Cats, We Got Cats

Here's a late birthday present for my girls, who I know will relate, as will many cat owners:

To quote detective Adrian Monk, "I LOL'd out loud."

We all had a great birthday weekend, I think. Now back to work for everyone. Kids, quit goofing around online and study for your finals!

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Ides of March Eve

Today is a really good day. The evidence:

1. It's "π Day," 3.14. Please notice that I've manipulated the post time to read 1:59 (p.m.), which pointlessly carries the digits of π out three points further. (If I wanted to do it right, I'd calculate that 0.159 of a day equals 3 hours 48 minutes 58 seconds, and reset the post clock to 3:48:58 a.m. But I'm not that big a nerd.)

2. A few days after 20 years ago tomorrow, I was doing this:

Apologies for the picture's stripes.
A new scanner is on order.

My two little pooquita chiquitas celebrate their birthday tomorrow, and Karen and I are taking a cake, gifts, and a couple of their girlfriends to spend the day at their all-grown-up big-girl university. In contrast to 20 years ago, I think today if they ganged up and used some strategy, they'd have a fair chance of taking me. Good thing I instilled all that respect when I had the chance. Right, girls? Right?

3. One other reason.

I hope you have a great weekend, I think I will.

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One Of Those Days....

Below is my impromptu ranking of some artistic media I've used. On top are those with which I have the most practice, can usually achieve the look I intend, and enjoy working. The farther down the list a medium falls, the more likely it is to make me waste many frustrating hours before throwing away the result.

#1. Ink and brush
#2. Watercolor
#3. Acrylic
#4. Pastels
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#10. Oils
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#34. Wacom tablet and computer
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#73. Dog poo and a wiggly twig
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#652. Gouache

Stupid gouache.
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Shake shake BOOM! rattlerattlerattlerattle

I felt this cute little earthquake about eight minutes ago.

An amusing trifle, really; just a magnitude 2.2 that wouldn't be noteworthy at all except the US Geological Survey says its epicenter was 5 km directly below my house. Someday the Gates of Hell will open up in my backyard and you'll all be sorry. But I'll be sorrier.

I Can See My House From Here

I find this photo very moving.

That's a picture of the Earth and Moon as seen from the planet Mars. Frankly, I didn't know we had anything in the Martian neighborhood with optics good enough to take a shot like that, and at first suspected it was a fake. But it's real, shot by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently orbiting the red planet. Usually it's pointed down toward the ground. By the way, NASA says that's the west coast of South America in that picture, and in a higher-res version I can just make it out.

What strikes me is that we go to all the trouble of sending these spacecraft out to explore the unknown millions of miles away, yet are moved most powerfully when they point their cameras back at us. It's the same reaction the world had when the Apollo 8 astronauts became the first humans to see the far side of the Moon first-hand* and photographed Earth rising over the lunar horizon as they flew back around. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, everything you know and love, everything that ever happened in all of human history, all the life we have knowledge of anywhere in the universe, is on that fragile little blue sphere.

I've seen a few photos like this before. As I recall, one of the Voyager probes photographed the Earth-Moon pair as it soared away from us on its way out of the solar system. We send surrogate eyes out only to look back and see ourselves more clearly. These pictures get me every time.

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* The Soviets took the very first pictures of the far side of the Moon via unmanned probe, which is why most of the craters back there have Russian names.

In Praise of Pioneers

A recent discussion at an Internet watering hole got me thinking about pioneering cartoonists, comic book artists and writers, and the lack of respect they get. The business has always been cruel to its veterans--comic books much more than comic strips, I think, but both find new voices more compelling, new styles more diverting. They eat their old. That's the way of the world, the way of business, and I understand it. I expect a profit-driven publisher (and publishers who aren't profit-driven don't publish long) to put out what sells.

What pains me is that fans go along.

The newspaper comic strip is just over a century old. Comic books have a history almost as long--at first, many of them existed to reprint newspaper strips--but turned a corner when Superman debuted in 1938, 70 years ago this June. Before the invention of television, comic strips were a major mass medium of entertainment and cartoonists were stars. Millions of comic books were sold every month during the "Golden Age" that began with World War II and lasted about a decade after (again, probably not coincidentally ending with the proliferation of TV). Into the 1970s, comics and cartoons were important and popular cultural touchstones in a way that many, including I, believe they haven't been since and probably won't be again.

