Rebel Without Applause, Steam Time Machine

In an earlier part of this century, I took pencil to paper and drew the "rebellious" individual below. Then I thought up something for him to say:

I thought I could do something else with the cartoon, so eventually came up with the following:

(left click to enlarge)

Here's a place I pass by on occassion. It's on Irving Park, and for some reason, there's always steam coming up from some hatches in the ground. Do they have Morlocks living down there??

Fear Doodle, Neon Blight

I had an idea for a strip about a rather feaful subject, so did some practice drawings of characters reacting to something scary. Hmmm -- Doodle of Fear sounds like the name of a Barnaby Jones episode...

They Say the Neon Blight's a Fright, on Broadway. A couple of years back, everybody got tossed off the Red Line L train in Uptown on a rather dreary evening. Not really a lot of neon here, but I was on Broadway. Images brought to you in the Miracle of Sepia Tone



Just a doodle here folks -- move along...

Butter Dish Paradigm Shift

Got a package in the mail the other day. My sister sent me a butter dish. Never before have I had such an extravagance as this -- I mean, an entire dish and cover devoted entirely to the storage and display of a single stick of butter. You Know it had to take me a while to wrap my brain around that!

Dig it:

EMPTY. yeah, but just wait...

OK...ok... Butter (in stick form); but... just where is this going...?
WAMMO!
I know: WOW.

Can't say my life is going to be the same, now that the butter dish is a part of it...

Here's a Post-It doodle. This one I actually decided to color.

Squidly Commute

Some more imagery from my daily commute

About a decade ago, for the amusement of my coworkers, I scribbled some cartoons featuring squid-headed characters. The first one here features Brad Dylan: Squid-Headed Junior Executive.

Originally inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecrafte and other Weird Tales writers, since the time I'd drawn these, Squid/Octopus Headed characters have become quite popular on film and TV.

Through the Glass Fuzzy

Tuesday, while going through the old cartoons, dug up this:

This was inspired by some incident on an elevator some years back (not quite so extreme, though). Just put the cartoon aside for some future use. Well, coincidentally, on Wednesday, I had an odd little encounter on an elevator in the Sears Tower:

Just picked up some envelopes from a client on the 63rd floor. Unusual for that time of day, there was another person leaving the that office (usually in the evening, it's just me in the elevator). We got on the elevator together (me with my courier cart and all), and after the doors close, the guy says to me: "...So what is it you guys are doing that smells so bad?" I gave the guy a "Pardon Me??" look, and he continued "...it's like paint remover... or stripping wood...". I just gave him a puzzled "uhhhh...?" and wondered if my mouth wash just wasn't makin' it.

Finally, he noticed the envelopes in my cart, and said "oh -- your a messenger -- there's some work being done to the office -- I didn't mean to suggest you..."

Ha, ha, well that was a relief -- I didn't stink! Well, at least not like paint remover...

Pics taken through the rather dirty window of the Metra on a stormy day:

A Post-It from years past. Inspired by some sort of self-help "pleasing your inner child" kind of thing, I suppose.

Abstract Medication

Here's another Raymondo's Jar of Spiders cartoon. I'm sure this is still an ongoing concern at many companies

A variety of subjects taken on 10/5/07


For the Way Too Serious cartoons, I usually had some kind of background image unrelated to the cartoons and text. Here's something I drew for that purpose.

Radiator Friendly

This Post-It cartoon goes back quite a while; Before 1993, I figure, when I was still living in a studio apartment on Virginia & Lawrence in the Ravenswood neighborhood. There was this lonely little radiator hissing away all during the winter -- it did give the place a little extra atmosphere.

I call the cartoon:

Walter and His Talking Radiator

A couple of pics of seagulls buy 2 n. Riverside on Monday evening

I'm not sure what exactly inspired this particular drawing, but I figure it must have been intended for some larger cartoon. Who knows -- perhaps I'll dig up some strip I completely forgot about, or maybe use the drawing in some new super colossal masterpiece...

When Over-Time Collides

One of my favorite 1950s SF flicks is George Pal's When Worlds Collide. In the movie, it is discovered that a star, Bellus, is moving into our solar system and is going to run smack-dab into Earth. It is also determined that there is a planet orbiting Bellus, Zyra, which may be capable of sustaining life. Plans are made to build space arks to transport a lucky few humans to Zyra before Earth gets clobbered.
Also, before the total destruction of Earth, Zyra will pass close enough to cause all sorts of disasters. We follow the work of one group as they build their Space Ark (only a fraction of those working on the ship will be able to leave on it). Anyway, in a nice story telling touch, we see a "countdown" calendar that is posted at the rocket factory, reminding everyone how much time is left.

Each day, a page is torn off till the end
Well, I've always wondered: In the world this is happening, what was it like walking into a print shop and ordering these calendars? Did they spend much time choosing fonts and paper stock?
After finding out the world is going to end, somebody had to just keep coming to work to get the job done. Hey, maybe they made some big over-time bucks!

****

Some pics from earlier this year.

Seen from the Metra train

Winter (remember that?) , around the building I live

Crumpeteers Go Forth!

Drew the picture, and then thought up something nonsensical to write...

They do look like "tourist-y" types, don't they?

Shots from south of the Loop

Doofus McCool, Found Looking Down

Today we open with an item from an omnibus feature I called SNARDO & LINKY. This particular entry from 1998 was captioned:

TV Series cancelled after one promo ad

While we are on the subject of words that contain the letters L, I, N, K and Y, it reminds me of somthing from my days at the University of Boffo; Specifically Prof. Muldoon's theory of slinky. The Professor had postulated that any sir name can be turned into comedy gold by ending it with "slinky". It is rather flexible how one modifies the name, for instance, "Mortonsen, Ronko & Goodwin" become Mortenslinky, Ronkoslinky & Goodslinky. Muldoon had insisted that "Slinky" was so powerful, that a play or movie in which every character had such a name would be so dangerously funny, that people would literally laugh themselves to death.

The Administrators of Boffo expulsed Muldoon, feeling his ideas too insane even for the Citadel of Humor. The official statement said that keeping Muldoon on the faculty would be the moral equivalent of "Slapping the Supreme Deity multiple times about the face, such as Moe would do to Larry, Curly, Shemp, Joe, Curly Joe, and the other third guy in the cartoon version, if he was someone different, but maybe that was Curly Joe too..."

Prof. Muldoon was ran out of town like a common lunatic, and no one is sure what happened to him. One rumor has him ending up in Ireland, where he continued his mad experiments; pushing humor to the outer limits, and testing his theories on potatoes carved into the likenesses of celebrities.

But who knows? I haven't heard any news stories of masses of people dying of laughter -- well, not yet....

Things spotted while looking down.