Tag Archives: funny

When Harry Potter Fanfic Mashups Go Wrong

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I guess I could have worked a lizard in there somehow but I could only think of Daniel Pinkwater novels and a minor character from Fullmetal Alchemist.

I guess I could have worked a lizard in there somehow but I could only think of Daniel Pinkwater novels and a minor character from Fullmetal Alchemist and this is weird enough as it is. Do kids still read Daniel Pinkwater?

The odds that anyone gets all 5 references here are kind of slim. Harry Potter’s pretty universal among a certain cohort, as is Snoopy, but there’s not a tremendous overlap there. I’m sure kids recognize Peanuts, but I don’t know how many of them, outside of the music theater group, know You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. A lot of people love His Dark Materials but the first movie flopped and it’s not as popular as it ought to be considering how the book is. Guardians of Ga’hoole is a terrific story, too, but it’s even more obscure. The movie was straight up awful, and there are so many books that you have to be pretty committed to the story. I highly recommend it, though, if you would like to read something that riffs off of Lord of the Rings, is written for kids, and stars a large cast of owls. And then I threw in a terrible, but catchy, pop music song from 5 years ago.

So, like everything I do, its potential appreciative audience is already minuscule before I even ask anyone to read it. But here it is. The idea’s been cracking me up for a couple weeks already. I’m dying to see if anyone else gets even a chuckle out of it.

At least it pleases me.

I like this black and white style too. I’ve been using color and fancy backgrounds to cover up inadequacies in the artwork, but it’s time to scale back and let the lines start speaking for themselves. I have another idea that will look better in this style too, or at least in black and white with only a few colored accents.

Making Friends IRL 2015 (Introvert Edition)

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Next time: Losing Friends Online,, Scrabble edition

Next time: Losing Friends Online,, Scrabble edition

Those of us who have never felt quite human can only utilize the great social equalizing power of the Internet to a certain degree. After a while, you have to venture out into the world of realtime flesh interaction, where, if you screw up, you can’t just delete your profile and start over. If you’re fairly young, maybe you can move to another city and try again, but after a certain age, you probably own too much stuff, including real property, to make that a feasible option, and you must, instead learn how to pass yourself off as a normal person who can periodically attend crowded events and make conversation with unfamiliar people.

I would not attend as many parties if not for The Man, so I usually have the option of hiding behind him, although I sense that he would prefer not to have to drag his wife around like a leaden shadow when he wants to socialize (which is all the time).

Other strategies include offering to help the host/hostess with their duties, scrupulously reading the titles of all the books on the shelf, and making friends with the household pets. Or, you could just be a bit more aware and a little more confident. If you have access to someone’s social media profile, you could browse it in advance in order to prepare yourself with topics of mutual interest. Or, you could simply be well-informed or opinionated, which will also give you many things to talk about.

Just remember, no one else can see inside your head. If you sound confident, everyone is going to perceive you as such. If you act like you’re OK, the world will respond as if that’s the case.

Pressing Issues Faced by Real Adults

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Remember how, when you were a kid, you couldn't wait to be an adult because adults could do anything they wanted to do?

Remember how, when you were a kid, you couldn’t wait to be an adult because adults could do anything they wanted to do?

1) I’m the health nut who loads the fridge up with fruits and vegetables and then gets all annoyed when there isn’t any cake in there, even though I can’t really eat any amount of cake without making myself sick.

2) Even when I worked out miles from my house, I still recognized the irony of driving to the gym. The Man and I are considering membership at a gym 1 block away. I’m curious as to whether he’ll want to drive there.

3) It’s perplexing that my stepkids have yet to find their father or me mortifyingly embarrassing. They still hug and kiss us, even in public. I don’t know what I have to do to fill these children with the shame that comes from thinking other kids are judging you based on your parents’ weirdness, and we are pretty weird.

