i've never seen sam & silo - for some reason, walker's comics have never been at all popular here in the uk - but iirc it's a retooled version of sam's strip without the meta elements? fantagraphics have issued a complete sam's strip, btw, that looks p tasty
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 13 July 2012 14:37 (eleven years ago) link
S&S were pretty vanilla, nothing you'd ever think Bill Watterson would have been influenced by.
― pplains, Friday, 13 July 2012 14:40 (eleven years ago) link
WF i liked that review a lot.
schulz' minimalism (and the ironic adaptation of the entire medium to that minimalism, when pretty much literally no one else can work properly with it) is so magic and spooky; i am not really arteducated but i suspect he was a greater american artist than most of the abstract expressionists or whoever his "fine" contemporaries were. sometimes i reread the paragraph-long intro he gave watterson's first big color collection, which begins "bill watterson draws great bedside tables. i admire that." and goes on to say that he likes "calvin's little shoes that look like dinner rolls". can you imagine what that must have felt like for watterson.
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Friday, 13 July 2012 14:52 (eleven years ago) link
haha, wow. i didn't know about that
― Nhex, Friday, 13 July 2012 15:17 (eleven years ago) link
sam's strip is greatthe dinner rolls bit is legendary.
― This clam, stranded on someone’s floor, is trying to dig itself (forksclovetofu), Friday, 13 July 2012 17:52 (eleven years ago) link
schultz was clearly a difficult guy.
this thread convinced me to grab a lot of the fawcett peanuts collections off ebay
― Mordy, Friday, 13 July 2012 17:56 (eleven years ago) link
xp I mean, he's not wrong, but damn dude, lol
― Nhex, Friday, 13 July 2012 18:18 (eleven years ago) link
haha i've always thought it was like intensely complimentary! to single out little cartoonist's details like that instead of just saying oh childish wonder oh sophisticated wit oh we need the comics more now than ever.
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Friday, 13 July 2012 18:23 (eleven years ago) link
he also compliments the water splashes.
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Friday, 13 July 2012 18:24 (eleven years ago) link
i've seen some really old beetle bailey (early '60s i think) with what seemed like pretty sharp, stinging anti-military lolz -- or anyway a lot sharper than it got later.
schulz is right! i love the way watterson draws little things -- telephones, the covers of comic books, trees.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 13 July 2012 18:49 (eleven years ago) link
i can understand why schulz wld admire the attention to detail of someone like watterson - after all, schulz's background was in correspondence course commercial art, where the public wld pay to have their renderings of objects, animals etc graded via the post by schulz and many other 'teachers'.
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 13 July 2012 21:27 (eleven years ago) link
i read he used to have contests with the other drawing instructor guys where they'd draw a series of parallel lines as close to each other as possible without touching, and he'd get them really close, so that the gap between lines were smaller than the lines themselves.
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 13 July 2012 21:31 (eleven years ago) link
^I love this anecdote!
― Lewis Apparition (Jon Lewis), Friday, 13 July 2012 21:36 (eleven years ago) link
schulz drew this in high school:
http://farm1.staticflickr.com/87/243527705_99306dddfc_z.jpg?zz=1
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 13 July 2012 21:41 (eleven years ago) link
little hitlers
― congratulations (n/a), Friday, 13 July 2012 21:48 (eleven years ago) link
OMG
― Lewis Apparition (Jon Lewis), Friday, 13 July 2012 21:48 (eleven years ago) link
http://childrensbookshop.com/images/bookimages/68/68044.jpg
there's a larger version of that pic, and the story behind it, in this bk, which is really great and really cheap secondhand. along w/ a nice selection of full colour sunday pages up to abt 1973, it contains a great photo sequence of schulz drawing and lettering a daily, and some terrific pics of him wearing 70s big collared flowery shirts - its still the best single volume peanuts bk, imho (the chip kidd bk favours the late 50s/early 60s stuff, which may suit ppl w/ the same taste as aldo. personally i find some of the design a bit grandstanding, although the bk does contain many treasures, too)
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 13 July 2012 21:57 (eleven years ago) link
hey man, no chip kidd no fucking deal!!!?@?@@!@#111!
― Lewis Apparition (Jon Lewis), Friday, 13 July 2012 21:59 (eleven years ago) link
(sorry, I have no reason to be angered by chip kidd but i just am)
― Lewis Apparition (Jon Lewis), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:00 (eleven years ago) link
u convinced me. xxp
― Mordy, Friday, 13 July 2012 22:00 (eleven years ago) link
the thing that rly irked me in the michaelis book is that he seems to think schulz deliberately made up all the bad childhood memories he would mention in interview years later -- being picked on by bullies, etc. -- because he (michaelis) couldn't find any witnesses to verify it! i mean, i had a shitty time in first grade too, but i doubt any of my classmates would remember that 80 years later.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:01 (eleven years ago) link
i second 'peanuts jubilee,' it's much more charming than the chip kidd book (which i actually found pretty disappointing, tho the huge oversized reproductions of schulz panels are inevitably beautiful). and 'peanuts treasury' and 'sandlot peanuts' (old oversized books with tons of classic strips, both probably bargain-bin remainder or easily found used now) are both great too.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:03 (eleven years ago) link
i feel i have seen many wonderful things that i wouldn't otherwise have seen - schulz originals, translated japanese batman comics and so on- thanks to chip kidd, but the price for that has been to have CHIP KIDD flashed onto my retinas 24 frames per second
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 13 July 2012 22:04 (eleven years ago) link
sandlot peanuts was among the first books i ever owned; my copy has crayon scrawls all over it
― This clam, stranded on someone’s floor, is trying to dig itself (forksclovetofu), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:05 (eleven years ago) link
don't know sandlot peanuts, must seek out - iirc, peanuts treasury (the big golden hardcover?) recycles some of the autobiographical material frm jubilee...don't have those to hand right now
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 13 July 2012 22:06 (eleven years ago) link
sandlot peanuts is just the baseball stuff. at age four, i knew the name joe garagiola
― This clam, stranded on someone’s floor, is trying to dig itself (forksclovetofu), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:07 (eleven years ago) link
and the name joe shlabotnik
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:12 (eleven years ago) link
seriously though!
