Tag Archives: gluten free

The Art of Negotiation

hostage negotiations_edited-1

Don’t knock cauliflower crust pizza until you try it. It’s pretty good! And yes, it has to be a Mexican Coke. And yes, I can taste the difference. So no funny business. No Pepsi. No Tab. And definitely no high fructose corn syrup. 

Today’s comic is a bit of a shout out to Joe Martin, one of the great old-school newspaper comic strip artists, a dude who has been writing not one, not two, not three, but FOUR dailies for something like the last 38 years. (He apparently got married at 16 and had a passel of kids, so it was probably a survival/escape mechanism.) His wikipedia page is a bit threadbare, but his website claims that the Guinness Book has awarded him the designation of the world’s most prolific cartoonist, having published well over 20,000 gags. Mind-bogglingly, he is still funny after almost 4 decades at it.

He does a periodic bit about his “Uncle Leon” and what the world would be like if this out-of-touch relative held a variety of professional and historical positions. I’m pretty sure that’s where this comic came from, except that I am probably a little weirder. Like Uncle Leon, I am wholly unsuited to a wide variety of professions, but, unlike Uncle Leon, I think I’m aware of my shortcomings and could at least fake it for a while before people caught on.

I’m pretty pleased with this stereotypical looking police detective and his skewed tie. There are a couple details I couldn’t iron out, like the right side of his collar and the specifics of how men’s mustaches go gray, but by and large, he actually looks like the caricature I was trying to draw. It’s weird how the solution to little issues seems so simple once the comic is published when they’re impossible in Photoshop and I’ve erased and redrawn them 50 times. But I am the queen of second guessing myself. Dragon came out fine, although I don’t usually draw my body so skinny or angular. For a really long time, when I started cartooning, I was always trying to draw the whole body of every character, but obviously, in many cases, you only need the top part.

In the future, It would probably behoove me to start drawing backgrounds, too, but I’m still learning. But getting to the point where I can always get the idea down and I don’t need a jillion reference photos to figure out how the human body goes together. I want to develop a more cartoony style, and you can’t do that if you’re always dependent on photographs.

It’s the Hypoallergenic Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

The rock is also suitable for children with lactose intolerance, nut allergies, and chemical sensitivity.

The rock is also suitable for children with lactose intolerance, chemical sensitivity, and peanut allergies. Not recommended for kids with behavior disorders, though. 

There will be no teal pumpkin in front of my house this Halloween; at the rate I’m going this year, there will be no pumpkins at all, let alone jack-o-lanterns, unless we obtain and carve them Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. I feel for kids with allergies. Personally, the list of things I can’t eat anymore is almost as long as the things I like these days, but there are just too many variables, and my budget for candy is pretty small anyway. Plus, we rarely get more than 2 dozen kids, and half the time we take off around 8 to go to a party.

If you haven’t seen It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, it’s worth 21 minutes of your time. I mean, media-wise, the ’60s were a simpler time. There are no explosions, no gore, and nothing the least bit scary, but it’s still a Halloween classic, in its way.

For many months now, I’ve been turning over an idea for another big, serious, depressing comic about my childhood, something that I’ve written about in longer prose work, but couldn’t quite figure out how to frame it in comic format. Today the way in seems to have revealed itself, but there wasn’t a chance to get it started because I went to 6 shoe stores unsuccessfully searching for a pair of minimalist sneakers identical to the pair I’ve been wearing since 2012 instead of drawing a long comic. Maybe tomorrow. Or at least get it started tomorrow, as I now realize that today is only Thursday.

Dragon Comics 47

Ah, the classic pie-in-the-face-gag. Never gets old.

Ah, the old pie-in-the-face-gag. Never gets old.

A new twist on an old classic! Cliche + technology = modern comedy. “Gluten free” and “vegan” are hilarious buzzwords, too. Personally, while I prefer a gluten free diet, veganism seems unnatural to me. Please pass the butter and the eggs please. Meat is more of a convenience than a necessity, but I don’t want to live in a world without butter. I do try to eschew sugar, although, at this time of year, it’s almost impossible. I already promised the kids we could make gingerbread and the 3-parties-a-day holiday schedule has begun.