Creativity + Neatness = Art isn’t too far off, but there are a few things missing. Such as clarity, purpose, surprise, know-how, perspiration, and something to put under it all, such as a newspaper, so the table stays nice.
My daughter did this, and now for hundreds of years people will find little smiley pebbles in our neighborhood and wonder why.
Alice is the strange little kid who stares at you so fixedly in a restaurant or other public place until you’re overcome by self-consciousness. Please note the breaking of the fourth wall.
Ew, a sticky floor. Aren’t you glad I got the fourth wall fixed in time?
A cheap-shot definition of the oboe is that it’s an ill wind that nobody blows well. Me, I love the oboe.
Though I might find an eight year old practicing the oboe every day to be a little trying.
I swiped Mr. Otterloop’s little joke from a very old Mad Magazine. Shh, don’t tell.
Dill’s brothers’ first trebuchet. It’s rendered pretty accurately, too, if anybody needs a schematic for building your own.
This is also drawn from life, and is believed by many to be effective.
As I might’ve mentioned, I love the notion that some unremarkable, commonplace thing, such as a pile of dirty snow, might inspire a whole new mythology. At least for Petey.
Drawing a forced-perspective view such as the one in panel two is very enjoyable. Making it read clearly can be difficult, but it works well for cramming things into a small panel and gives it an interesting, toy-theater feel.
Petey elevates his limitations, turning them from character flaws into qualities worth studying and imitating. You’ll note the 108-year-old guy gets a bottle of wine with his fungus, so it can’t be too bad.
This has happened to every parent I know, whether they’ll admit it or not. I’ll bet emergency rooms treat dozens of broken noses every year by a parent too embarrassed to say what really happened.
The first time I noticed the moon out during the day, I was in first grade and I thought something must’ve gone really wrong. I blame that Goodnight Moon book for my confusion.
In the old Washington Post Magazine strips, Mrs. Otterloop very briefly worked for a handicraft store that sold crafty things like the juice-box caddy. I dropped that, as it seemed a little stereotypical; she ought to work at something unexpected, like as a crane operator, or as a truck driver, or as a motivational speaker.
“March comes in on clumsy feet, Kicks the trash cans down the street, Spills some garbage on the lawn, Blows the rest to hellandgone, Knocks the branches off the trees, Gives the power lines a squeeze, Then March leaves and as it goes, The sun comes out and then it snows.”
I tried to make Ranger Dan as indoorsy and unranger looking as possible. He’s right, though; owls are not all that bright.
And Dill’s not the sharpest crayon in the box either.
The job thing Daddy does has not been identified, at least in the syndicated Cul de Sac. But it was identified a few times in the Post version; Daddy worked at the Department of Consumerism, Office of Petty Complaints, where he was in charge of brochures. Because the strip was set more specifically in Washington, D.C., this all made some sense.
Drawing that intestinal tangle of tube slides is insanely fun.
Dill’s brothers again, and I guess there are four, with a wide age range. They’ll rarely be shown as they have more power as offstage characters. And if they look anything like Dill, they’d be pretty disappointing in the flesh.
Quackmeyer must’ve shaken his head instead of nodding it, and Alice got mad at him.
Steering Petey into places outside his very narrow comfort zone is enjoyable and a good way to provoke some minor drama. And it’s all for his own good, of course.
Dill sometimes shows signs of having a dark side. Because he’s the smallest of five poorly socialized and semidiabolical brothers, who can blame him?
They stop naming classes past middle school because, obviously, if it were extended through high school, there’d be classes called the Fledgling Burnouts, the Irritating Overachievers, the Smartmouths, the Potential Wasters, and worse.
Mr. Otterloop does have hair but, like Charlie Brown, it blends in with his head. Unless Charlie Brown is bald, in which case I have to rethink everything.
Petey, who is cripplingly self-conscious, has had a few out-of-body experiences, but this is the first time he’s proliferated so exponentially. A few more Peteys and he'll have his own team.
This was rewritten five or six times before my editor and I were satisfied with it. It only became funny when Dill admitted defeat in the face of Alice’s blinding logic.
“Pancakes” is also one of those words that’s comedy gold. “Waffles” is only comedy silver.
Little Neuro is, of course, a parody of the great fantasy strip Little Nemo in Slumberland. It has everything Little Nemo had except imagination or narrative drive.
