Secrets of Unprofessional Cartooning

Like most cartoonists, I suppose I can be touchy about giving away trade secrets. But since I'm doing a lot of teaching, its important that I set a good example. So here you have it, the "keys to the kingdom."

Cliff's Notes Illustrated

Here's this series of pages I did back in the mid 1980s. The idea was to take ponderous works of literature and modernize and miniaturize them. So the great white whale became the Big Bee, the crown of England became a coin, and the hordes of Greece became a little league team. And I tried here and there to explicate the meanings of the works, as found in the Cliff's Notes.

The first four ran in a zine called nada. The fifth one didn't see print until they were collected in Acme Comics #10 in 1994. That anthology can still be purchased from The Squid Works.

The artwork is a bit naive and punkish, but I think it succeeds on its own terms. Click on these images and they should finally appear big enough to comfortably read.


Cliff Notes Faust


Mo Bee


The Complete Works of Shakespeare


Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" cycle of operas


The Iliad and The Odyssey


Thank you for your time.

Harvey Pekar, Rest In Peace

Recent Tragic Strips

Upcoming Classes

I'm teaching kids this month and next on Saturday mornings at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Tell some kids.

Also, my SVA Cartooning Basics class starts in just over a week. It's almost full.

Update: the SVA class filled with a waiting list, but the kid's class didn't enroll after all. Drat. Another time, perhaps...

Yep, That Was Me

Photo by Cheese Hasselberger

The posters have mostly come down now, but for a couple of months this year, I was honored to be one of six SVA Continuing Education instructors featured in their Spring ad campaign. My picture appeared in subway trains all over the city and in a full page ad in the Village Voice.


Photo by Elinor Carucci

The subways also had these closeup shots of my hand doodling.


Photo by Elinor Carucci

Was that ever cool.

Photo by Elinor Carucci

Click here to see the whole campaign.

Comic Attack's Artist of the Month

I spilled my guts a bit in this interview on Comic Attack dot net. Read it if you dare.

Comics Drawn Into the Void

Another bit of attention for work I did decades ago:
I feel very proud and lucky to have been included in Michael Dowers' new anthology, Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s. My contribution is slight, let's admit, but the book itself is amazing.

Tom Spurgeon posted a very good review on The Comics Reporter, which says,
"If the clash of ideas in the design of Newave! make the book fizz, it's the mix of melancholy (so many comics drawn into the void!) and triumph (and yet here they are!) that Dowers teases from the subject matter that makes consuming it a satisfying experience."

Spurgeon astutely singles out my friend and fellow Hector, Harry Lyrico, and his classic minicomic, "White Boy Goes to Hell," for praise. One of these days, I'll post some of Harry's Hector work for all to enjoy.

Unsung Characters of Comicdom

A comic I made in the 1980s, Steel Pulse Pro-Wrestling Adventures, is featured in this week's column Unsung Characters of Comicdom which runs on the website, Comic Attack.net.

Writer Josh Jones gives a rollicking synopsis. Sometimes I forget how fun it was to write that thing. I was a beginner and my artwork was full of crazy weird mistakes. Even so, Jones says the artwork is "refreshingly expressive" and adds, "Modern mainstream publishers just don’t produce comics this awesome." Thanks, Josh!

Ink Improvisation

"Hector Goes to Medical School," 2001.

I've been teaching some courses on comic book inking and having the students practice what I'm calling "ink immersion"-- not in the sense of baptism, which might be fun, but in the sense of working directly with ink, sans penciling. I figure this is a good occasion to continue this thread I started awhile back about individual comic panels regarded as illustrations.


"Secret Rites of Hector," 1993. I'm pretty sure this is the first strip I improvised. I generated a stack of of these figures to get something wiggy enough. The text is adapted from a masonic handbook my friend found in a dumpster.

I find the traditional way of drawing comics-- inking on top of pencil plans-- to be frustrating. Usually, when I erase my pencils, the ink lines are way more anemic than I imagined. By the time I adjust the weights, they lose much of their character. One solution, tracing onto clean paper on a light table, presents its own problems. Often I lose track of subtleties in the penciling that weren't visible through the paper.


This panel from True Fiction #1, 2000, is made from two versions collaged together.

So sometimes I try this method of looking at my thumbnail designs just as I would look at a sketch subject, and improvising the illustrations directly in ink. If I'm warmed up and having a good day, I find it permits a degree of spontaneity and invention that the pencil-tracing approach tends to squelch.


from "The Stutterer's Alfalfabet," 2001. Can you spot my hidden signature?