That wasn't that long ago! A lot of very creative people who did that work are still alive. A few of them would still love to work. Not many of them get the opportunity.

Attending the big San Diego Comic-Con the past three years, I've gotten used to seeing cartooning pioneers sitting ignored in Artist's Alley, their view blocked by a long line waiting to meet the superstar wunderkind sitting at the next table. I dunno.... I've got no business telling people what to like. But to me, being a fan of something means having an appreciation of its history and the contributions of those who came before. To me, those fans lining up at the wrong table are like baseball fans who worship Barry Bonds but have never heard of Willie Mays.

(It's not the same thing, but I remember reading about a convention whose guests included "Star Trek" actors and Apollo astronauts. The actors drew huge crowds while the astronauts sat alone, chuckling to each other that fans would rather meet people who pretended to explore space than those who actually had.)

I can't say that the experienced pioneers deserve work; that's for the market to decide. But they deserve acknowledgement and respect. I've been lucky to meet a few. I never know what to say and I'm sure I always manage to sound like an idiot fanboy. It seems to come down to "thank you for your work, it means a lot to me," which is pretty weak but I think is better than nothing.

I'd take Willie Mays any day.

Top to bottom: Jerry Robinson, Irwin Hasen and Gene Colan,
talented pioneers and gracious gentlemen all. Look 'em up.

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On Cheating

Never draw what you can swipe.

Never swipe what you can trace.

Never trace what you can cut out and paste.

And never do any of that if you can hire somebody to do it for you..

--Wally Wood
Master Cartoonist

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I hate drawing cars. I'm not good at it. There's always a kid in the high school art class who earns minor fame, and maybe even a little pocket change, drawing beautifully rendered hot rods, with giant exhaust pipes roaring, tires squealing off the page, and every chrome reflection perfectly in place. He (invariably a "he" in my experience) is a venerated specialist, and he is not me.

In theory, an artist who understands perspective can draw anything. Establish a horizon line and vanishing points, and build the object out of simple shapes. It works great for a lot of things. The problem (or rather, my problem) with cars is that they're pretty complex objects, with lots of compound curves and subtle angles. Another problem with cars is that everyone is intimately familiar with them; if a drawing doesn't get the proportions just right, readers know it looks "funny" even if they can't say exactly why. Yet another problem is that every car model has dedicated owners and fans who know every bumper and bolt. I'd really like to get 'em right. .

So when I recently had occasion to draw an old car, I knew I needed help. The first resort is reference photos, and indeed you can google hundreds of pictures of old cars in various states of restoration and repair. That helps, but didn't give me the angle I needed. Evidently, no one in automotive history has ever photographed a car from a spot hovering 30 feet above the front left fender. That's a tough angle to extrapolate from a bunch of ground-level front and side shots.

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I needed a model. After combing fruitlessly through dozens of Hot Wheels racks, I found an online vendor of affordable, accurate models of old cars. A couple weeks later, I had a 1939 Chevy coupe ready to pose for me.
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At this point I might've drawn it freehand, but I decided not to do that. Instead, I put the model on a sheet of white poster board and took digital photos of it from several angles.

1939 Chevy coupe, with a smaller-scale 1940 Ford on its tail

I chose the photo above, opened it in Photoshop, and made the Chevy approximately the right size to fill the hole I'd left for it in another drawing several weeks earlier.

At this point I might've traced the photo using a light box ... but I decided not to do that. Instead, I converted the color photo into a duotone image, which is like a black-and-white photo except you substitute shades of some other color for black and gray, in this case cyan.

Cyan duotone

I printed that picture onto a sheet of the same 2-ply Bristol board I use for all my cartooning. Then, I used a brush and pens to ink directly over the light blue image.

