Ol’ George #21: The Wearin’ o’ the Grin

 

Ol’ George #20: India Pale Fail

 

Notes on #20: 

1. I realized after I wrote this that Balonious begins his litany of Wilting Turnip’s great IPAs by copying “Patrick Swayze Christmas “ from MST3K. 

2. The punchline comes from Looney Tunes, but where did they get it? No one knows. Some say Vaudeville. They’re just guessing. 

3. George will never go to Wilting Turnip. He’s got everything he needs at Kelly’s.

Ol’ George #19: Tick It to Ride

 Ol’ George #19: Tick It To Ride

Notes on # 19:

1: This strip needed a beer geek character and I decided it should be me. Balonious Funk is a play on my BeerAdvocate.com username FeloniousMonk. When I came up with it in 2002, I thought I was so very clever, unaware that the joke had been made many times before. 

2.  And now we have our very first continuity. The beer called Ferval’s Finest in #18 is the same that Irma served George in #11, 2 months ago. It’s been on tap all this time and hasn’t gotten any better.

Maybe Balonious heard how awful it is. He doesn’t care.

Ol’ George #18: Poet of the Pint

 

Ol’ George #17: He’s No Clown

Notes on #17;

1. I came up with this idea months ago, but I had to do it now for this reason: it was 25 years ago, on February 12, 2000, that Charles Monroe Schulz left this world. 

I found out the next morning. I woke up early that Sunday morning, drew a bath, and got the paper, got in the tub, and read Schulz’ last strip. It was the same goodbye letter as his final daily, published in December 1999, but with a collage of classic scenes surrounding it. Oddly enough, almost immediately after, the announcer on the jazz station playing in the background gave the news. As I say in the tub holding the funnies and started to cry. I’d been following Charlie Brown and Snoopy since I was four years old. 

2. My original idea for this one ended with panel two, but I had a change of heart. I didn’t want to end with a bitter Charlie or with someone being mean to him. I had to give him some happiness.

In the end, Schulz also gave Charlie some happiness. He never flew the kite, kicked the football, won a baseball game or sat down to lunch with the little red haired girl. That wouldn’t be funny, after all. But he did enjoy a relationship with a girl who liked the way he danced, and his dog was always by his side. 

3. So I’m sentimental, so sue me.

Ol’ George16: Drunk, Drunk, Drunk

 

 Notes on #16:

1. All of the previous 15 cartoons were done with pencil sketches first and embellished with felt tip pens and markers. For this one, I used no pencils, only a Pilot G2 .07 gel pen. It’s not my favorite pen, but the one I had on hand. My favorite is the Pilot V5 ( or 7) extra fine rolling ball. However, right now I only have one of those, in red, and George is a blue cat, not red. 

2. This change in style is a tribute to one of my cartooning heroes Jules Feiffer, who passed last month at age 95 (almost made it to 96!) I have no idea what his process was, what pens he used, whether he pencilled, etc., but his work has always been loose and spontaneous. 

3. The title is a nod to the original name for his later self-titled strip, Sick, Sick, Sick, which began initially in the Village Voice in 1956 and went into syndication until 1997. Meanwhile, he produced plays, screenplays, novels and children's books. I became a fan from the I discovered a paperback collection at a used bookstore in the 80’s, scouring shelves on each visit. For years, I could only find a few, but now I have them all. Thanks, eBay!

Ol’ George # 15: Post No Bills

 

 Ol’ George #15: Post No Bills 

Notes on #15:

1. I’d been obsessed with comics and cartoons for as long as I could could remember, but the comics page was getting boring as I got into my teenage years. Mad Magazine alone couldn’t fill my needs.Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed arrived in our local paper just in time, in 1981, when I was twelve or thirteen. It was the right dose of satire and subversion. I still recall the thrill I felt when the first book collection came out. 

When they introduced that lovable Bill the Cat in ‘82, I was infatuated. I got the first t-shirt immediately, but that was all the merchandise for a bit. That would ruin the joke, after all, for Bill was originally a spoof of the ubiquitous selling of Garfield. 

I drew Bill all the time. In the backgrounds of my high school newspaper comic “Lenny”, signs appeared saying Post No Bills with a picture of Bill. A friend and I did an animation of Bill hocking up a hairball for an art class. When I decorated the window of my favorite used book store for Halloween (an annual tradition in Anoka, Halloween Capitol of the World) with a depiction of ghosts floating through a graveyard, Bill’s tombstone was in the scene.

After Breathed stopped the strip and started up Outland, my enthusiasm waned. When Bill merch appeared, I was up on my high horse, all righteously indignant.

All these years later, I own a Bill doll, bought directly from the cartoonist (along with a signed copy of a two volume complete edition of the strip with an Opus sketch, and a signed/Opused print of a favorite strip). And I again own a Bill t-shirt, but one in a size more appropriate for my contemporary build. 

2. The funniest and cruelest joke about Cathy is courtesy of Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead. “Someone draws that? I thought they dropped string on the ground and photocopied it.”

I can’t complain too much about minimalist cartooning. Much of the blame can be delivered to Charles M. Schulz, and I do not hide my admiration for his art. 

3. Remember, folks: this is not a strip about beer. It’s about a cat who drinks beer at a bar and people, animals, things he meets there. And I hope you find it entertaining.