You might think this would speed up my process, and sometimes it can. But more often, as I'm sure it is with most jazz musicians, I end up doing several "takes" before I get something I can use.


from "The Twilight of the Bums," circa 1999. These character designs eluded me until I resolved to put away my pencils and doodle them into being.

Nowadays, depending on the project, I might do tight penciling, light penciling, or no penciling. A small percent of my comics are ink improv. Many examples are scattered on this blog and my website. Can you tell which ones they are?

Another Recent Strip

Hare Krsmas, Everybody!

And a happy new year!

Always Proud of my Students

Comic by Dane LaChiusaHere's a new thread I'll be happy to update now and then. I keep learning about former students who're posting their comics online. I'd like to start sharing the links.

I'll begin with Dane LaChiusa, whose Inking Comics project illustrates this post. Check out:
www.whenithinkaboutyouiquotemyself.blogspot.com

On Auratic Outmoded's Weblog, Meredith Leich has some kind words about the Inking Comics class, along with her final project.

Jeff Kocan actually did some blog posts about his experience with my Cartooning Basics class:
www.cigarettesandcoffee.com/posts/category/making-a-comic

Janet Do shows the steps she took to complete her minicomic project on her Milktoasty blog.

I put in an appearance as a cartoon rat in Mark Weisner's comics on his Deviant Art site.

For me, part of the fun of these blogs is in watching the artists develop their technique. Franzine begins with Fran's first class drawing and takes off quickly from there.

I like Chris Varley's Cheeks and Shug blog because you can see the verbal humor he did before he took my class and the slapstick he's been pursuing since.

Earl Barrett-Holloway began his blog after he completed my inking class, but we can watch him study digital coloring here, continued here.

Student Brian Einersen has made headlines with his class minicomic, Lady Saga.

Not least but last, here's this blast-from-the-past podcast. It turns out that the very first time I attempted to teach anything to anyone, one of the kids in the room was none other than Charlito, now the host of Indie Spinner Rack. Here, if you scroll past the obligatory Denver blizzard coverage, you can hear him in conversation with Stan Yan. Stan's another of my earliest students who's become a top flight cartoonist and now a busy instructor. And so the baton advances. They keep talking about me and getting interrupted. Grrrr.

More Tragic Strips

Here are a couple of single panel Tragic Strips that ran in the Rail last Spring and Summer. They're kind of the same joke.
I redrew the subway one completely from the version that saw print. I like this one better, though I still might add wash to it.

The Umpteen Umbilici of Ulro

Last week I finally made it up to the Morgan Library Museum to see their amazing collection of William Blake prints. It made me wanna post these old unpublished jam pages where I was goofing on a similarity I think I perceive between the prophecies of Blake and the cosmic comics of Jack Kirby.

It's from this comic jam my friends and I have been passing around for years and years. The comic is called Giant Size Man Thing, the story is called "Even an Android Can Cry," and it's about a character named Rod Packer, Public Dick.

Here are pages 16 thru 18. Click to enlarge, of course.



While I'm at it, here are a couple of my other pages. Page 8 makes fun of my favorite superhero dialog cliche. If anyone's to find funny, my timing will have to be perfect.

Page 25 is really just marking time. I like it because I was under the spell of Alex Toth when I composed the panels. I hope to do more like that sometime.

Maybe I'll publish the whole thing someday, to the relief of those who've contributed, if no one else.

another recent Tragic Strip

This ran in The Brooklyn Rail in October.

Celebrity Sighting

I was riding to my comic inking class yesterday when I noticed the actor, Patrick Stewart, a couple rows over on the F train. I managed to do this sketch. He didn't seem too happy about that. He kept lowering the brim on his cap.

Tragic Strips: Made Out of "Mac"

I've fallen seriously behind on my plan of posting recent Tragic Strips.

Last summer, I did four more permutations in the Made Out of "Mac" series: 2 Mathews's Algorithms, a panorama, and a larded acrostic (the original strip runs vertically down the middle).


I published a collection of the strips so far, which includes a number of guests and jam strips. It can be purchased from the Squid Works.

Doodle Diary

Awhile back, my friend Isaac Cates took one of my doodles and colored it, which inspired me to try dabbing some color onto these.


The approach to the drawings follow a method I teach under the name "DareDoodle Number Three."


Maybe I should do a post explaining the DareDoodles someday.


What with Halloween looming, I guess I had costumes on my mind.


I imagined these as costumed figures in some sort of post- or neo-constructivist theatrical performance.


Happy Halloween, everybody.

Rest in Peace, Raymond Federman

One of my favorite writers passed away yesterday.
I'm very happy he let me illustrate one of his books in his lifetime.