Inked

The tricky thing here is to not get bogged down in detail and draw too tightly, despite the pains I've taken to this point to be as precise as possible. Cartooning is distillation and simplification. It's got to look as loose, relaxed, and hand-drawn as the rest of the artwork that will eventually surround it. I didn't go nuts putting in lots of reflections and spotted black because, again, that wouldn't match the style of the rest of the page.

Next, I scanned the drawing into Photoshop, where I made all the blue disappear (I likewise pencil all of my artwork in light "non-photo" blue so I don't have to erase after I've inked). All that remains is my black line art, ready to copy and paste onto the open road I drew for it elsewhere.

Blue erased, ready to copy and paste

Semi-final (I may add some shadows and such later). The road texture is a charcoal rubbing I did of my concrete front porch.

I ... kinda wish I hadn't had to do that. I'd love to have the skills to dash off any car from any era from any angle, but I don't. I admit I feel a little disappointed in myself--but not much. Over time, I've come to regard both writing and drawing as primarily problem solving. I know what I want to accomplish; now what's the best way to do it? This is the best way I could think of to solve a particular problem and produce the result I wanted.

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; !

Yesterday's New York Times had a nice little article about my second-favorite punctuation mark, the semicolon. The lede of the story is that a new subway placard, reminding riders to throw away their newspapers, properly--even elegantly--used a semicolon. Such a marvel! The article then touched on the use and misuse of the shy but intimidating character.

My favorite passage in the story: "David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam serial killer who taunted police and the press with rambling handwritten notes, was, as the columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote, the only murderer he ever encountered who could wield a semicolon just as well as a revolver."

I mention the article here even though I don't expect anyone else to follow that link or care. That's part of the story's charm.

What? Doesn't everybody have a second-favorite punctuation mark?
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I Am Old

My wife, kids and I are all fans of the Indiana Jones films (someday I'll tell you about our bathroom decor), and we all agree that our first look at the online trailer left us pretty happy and eager for May 22. Happy? "Giddy" is more like it. Harrison Ford still cuts a credible figure with the hat and whip, and we're impressed with the look and tone glimpsed in the preview. However, the point of this post isn't to give a bit of much-needed publicity to Mr. Lucas and Mr. Spielberg's obscure little art-house film.

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The point of this post is that I'm old. We were talking about the trailer when one of my girls said, "This'll be our first chance to see Indiana Jones on the big screen!"

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My wife's and my reactions were identical: "What do you mean? Surely that can't be true. Never once seen an Indiana Jones movie in a theater? How is that possible? How could you even become an Indy fan without seeing it as God intended? You obviously forgot!" Even after we spent a few minutes working out the timeline, we couldn't quite comprehend how our kids had reached adulthood only seeing videotapes of Indiana Jones on television.

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Here's how. My twins are nearly 20, born in 1988. The last Indiana Jones movie--which I clearly remember seeing as a full-grown mature adult--came out in 1989. QED.

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Today we all went to the movie theater to see "The Spiderwick Chronicles" (not bad), which was preceded by the same Indiana Jones trailer we'd huddled around my monitor to watch two days before. The first time my kids have seen Indiana Jones on the big screen.

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I was thrilled for them. And a little wistful for myself.

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This movie better be good....

Review: Suite 101

There's a very nice review of Mom's Cancer just posted at Suite 101, an interesting site with which I was not previously familiar. Suite 101 is hard to describe: it's like a general-interest magazine that publishes freelance articles on a variety of subjects such as lifestyle, health, education, entertainment, books, technology, politics and more, with dozens of new pieces posted every day. Very ambitious, and evidently successful.

Editor/reviewer Irene Taylor concludes, "This book is a 'must read' for anyone facing cancer of a loved one. Make no mistake--this graphic novel isn’t a child’s comic book. It is a serious, often humorous, always honest guide on how families can cope with a cancer diagnosis and survive the difficult road ahead." Irene and I corresponded when she asked permission to post my cover art with her review--a courtesy I always appreciate--and I'm grateful for her recommendation. Thanks!
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My Friendly Neighborhood Furry-tailed Rats

About a year and a half ago, I posted this sketch of a very determined squirrel in my backyard. This little guy worked extraordinarily hard for every seed he managed to sneak from my bird feeders, clinging to a slippery pole while an infinite feast awaited just beyond the tips of his fingers.