4) My parents wanted me to be a doctor. Pretty much nobody’s parents want them to be an artist. Definitely nobody’s parents gaze lovingly into the crib and say, “One day, she could draw webcomics!”

5) How do lawyers and judges even work? The few times I’ve been in court I just wanted to scream and break things and punch a cop. I mean, I know they get recess and all, but I’ve never seen a playground at the courthouse. I’d rather stare at a wall than work in a courthouse.

6) The age-old debate.

Revenge of the Helicopter Kids

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Listen, you don't know my parents like I do. My parents are better than those other parents and they deserve special treatment.

Listen, you don’t know my parents like I do. My parents are better than those other parents and they deserve special treatment.

If you, like me, have 150 Facebook friends with school age children, you’ve probably seen a bunch of photographs in the last couple weeks featuring kids in new clothing and various attitudes of excitement or embarrassment holding signs proclaiming “First Day of Kindergarten,” or some similar sentiment. Well, my cousin posted a picture of herself hugging her 5-year-old with a caption explaining that she was probably the worst mother in the world because she wasn’t going to make him hold an adorable sign before he went off to school, and that the child would probably be scarred for life because of this moral failure.

So that’s where this comes from. But it comes from other things, too, like the Boy once again losing his Kindle privileges because he was watching YouTube when he was supposed to be doing homework. I’ve been thinking along similar themes, how we hold our kids to higher standards than we hold ourselves, and most of us would find ourselves without smartphones if some higher power took them away when we used them to screw around on the Internet instead of work.

My feelings on helicopter parents are well-documented. OK, there are worse things you could do to your kids, but when we’re talking about good intentions gone wrong, wrapping your kids in bubble wrap and protecting them from every possible bump the universe might have to offer while arguing with teachers, coaches, and other experts on particular aspects of childhood why your kid is better than other kids and deserves to be treated differently is a terrific way to raise a completely helpless and ineffective human being. How long do you plan on doing this, I wonder? When I taught at the college level I heard of parents trying to advocate for their kids, and a couple kids told me their parents were going to call me, but my standard response was that I wasn’t going to talk to their mommies and daddies because they were grownups and responsible for their own behavior. Legally, I wasn’t supposed to discuss their grades with their parents either.

Still, my supervisor assured us that parents would call anyway. From the kids, I heard firsthand that their overbearing parents didn’t prepare them for life after high school. They didn’t know when to go to bed without being told; they didn’t know when to get up. All their lives they’d been told they were the best, and suddenly it turned out that they were just like everyone else. And, having never been allowed to fail, they didn’t know how to succeed on a level playing field.

Seriously, moms and dads, back off! Your kid should be given more responsibility every year so that they have actual adult experience when they are 18. They should be allowed to fail, over and over, so that they learn about consequences and how to make better decisions. They should be taught not to throw a fit when they don’t get everything they believe they deserve. Otherwise, they are going to be mightily disappointed when college spits them out into the real world and they don’t get every job and raise and promotion they think the world owes them.

However, if any children would like to argue that I deserve something more than I’ve achieved in life, I would welcome the effort.

3D Dragon Comics #1!

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You were probably expecting something with a little more depth, but that's just a matter of perception.

You were probably expecting something with a little more depth, but that’s just a matter of perception.

There’s a type of psychological intervention known as Sand Table Play Therapy, which basically involves arranging objects and figurines in a tray of sand. Sand is nice, but it also goes everywhere and I don’t really think it’s all that integral to the actual symbolic actions that comprise this treatment, which is basically about forcing rigid adult minds to become malleable enough to throw off the limitations of maturity engage in meaningful play. I’ve got a million of these little objects–I could easily have created dozens of different tableaux using stuff that’s already in my office–and it really is soothing to rearrange them sometimes. It’s also nice to justify owning all these tchotchkes.