What’s not shown makes this strip funny. If Dill were shown catching Petey’s shoe, it would be less funny.
Petey’s generally unhappy with most of the physical world. The part of it that contains sports equipment must drive him crazy.
A grocery store strikes me as being a good setting for comedy, as does a restaurant. Funniest of all is, of course, a pancake restaurant.
Toys like this are kind of condescending.
I salute you again, Lemony Snicket.
I don’t know all of Alice’s toys, but in the second panel I recognize Polyfill (extreme right) and Clem Clownpants (in the stripey hat). Clem is later identified not as an actual clown, but as an office worker whose career is stymied by his lousy wardrobe.
Petey has a few totem objects that lend him strength and courage. If he were equipped with all of them, he’d be invincible.
Every preschool classroom has a swaybacked sofa or unsprung chair donated or scrounged by a parent.
Some show-offy crosshatching in that second panel. Newspaper strips are shrunk to such puny sizes that it’s dangerous to crosshatch too much as it reproduces as a fuzzy clot. On the other hand, fuzzy clots are funny.
If it’s this personal, maybe Petey’s aversion to nature is well founded.
Note Alice’s fashion doll, which never seems to be wearing clothes. I think it’s vain and demanding, and Alice gets fed up with it.
The Otterloops are shown at mealtimes pretty often, but whatever it is they’re eating usually looks pretty unappetizing. I gave up on trying to draw food accurately years ago, except for hamburgers.
OK, and maybe pancakes. But they’re comedy gold.
Just identifying an echidna, much less the color ecru, suggests Beni’s pretty advanced for his age.
The shrub is related to Charlie Brown’s kite-eating tree, but it’s more omnivorous.
I’d thought of the Sofa Centaur about twenty years ago but I didn’t know what to do with it. What it needed was a framing device and a snoring grandma.
That ice-cream store is drawn from one three blocks from my house, and they do serve ice cream that color, mostly to kids Alice’s age.
Around here schools have Crazy Hair and Pajamas Day, something I was not afflicted with in my academic career.
Alice’s taunt in the second panel is inspired by a bit cut out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Two brawny river-boatmen, preparing to fight, circle each other bragging of their awful prowess and superhuman strength. They never get around to actually fighting though.
Patterns in a black-and-white drawing can be used like colors to give it clarity and liveliness. Or they can just be confusing.
Thus begins the epic adventure of Petey’s oboe recital.
When I was Petey’s age, I took bagpipe lessons.
Bagpipes, like oboes, are double-reed instruments and vehicles for cheap comedy. Bagpipes, however, are more aggressive than oboes.
Though this isn’t much alluded to, Mrs. Otterloop’s first name is Madeline. Mr. Otterloop’s name is Peter, making Petey a junior, which is one mo
re thing for him to worry about.
Again, Dill shows a bit of his dark side. Or maybe it’s just his slightly creepy side.
The school motto, “A little learning,” is from the first line of a poem by Alexander Pope. The line finishes “is a dangerous thing.”
And the lobsters sometimes escape from their tank and rampage around the parking lot.
It is catchy.
I try not to show Mr. Otterloop as a standard-issue Dumped-On Dad, but it’s difficult not to sometimes.
It’s not suggested that the deviled eggs are meant to be thrown during the performances, but it’s hard not to jump to that conclusion.
Mrs. Otterloop’s comment about Petey not needing glasses makes me happy.
A crowd scene. Nobody likes drawing crowd scenes, least of all me.
Ernesto Lacuna’s second appearance.
Medieval engines of war fit in with bland suburban neighborhoods remarkably well.
Petey is likely also a fan of the more somber and intense modern graphic novelists.
Alice, on the other hand, has a deep yet inchoate desire to ride on a float and wave at people.
Please note the stilt-walking Uncle Sam, which is required by law in all Fourth of July parades.
Over the years I’ve gotten a little leery of talking animals. They’re freer of convention than those characters who are merely human, and they can unbalance a strip in their favor pretty easily. Thus Mr. Danders has disappeared for a little while. But if I impose a loosely enforced law that Everything Talks to Alice (as she’s the center of the universe) then I can have an occasional talking animal. Such as this malevolent butterfly.
Again, cheese is funny.
My yard is full of those things, and I don’t think they’re flowers.
The coming of the Uh-Oh Baby.
The Uh-Oh Baby is based on something I saw while waiting in line at a fancy ice-cream store. A woman with a little girl had ordered a complicated ice-cream cone that was taking the guy behind the counter awhile to construct.