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This morning I looked out my back window and spied the little guy below, probably a direct descendant, no less determined and a slightly more capable climber. Or maybe the pole just wasn't as slippery today.

Odd Ends

I've been busy lately--very, very busy--and likely to remain that way for a while, which explains my dearth of blogging but does not ease the guilt gnawing at my soul. I appreciate the loyalty of everyone who checks in once in a while. I'll try to make it worth your while soon. Meanwhile, here are some Internetty things I've come across that I've found interesting:

1. Successful science fiction writer John Scalzi posted 10 tips titled "Unasked for Advice for New Writers About Money." Although aimed at aspiring, inexperienced, or struggling writers, I found much wisdom there for any sort of self-employed freelancer type (which I've been for about nine years, completely independent of cartooning). Scalzi's aim is to wipe the romantic stardust from wanna-be eyes and tell some hard truths: Treat it like a business. Don't quit your day job. Don't undervalue your work. Your income is half what you think it is (there's no automatic paycheck deduction to help pay those quarterly taxes). And my favorite, marry someone with a real job. I have little argument with any of it, although the comments raise some interesting counter-examples and objections.

2. Comic book writer Steve Gerber, creator of Howard the Duck, died today at age 60 after a long fight with pulmonary fibrosis. Mark Evanier broke the news and wrote a nice obit in his blog. I liked Mr. Gerber's work, which was intelligent and witty, but mention him here mostly because he wrote a blog himself. In it he discussed current comic book projects but also his illness, and his archived posts describing successive set-backs with a mix of hope, frustration, courage and fear reminded me very much of my mother's. It's good to remember once in a while.

3. Something lighter? Drawn is "the illustration and cartooning blog" that always gives me a dozen new ideas and two dozen talented people to be jealous of, while io9 is a new blog that delivers news about science fiction and speculative tech in a breezy format that consistently scores one or two hits a day with me. And every month or two I find time to listen to the JCB Song. I can't help being a sentimental dope; having kids'll do that to you.

4. Something lighter still? There's no going wrong with a Monty Python Video Wall.

More and better later. Thanks.

Gus Arriola and the Language of Lines

Cartoonist Gus Arriola died yesterday at age 90. His Associated Press obit is here. Mr. Arriola wrote and drew the comic strip "Gordo" between 1941 and 1985, when he retired. It's fair to say he's not a household name, but when I was a kid trying to figure out how comics worked, his strip was among those I most frequently clipped and saved. I think he's one of the all-time underrated greats.

"Gordo" was set in Mexico and featured an overweight tour guide, his housekeeper, and various human and animal characters--notably a chihuahua, pig, cat and rooster. The strip had swell characters and an easy-going charm, but what really caught my eye was the way Mr. Arriola played with the language and iconography of comics in ways I'd never seen before. His use of graphics was masterful.

Unfortunately, good examples are hard to come by online and I have no idea where to find my 30-year-old clip file (though I suspect I still have it somewhere). The images below were the best I could find, and you'll just have to take my word that I remember several even better.

(click to see larger)

The Sunday strip above, which I scanned from Jerry Robinson's book The Comics (which unfortunately reproduced it in black and white), is a nice piece from 1954. There's a lot of arty goodness going on here: the shapes of panels, the bottom border and negative profile in panel 6, the playful use of lettering guides as a design element in panel 3. Even the cigar smoke in panel 6 is an interesting squiggle. But what sells it is the checkerboard pattern, introduced in panel 4 and finished off in the final panel, where Gordo is not just a checkerboard silhouette, but one that has shattered into surprised shards.

The next Sunday strips are in color and highlight's Mr. Arriola's use of same as well as his incredibly graceful and expressive ink line. I thought he really shined when drawing the animals, particularly in frenetic action accompanied by colorful streaks or lightning bolts. I love the first strip, which is very "meta," in that the cartoonist literally cools off the characters by coloring them in cool colors (and letting in some cross ventilation by cutting two holes through the panel border!).