― This clam, stranded on someone’s floor, is trying to dig itself (forksclovetofu), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:14 (eleven years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSrABUI84wE
ahh i can see why a baseball-themed peanuts anthol never made it to the uk - but the exoticism of things like baseball and summer camps was def part of the appeal to this partic brit reader, and i'm sure many others. when i was young i had no idea whether the great pumpkin was a real holiday/event or not
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 13 July 2012 22:18 (eleven years ago) link
it is iirc
― This clam, stranded on someone’s floor, is trying to dig itself (forksclovetofu), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:19 (eleven years ago) link
the sack toon, btw, is a really faithful rendering of a long stretch from Sandlot
"you're fun to be with mister sack"
― This clam, stranded on someone’s floor, is trying to dig itself (forksclovetofu), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:21 (eleven years ago) link
and the punchline of that shaggy dog story is amazingthe gag is that charlie brown has baseball on his mind so much that he develops a rash on the back of his head in the shape of the stitches on a baseballthen he sees the sun rising as a baseballso he goes to summer camp to get baseball off his mindand after many weeks he decides he's cured so he wakes up early to watch the sun rise, unsure if it will be a baseball or the sun and when he finally looks he sees - really, watch the video.
― This clam, stranded on someone’s floor, is trying to dig itself (forksclovetofu), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:24 (eleven years ago) link
haha i had that video when i was a kid -- it also includes the truly insane story where charlie brown bites the kite-eating tree, is threatened with a lawsuit by the environmental protection agency (!!!), runs away, gets lost, and winds up living in a cardboard box (!!!!) and coaching a team of toddlers.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:27 (eleven years ago) link
in retrospect, it's amazing how faithful (and popular) those cartoons were considering how ubiquitous they became.i remember a musical saturday morning peanuts show that i used to watch as a kid.
― This clam, stranded on someone’s floor, is trying to dig itself (forksclovetofu), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:29 (eleven years ago) link
and a quick google search suggests that was the cartoon adaptation of "you're a good man charlie brown"i can't hear home on the range without "give me my pencil"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgQyRoP6fgU
― This clam, stranded on someone’s floor, is trying to dig itself (forksclovetofu), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:31 (eleven years ago) link
we talked about mr. sack upthread but i had not seen the adaptation
SO HERE I AM GOING TO CAMP. FOR SOMEONE WHO HATES GOING TO CAMP I SURE SPEND A LOT OF TIME THERE. MAYBE I WENT TO THE WRONG DOCTOR. HIS SOLUTION FOR EVERYTHING IS TO GO TO CAMP. I KNOW WHAT'LL HAPPEN TO ME. JUST WHEN I GET OLD ENOUGH SO THAT I DON'T HAVE TO GO ANYMORE, I'LL GET DRAFTED INTO THE INFANTRY.
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:32 (eleven years ago) link
i bet you straightened them out, didn't you, sack?
― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Friday, 13 July 2012 22:33 (eleven years ago) link
'the infantry' really makes that
― Lewis Apparition (Jon Lewis), Friday, 13 July 2012 23:20 (eleven years ago) link
in one of the books my dad had, charlie brown loses in the spelling bee because he misspells 'maze' as [willie] 'mays'. which is less sad than the time he misspells 'beagle'
― mookieproof, Friday, 13 July 2012 23:30 (eleven years ago) link
schulz definitely loved his "funny words"
― mississippi joan hart (crüt), Friday, 13 July 2012 23:49 (eleven years ago) link
Ever since I read that Michaelis book I periodically doodle objects in little groups of 3s, it's a good exercise. It inspired this thread: Things that are satisying to draw a simple cartoon of
― Team Safeword (Abbbottt), Saturday, 14 July 2012 05:00 (eleven years ago) link
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, July 13, 2012 3:01 PM (6 hours ago)
haha you would totally not guess that is the case from that epic TCJ article w/Monty Schulz where he questions the veracity of seemingly every minor anecdote in that book
― Team Safeword (Abbbottt), Saturday, 14 July 2012 05:02 (eleven years ago) link
http://danceraday.tumblr.com/
― I dont even know that I think this sucks per se (forksclovetofu), Friday, 27 July 2012 14:08 (eleven years ago) link
have we ever brought up Three Word Phrase?http://threewordphrase.com/todo.htm
― Nhex, Sunday, 29 July 2012 02:33 (eleven years ago) link
why did you do that.
― pplains, Sunday, 29 July 2012 02:35 (eleven years ago) link
say what you will about rage comics, but I've laughed at fucking dolans 10x funnier than whatever that was supposed to be.
― pplains, Sunday, 29 July 2012 02:36 (eleven years ago) link
ooookay dude *backs slowly away*
― Nhex, Sunday, 29 July 2012 02:43 (eleven years ago) link