When the cone finally appeared it was dazzling, an ornate thing in a waffle cone decked out with all kinds of jimmies and sprinkles. The woman took it and handed it down to her little girl, who immediately dropped it on the floor.
Everybody in the store froze in place, shocked by the shattered, ruined spread on the floor. The little girl, unfazed, put her palms up and said, “Uh-oh,” like that’s what we say when things go south.
OK, so it’s not much of an anecdote. And I don’t even like ice cream that much. But I’m sure there’s a lesson for us all in there somewhere.
We had a guinea pig for a year or so. It was a former kindergarten classroom pet, rejected because of allergy issues.
After a year we gave it away to friends. It was not an impressive animal. It squeaked all night and the cats were scared of it.
This may be the first time that the legend of Robert Johnson was crossed with produce. Somebody pointed out to me that there are three stories going on here without it becoming confusing. If I could’ve, I would’ve made it four.
I think Dill’s parents are former hippies who lived on a farm, and then moved their large family to the more confined space of a suburban neighborhood, but continued to think in the sprawlier ways of a farm. In other words, their yard is full of junk.
This might be proof that Ernesto is not imaginary. Or, as Petey believes, it might be evidence that he’s a mass delusion.
This series was drawn at an actual beach house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, so it’s extra-accurate.
The center panel is another bow to Little Nemo. In one very famous episode, Nemo was carried away by his bed, which sprinted down the street on elongated legs.
Water and its movement is fun to draw. So are clouds and small children. If it weren’t for the spit joke, this strip would be just too dang sweet.
The waves were drawn with a music staff pen. It’s a nib with five points for ruling a music staff (duh), and it’s great for making interesting textures when misused in a cartoon.
I forgot to draw the balloon around “ADULT SWIM” and I figure it’s too late now.
This is pretty closely related to an old Sunday strip. Except here, Petey’s opinion of mini-golf is more positive.
Pancakes!
Petey should dance more often.
Of all the creatures on God’s green earth, cows are the second most fun to draw (elephants being the first).
The interior of a car, on the other hand, is difficult to draw. This one is adequate.
Gigantic, repulsive urns, however, are a joy to draw. Some days I give myself something fun to draw and some days something hard. Unless I’m feeling lazy; then it’s all just talking heads.
Aw. A wise man said you can break hearts with a joke.
Note that Alice is peeking.
The bit about sea cucumbers is true. Most of Mr. Otterloop’s comments are reliable; they’re also rarely helpful.
Ernesto is in a hurry to grow up for all the wrong reasons. He knows adults have all the power and, being a Bond villain in embryo, he’s a little power-crazed.
Irresistible Force meets Incurable Optimism.
Every kid-based comic strip has a designated bully. In this one, it’s Alice, unfortunately.
Like I said, Dill’s family moved to the suburbs from a farm. On a farm, there’s room to do things: put up outbuildings, raise livestock, store machinery, haul things. And build trebuchets. These activities translate poorly to the little fraction of an acre available in suburban development houses, but it’s fun to try.
Again, Dill is moved by the poignancy of the inanimate.
The Uh-Oh Baby should appear just often enough to make readers antsy at the appearance of a baby, any baby, in the strip.
I do this, too, but I’ll never admit it. From what I’ve heard, most people do this but will never admit it.
Again with the cross-hatching. There’s nothing like it for establishing atmosphere, or ruining your eyesight.
Whole caravans of portable classrooms have been sighted crossing the continent in search of school systems that are solvent and in need of qualified teachers.
In a few years Ernesto will rule the Junior Crossing Guards and the whole nation will tremble under his dominion! Especially if the whole nation wants to cross the street.
“Subtle” is a nice way of saying “incoherent.” An editor once told me that a cartoon I’d drawn might be too subtle for his paper’s readers, and I knew right away what he meant.
Marcus would get a lot of pity candy, too.
Maybe comics appeal so strongly to Petey because of his control-freakishness. He’s right about film’s passivity versus comic’s engagement. And Alice is definitely right about that actor eyeball thing. But, having said all that, do comic books still run ads for whoopee cushions?
Pulling back suddenly in the sixth and seventh panels after the flatness of the preceding five gives this strip a dramatic depth of field not seen since Citizen Kane, I’ll bet.
Cul de Sac Golden Treasury Page 2