(click either to see larger)

Next, another black-and-white Sunday strip I found online, this one capturing the dark festivities of Dia de los Muertos. Note that these aren't just pretty pictures, but pretty pictures that tell a story. But mostly, it's just Grade-A cartooning.


In his imaginative use of the entire cartoonist's toolbox, I always thought of Arriola as a natural heir to Cliff Sterrett, the best cartoonist you've never heard of. Mr. Sterrett did "Polly and Her Pals" in the 1910s through '30s, when he created innovative, abstract work that was both of its time and far ahead of it. Below are a couple of good examples.

(click either to see larger)

Here's a close-up of that sixth panel, which I think shows just how far comics allows you to push the boundaries of literal representation to communicate an idea--in this case, a spooked cat in the middle of the night--that couldn't be shown any other way. This is just beautiful stuff.



The Language of Lines
Coincidentally, I learned of Mr. Arriola's death after coming home last night from the opening of a new exhibition at the Charles Schulz Museum titled "The Language of Lines." The show pretty much covers what I've been writing about: the unique symbolism of comics that instantly communicates an idea, from the antique "light bulb of inspiration" and "sawing log of slumber" to increasingly sophisticated techniques that continue to emerge. Originals in the show date from the early 20th century (including Sterrett) to today, as represented by "Pearls Before Swine" and "Stone Soup," among others. Good examples from "Peanuts," "Pogo," "Doonesbury," "Calvin and Hobbes" and many others illustrate the thesis. When you see Snoopy dance on Schroeder's musical notes, Calvin melt into a puddle of snot, or George W. Bush depicted as an asterisk wearing a Roman soldier's helmet, that's the language of lines.

(An "inside baseball" note: I don't think I've ever seen "Calvin and Hobbes" originals before and was astonished by how small Bill Watterson drew them--particularly his Sundays, which looked even smaller than published size to me. Most cartoonists draw originals at least 1.5 to 2 times the size at which they'll be printed, and often larger. For example, "Peanuts" originals are huge. I guess the tight confines gave Watterson the look and line he wanted, but it really surprised me. Very gutsy.)

The exhibition was curated by Brian Walker, cartoonist Mort Walker's son and part of the Walker-Browne dynasty that continues to produce comic strips such as "Beetle Bailey" and "Hi & Lois." However, Brian may be even better known as a comics historian, author and museum curator, having organized dozens of comic art shows in the U.S. and abroad, including the very high-profile "Masters of American Comics" in 2005 through 2007. He also flew across the country to speak at last night's opening.

I've met Brian twice before. We share a publisher in Abrams and, I discovered just last night, the same editor (look out, Charlie, we compared notes). I also met his wife Abby. Brian grew up immersed in comics and is one of the most knowledgeable experts around, and it was a pleasure to reconnect with him. A bad cold, as well as sadness over not being home to see his beloved New York Giants play the Super Bowl, didn't distract him from giving a nice talk on the language of lines as demonstrated in the pages we then went into the gallery to view. Add some music, wine and snacks, and it was a very memorable evening.

So it was somehow fitting to come home with that exhibition and conversation on my mind, and then read about Mr. Arriola. "Gordo" isn't represented in "The Language of Lines" but it could be--probably should be. It was a very influential strip for me personally. In the bigger picture, I can't help comparing the bold graphic sensibilities of creators like Arriola and Sterrett to the much more pallid, static comic strips of today. If somebody drew comics like that now, it'd be heralded as a cutting-edge creative breakthrough--never mind that Sterrett did it 90 years ago and Arriola 60. This great stuff used to be in the newspaper every day!

Too many contemporary cartoonists and readers don't even remember what they've forgotten.
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MoCCA Exhibit Extended

Forgot to mention.... I got an e-mail a few days ago from Jennifer Babcock, curator for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) in New York City, asking if she could hold onto my Mom's Cancer originals a little longer. Their exhibit, "Infinite Canvas: The Art of Webcomics," was supposed to wrap up more than a week ago, but now they'd like to extend its run through March. I guess it's going well.

Flattered, I replied "Hell, no!"

Aw, not really. As I remarked while dining with the folks from the Norman Rockwell Museum, my stuff looks a lot better hanging on their walls than sitting in an accordian folder beside my desk.

