light her cigarette. I never figured out where she'd keep the lighter once she was done using it. I also assumed that she'd just always light the next cigarette from the used one before it. Here Nate has left his indelible mark on the world of Falling Rock. I doubt it will ever be the same.

Happy April 1st, everybody.