I’d been thinking about doing this type of 3-dimensional photographic comic for a long time, even before I started this blog. Reading Dave McKean’s Pictures That Tick made it seem like time to try. For some reason, I thought this would be faster than actually drawing a comic, which was not in any way the case. It took twice as long as Dragon Comics usually take. But it was more fun, and got me away from my desk.

It would be really nice if there was some easy way to build a model that didn’t fully set: one whose features couldn’t be smushed, but whose arms and legs could be repositioned. And then I wish I had the equipment and knowledge to make stop motion animation films.

Anyway, I wasn’t really ready to do a comic about my demons, even though creating them yesterday also inspired me to do this. Maybe one day. I’m still puzzling over my comic about depression. It’s funny: seems like everyone gets depressed, and yet depression is a really personal and idiosyncratic experience. At least mine is.

Summer in the Desert

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Serves you right for wearing a fur coat.

Serves you right for wearing a fur coat.

This is more or less a true story, as long as you accept the premise that I have such a deep personal understanding of my cat that I understand the precise meanings of her vocalizations. Fairly certain this translation is accurate. The only thing that I’ve exaggerated is the size of the lemon tree and its proximity to the pool. Everyone knows you can’t plant trees that close to an in-ground pool.

It’s hard not to feel sorry for someone who has to walk around in a heavy black coat in the desert summer, but at the same time, she also has the option of hanging out in the air conditioning and waiting until the sun goes down to hang out outside. I get that she wants to be near me, but given her typical feline disdain for swimming, it’s hard to see why. Like, we don’t have to be together all the time (that you’re awake), Cat. When I’m doing stuff you don’t like, such as hanging out in the sun or submerging my body in water, you’re not required to join me. It’s your choice, meaning it’s really not cool for you to complain about it the whole time.

Fortunately for desert cats, there are always cool tile floors upon which to splay ones furry limbs.

For the record, the cat is perfectly capable of swimming. I once saw her swim the entire length of the pool to get away from a another cat that was threatening her. So she could totally jump in and join me instead of whining about it.

Anyway, this comic took about 5 hours to draw, and it among the best ones I’ve done so far. I’ve come a decent way in a year and a half. Maybe I will be ready for my next big project when the script is finished, hopefully in August.

Dragon Comics 89

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Being inappropriate isn't funny at all. It's serious, serious business. It takes dedication and endurance.

Being inappropriate isn’t funny at all. It’s serious, serious business. It takes dedication and endurance.

This comic and its accompanying blog post brought to you courtesy of I can’t believe I’m sick again and also by Walgreen’s brand cold medicine. Except actually I can believe I’m sick again because airplanes are basically giant petri dishes.

Even so I managed to finish an article about a dinosaur comic and completed the full range of human duties: I cooked, I cleaned, I performed childcare. And I drew this comic, to overall, it’s a win. To hell with you, rhinovirus.

Bonus: also had my modestly nsfw XXXenophile post on Panels today.

Dragon Comics 40

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My medium is metaphor. Mixed metaphor, I guess.

My medium is metaphor. Mixed metaphor, I guess.

It’s merely a coincidence that this 40th Dragon Comic publishes on the day on which the world marks my 40th trip around the sun. I assure you that this has no bearing on my maturity level. I do like how this arc comes sort of full circle, from satisfaction with art, to dissatisfaction with art, to depression about art, to straight up depression, to comedy about depression, and back to satisfaction with art.

There’s something classically right about black humor (thus, Dragon holds a copy of Hamlet, one of the best examples of gallows humor, in panel 1) because as long as we can laugh at our terror, our pain, and our uncertainty about life, we know that these things have not yet consumed us. When Hamlet fools with Yorick’s skull in the graveyard, it gives him, at last, the presence of mind to consider his own inevitable death while stirring in him the sensations of life. Ophelia’s death, and the clowning around it, spurs him on to the death and violence of the play’s conclusion. We all die, so why not keep merry? Whether or not Hamlet avenges himself on Claudius, he and Claudius and everyone else will die, like his Yorick, like his father, like Ophelia. Love cannot save us from death, but humor can save us from fear.