I'd still love to hear from anyone who's seen the MoCCA exhibit, since I'm not planning to get to New York in the next couple of months. It sounds like a great show for any comics fan.

Rockwell Interview

Back in August I blogged about recording a video interview to go along with the "LitGraphic: Art of the Graphic Novel" exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum, which is currently showing eight pages of original art from Mom's Cancer along with scores of more interesting works from better artists. As I mentioned in my report from the exhibit opening, the museum is playing these interviews of me and several others in a continuous loop on two monitors near the galleries.

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Anyway, museum curator Martin Mahoney--who flew to my home with Jeremy Clowe to tape the interview--just sent me a copy of the DVD and gave me permission to post my piece of it. Here it is, courtesy and copyright of the Norman Rockwell Museum:

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Subjectively, I think I'm hideous. (My wife: "No, really, that's how you actually look and sound." Me: "Good lord, why did you ever marry me?!") Objectively, I think it's a nice piece of interviewing with terrific production values.

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Backstage trivia: the rolltop desk I'm sitting at is where I actually do most of my artwork. My Eisner Award is on the desk beside me but I don't normally keep it there; the guys wanted it in the shot. The two plaster masks on the wall behind me are the Greek gods Hermes and Apollo, made by my children in art class several years ago. The big poster on the wall at upper left is an uncut sheet of 16 pages of Mom's Cancer as they rolled off the press, which I think is really cool. Mom made the stained-glass shade for the desk lamp behind me. And the outdoor footage near the end is my backyard, where I never actually sit around sketching but which I think looked particularly green and flowery that day.

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"LitGraphic" will be on exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. through May 26, and after that could be coming to a museum near you. I think it's worth a visit.

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Jeremy and Martin: the view
from MY side of the camera

Wow, Should'a Seen That Coming

"We regret to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, the publication of The Astrological Magazine will cease with the December 2007 issue."

True irony is such a rare and precious gift.....
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Messenger to Mercury

I know no one visits my blog for the latest news and opinion on space exploration, but a probe named Messenger just blew past Mercury and took some great photos I think are very exciting. My interests, my blog, my rules.

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Nobody's visited Mercury since the single Mariner 10 mission more than 30 years ago, and that machine photographed less than half the planet. Messenger will eventually go into orbit around Mercury and shoot the entire thing in high resolution. This pass is just a rendevous to begin to slow it down. Launched in August 2004, Messenger already flew by Venus once, Earth once, and Venus again, using those planets' gravity to change speed and direction, and it'll fly past Mercury again in October 2008 and September 2009 before parking itself in orbit in March 2011.

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No doubt some interesting science will come out of Messenger, but to me the excitement of a mission like this is more visceral: we are seeing things that literally no one has ever seen before. How often can you say that? Until today, we didn't know what more than half of an entire planet in our solar system looked like. The beauty of modern technology and communication is that everyone on the planet can find out nearly as quickly as scientists download pictures from the probe. And a few minutes later, I can post them on my blog for you.

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That amazes me.

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Interview: The McGill Tribune

Mom's Cancer is mentioned in an article published today in the McGill Tribune, which I take to be the student newspaper of McGill University in Montreal. The story by Carolyn Yates is headlined "The Death of the Sunday Comics" and is pretty good despite showing some of the hallmarks of college journalism. I think Ms. Yates bit off a bit more than she could chew, trying to cover the rise of webcomics and the fate of print in a brief feature. My name is misspelled "Flies" a couple of times but I don't feel picked on; Scott McCloud got renamed "McLeod." That's the "student" part of "student newspaper."

Ms. Yates offered me a choice of being interviewed over the phone or via e-mail, and for some of the reasons I discussed a while back--mostly the fact that I write a lot smarter than I speak--I chose e-mail. She sent me some good questions, I replied, and the best stuff got cut (that's not a particular criticism of Ms. Yates--it always happens). I genuinely appreciate being asked.

I always agree to do interviews and such, but knew I had to respond to Ms. Yates's request in particular when I saw that the offices of the McGill Tribune are housed in the Shatner University Centre, named after esteemed McGill graduate and noted thespian William Centre.* Some forces of the universe are not to be trifled with.
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*This joke adapted from Disneyland's Jungle Cruise Ride, where guests view the lovely Schweitzer Falls, named after famed African explorer Dr. Albert Falls. All humor content of this post copyright 1955 by The Walt Disney Co.
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Return to the Lopsided Universe

Back in early December I wrote about the Galaxy Zoo project, in which millions of regular folks (including me) help astronomers classify the shapes of galaxies. Our effort yielded the profoundly surprising result that, as seen from our nothing-special galaxy in a nowhere-special corner of the cosmos, the universe seems to have more galaxies that spiral counter-clockwise than clockwise. By all rights, they should be 50-50; any other ratio is insanely inexplicable. At the time, I guessed it probably said less about the universe than those observing it. Maybe, when faced with a faint fuzzy image and asked to detect a structure, more people somehow perceive a counter-clockwise one. That would be weird, but a lot less weird than a crooked cosmos.

Turns out I got it about right. To figure out what was going on, the Galaxy Zoo people did something very simple and clever: they flopped a bunch of their galaxy photos into mirror images of themselves, shuffled them back into the deck, and let us classify them again. And we beefwitted classifiers still thought we were seeing more counter-clockwise spirals than clockwise, and in about the same proportion (52-48). This post explains the statistics in numbing detail, but the essense is that if there's something screwy in the human-universe interaction, it ain't the universe's fault.

Galaxy Zoo can't explain why the observational bias exists, just that it does. Still sounds like a pretty interesting question for some psychologist or neurologist to look into. But not an astronomer.
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Seminar: Navigating Cancer

A couple of days ago I received an e-mail asking if I would pass along the information below, concerning an informational seminar in Washington D.C. later this month. Happy to do it, this looks good. Here's the press release:

Washington Cancer Institute at Washington Hospital Center invites you to the first in our series of free Living Well with Cancer seminars to be held throughout 2008. The first event, Navigating Life after Cancer: A Road Map for the “New Normal,” will feature two speakers, both well-respected experts in working with cancer patients and the challenges they face. Brenda Hubbard, RN, an oncology nurse and patient educator at Washington Cancer Institute at Washington Hospital Center, will address some of the physical, psychological and spiritual issues that come with a cancer diagnosis. Patricia Smith, an attorney, will focus on navigating employment and insurance issues.

The event will be held on Saturday, January 26, from 8 to 11:30 a.m. at the National Rehabilitation Hospital Auditorium located on the Washington Hospital Center campus, 102 Irving St., NW, Washington, DC 20010. To register, please call 202-877-DOCS (3627) or register online at www.whcenter.org/livingwell.
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In Which My Drawings Lead a More Exciting Life than I Do

A few days ago, I received a very nice letter from the Norman Rockwell Museum asking if they could hold onto the eight pages of Mom's Cancer artwork they're exhibiting a bit longer than planned.

Curator Stephanie Plunkett wrote that the show, "LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel," has been a big success--enough so that after it closes in May, they'd like to make it a traveling exhibition and loan it to other museums. Not every exhibition is so honored; apparently they've already gotten a lot of interest from big-time institutions.

Since Stephanie bribed me by enclosing a great book full of Rockwellian arty goodness, I said "yes."

If all goes as planned, I won't be reunited with my artwork until June 2010--unless I go visit it, and even then they probably won't let me take it out of the frame and mess around with it ("it's all right, I'm just fixing a little mistake...."). My drawings will visit parts of the country I've never seen. I'll be an old man by the time they come home. Still, as I mentioned to my wife, I guess if I miss them that much I can always redraw them.