I’m 40. I’m mortal. I’m going to die. But until then, I’m going to laugh. Even when I’m depressed, I’m going to laugh.

Dragon Comics 29

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Of all the work for hire I’ve done in my life, I’m perhaps most proud of the 30 entries I wrote for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature in the mid 2000s, including the entry on cartooning legend Tex Avery, whose 1949 cartoon short “Bad Luck Blackie” basically ushered the concept of cartoon violence into modernity. In retaliation for his torture of a kitten, a sadistic bulldog is cursed with bad luck, in the form of a variety of hilarious and increasingly unlikely objects that fall on his head whenever a black cat crosses his path.

The first 2 items to fall on the dog’s head are flowerpots; these are city creatures, and flowerpots falling from windowsills are explainable, even if 2 in 1 minute strain plausibility. Then comes the steamer trunk, followed, of course, by a piano. There is some explanation for the falling bricks at a construction site, but little logic behind the live bomb and the now expected, if not completely unlikely, anvil.

In the cartoon’s final moments, as the dog’s bad luck is sealed in seeming perpetuity, three final object fall from the sky onto his head as he runs off into a distance: a plane (OK), a bus (what? Did it fall off a bridge?), and then, for the punchline, a ship. A large ocean liner falls out of the sky, onto the dog. His luck is indeed bad.

In 7 minutes, Avery’s cartoon communicates an absurd logic, one without which we cannot truly enjoy cartoons. It’s the same logic explained in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Roger, the animated rabbit, and Eddie, the live action human, have been handcuffed together. As Eddie furiously saws at the handcuffs he snaps at Roger to stand still. In a good faith effort to help, Roger slips out of his bonds and leaves Eddie to his task. Eddie notices that Roger is no longer chained to him, and snarls, “Do you mean to tell me you could have taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?”

“No, not at any time,” Roger explains. “Only when it was funny.”

That is the essence of cartoon logic. Anything can happen. But only when it’s funny.

This is a lot of what I love about cartoons.

The Animaniacs summarized the boundaries and possibilities of cartoon logic in the 1993 short, “I Am the Very Model of a Cartoon Individual,” jamming a maximum number of tropes into 75 seconds of music. An illustration of an anvil falls from the pages of a book, manifesting with a heavy clang onto the head of a pirate. Yakko Warner sings, “From this bag here why I can pull most anything imaginable, like office desks and lava lights and Burt who is a cannibal.”

Anything imaginable, as long as it’s funny.

Peter does it in Family Guy and Pinky Pie does it in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

And this is what Dragon is doing today. I love cartoons. I love drawing cartoons. It’s unlikely that I’ll get any worse at it. This strip gives me hope that I might be getting better.

But I wanted to examine the Horsehead Nebula! And shoot the fun size trebuchet. And maybe eat a banana, or some other piece of fruit off the Carmen Miranda hat.

But I wanted to examine the Horsehead Nebula! And shoot the fun size trebuchet. And maybe eat a banana, or some other piece of fruit off the Carmen Miranda hat.

If You Knew the Things up with Which I Must Put

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Gourd out of my mind

Gourd out of my mind

The intention in writing a daily blog was to inject a sense of accountability into my art, i.e. the blog would serve as a motivation for creating art every day, depending on the vast backlog of mandalas and dragons for days when life made other plans. It never occurred to me to consider the weeks that life made other plans.

It’s been some dark times at QWERTY vs. Dvorak, but the end (or at least a respite) should be resolving itself shortly.

In the meantime, the following crude and unlovely surreal comic from days of yore (late ’90s? early ’00s?) basically sums up my attitude toward life as a partial result of the utter nonsense through which my mind has been dragged this summer.

I am an angry flower.

I am an angry flower.

Technically, this flower could count as a really off-kilter mandala, which is about what you’d expect from a rage-aholic flower.