So look for LitGraphic, coming soon to a museum near you (tour details will follow as I learn them). If you see my stuff, say "Hi" for me.
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Ah, Reddy Kilowatt, My Old Nemesis

A severe winter storm swept through the West Coast at the end of last week, splitting trees, loosening mudslides, and knocking out power to 2 million people between central California and Oregon. Unfortunately, I couldn't blog about it until now because my electricity's been out since 9 a.m. Friday.
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Now, there's a stretch of time after the power goes out that's kind of fun. You slip a flashlight into your pocket, light candles, break out the camping lantern, start a fire in the fireplace, dance to 78s on the antique hand-cranked phonograph, play "Clue." When the lights flicker back on everyone groans a disappointed "Awww!" because they were having a neat little adventure without them.
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This weekend I learned that "fun time" lasts about 12 hours. After 67 hours, it gets really old. You run out of "Little House on the Prairie" and Donner Party jokes on Day Two.
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Part of our back fence blew over. We lost much of the food in the fridge and freezer, which wasn't actually a lot. Some of it made for an excellent barbeque Saturday night. I don't usually barbeque in the rain, but this was a special occasion. Like well-prepared Boy and Girl Scouts, we took stock of our resources. What worked: the fireplace, gas water heater, gas stove top, laptop computers (but no wireless Internet in range). What didn't work: lights, heat, refrigerator, oven, Dance Dance Revolution, the computer with all my good stuff. Fortunately, we had sufficient firewood, blankets, sleeping bags, and cats to prevent hypothermia.
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Also fortunately, our children were home from college for winter break. They were delicious.
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It was both a blessing and a curse that our neighborhood was a little island of darkness surrounded by otherwise normal, fully electrified homes and businesses. All our usual supermarkets, restaurants, shopping centers and movie theaters worked fine. Sunday night my wife and I went to see a movie in which we had no interest just to sit somewhere warm and distracting for two hours ("The Waterhorse," which was not bad). That was the blessing part; the curse part was that because our outage affected a small number of people in the middle of a functioning civilization, we were a very low priority for repair work. At night, we could see the lights of homes around us--twinkling, mocking, bragging about all the electrons flowing through their wires--and fantasize about long extension cords that would deliver us sweet relief at last.
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Everything clicked on at 4 a.m. today, and all is nearly forgiven. The inside temperature of our house has risen 20 degrees. My wife is at the supermarket restocking our larder. And we have vowed to never take electricity for granted again, in a spirit of thankfulness and appreciation I expect to last at least another hour.
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All The World Seems In Tune

Little by little, the industrious (or even lazy) blogger reveals more about himself than he realizes or intends. My few long-time readers may recall mentions of the roles Star Trek, Monty Python, Victor Borge, Carl Sagan, Walt Kelly, Disney, NASA, comic books, comic strips, and many other influences played in forming little me. However, I have never mentioned the towering influence of Tom Lehrer.

Mr. Lehrer is a musical satirist who came to prominence in the late 1950s and '60s, a proto-Weird Al who composed and performed little piano ditties on best-selling comedy albums and, occasionally, on stage. His songs were smart, sharp, funny, wry, very dark and a little naughty--the perfect combination to appeal to 14-year-old Brian. His heyday was before my time but we got acquainted through a local radio comedy hour that played him regularly, and he perfectly captured the dry, sarcastic, mocking, too-cool-for-school attitude that comprises the mandatory uniform of adolescence. Song titles include "The Old Dope Peddler," "The Vatican Rag," "I Got It From Agnes" (a saucily subtle ode to VD), and "Lobachevsky," a jaunty tribute to the Russian mathematician. Luckily, and unlike many favorites from my youth, Mr. Lehrer still turned out to be pretty cool even after I grew up.

Mr. Lehrer left entertainment to teach math at the University of California, Santa Cruz, cementing his nerd credibility forever. He became something of the Salinger of Satire (or perhaps the Watterson of Wit) and rarely performed in public after the 1960s, although he did surface briefly in 1980 when a Broadway show titled "Tomfoolery" revived his songs in a well-reviewed revue. He is also reputed to have invented the Jell-O shot. I won't go so far as to say Tom Lehrer was an important intellectual influence in my life, but he sure was a fun one.

That's my introduction to these videos that capture the magic of Mr. Lehrer. My favorite is the last, which not only features one of my favorite Lehrer songs but shows a rare later performance in 1998 to honor the producer of "Tomfoolery," who also did a little show called "Cats." If you're inclined to watch, I hope you enjoy.










Extra Bonus Video: Something else by Mr. Lehrer that those slightly younger may remember from "The Electric Company":