Soon to be Erin-bound, I offer you this exciting Irish poem by J.M Synge, illustrated by yours truly.

Danny

Weekly Comic: Special "Death of Genghis Khan" Edition (August 18th, 1227)

one of those Original Mushroom Penis Drawings (OMPDs)

Oh My, Please Don't!

Samoan Characters wearing "Lava-Lavas" in Doonesbury, 1975

There hasn't been much follow-up, blogospherically speaking, from our lost Travel Correspondent, serving on the Navigator's Islands. Jenny Ruth has been writing privately, & I will share some more photos sometime. In the meantime, I've been digging up some of Uncle Duke's adventures as the irresponsible governor of American Samoa from 1970's Doonesbury strips. At one point, Duke procures a football scholarship for a massive Samoan kid, to go to Walden College.

Here is a photo of some of Miss Jenny Ruth's colleagues wearing lava-lavas in church choir. They seem extraordinarily comfortable.

Stuck Duck no. 6

More Stuck Duck

Stuck Duck no. 5

More Stuck Duck

Stuck Duck no. 4

More Stuck Duck

Stuck Duck no. 3

More Stuck Duck

Stuck Duck no. 2

I've also revamped comic No. 1 in the new style, more easily readable. The further adventures of Stuck Duck will always be filed under this tab.

"Stuck Duck" comic strip demo no. 1

I'm playing with a layout for a comic strip based on a sheet of paper with six character sketches I drew as a child. (I posted it here.) I chose Stuck Duck as the obvious hero of the strip. I may have to change the font (as much as I love garamond) & which program I use to lay it out.

Art from the Archive: Lost Character Sketches

I found these in a notebook from my childhood - I propose we resurrect these undeveloped characters - Fatty & Queeker & Stuck Duck & the whole crew - into some syndicated adventures or something.

Travel Notebook Art: Marshall Mullett is Born

While we were traveling last month, we each had our own notebooks, with many pretty drawings. We'll scan more, I reckon. Here's a character which could or could not be further developed: Marshall Mullett. By a Joseph Heller-esque coincidence, his mother named him Marshall & then he grew up to become a marshal of the law; & similarly, his paternal surname is Mullet, & he proudly wears the hairstyle his great-grandfather brought to this country in 1831. He has no problem sporting the full "MM" on his solid gold diamond belt buckle because of his broad pelvic structure.

Sayings of Cactana No. 3

Sayings of Cactana No. 2

Special Report: The Ages of the Sunday Comics Writers published in the Reno Gazette-Journal

Everytime I come to my parents house, I am struck by how backwards the Sunday Comics page is in the Reno Gazette-Journal. Their line-up has remained almost unchanged since before I could read. I remember that, when Dilbert became popular in the 90s, readers petitioned to have it added. And there was a bizarre debacle around that same time when they tried to drop Doonesbury & readers sent in a flood of angry letters. (Note to Comics editors: never try to drop Doonesbury.) The strips the Gazette-Journal publishes are so old school, the worst example of traditionalism not making way for new talent. Not publishing Get Fuzzy, for instance, must be the equivalent of a public library not carrying Harry Potter. Recently, in research for my new comics projects, I've been reading classic Garfield books on the toilet. I have been told that Garfield - which used to be very stylish & witty, & now one of the most embarrassing things ever published - is now written by a committee & that Davis is on life support. According to Wikipedia, Jim Davis married a second wife in 2000 at age 55 & had three more children, so it seems like at least one part of the old man is still working. I'm afraid he's probably the man responsible for Garfield's sad late era.

What was the point of this? Yes, newspapers, you're an endangered species anyway, you need to stay current with the Sunday funnies! I was also wondering how old some of these comics writers are - & I'm not being ageist, obviously some of the funniest people to have lived have been old as Methuseleh. But when these guys have been pumping out daily comics for so many decades, some of the quality is going to thin. Curling up with a cup of coffee on Sunday with this collection of has-beens leaves you feeling so empty. I decided to look up the ages of every comic strip writer in the Reno Gazette-Journals horrible Sunday Comics section:

Classic Peanuts - He would be 86, & lived for many decades in Santa Rosa! Today they just publish reruns.
Garfield - Jim Davis currently resides in Albany, Indiana, & is 63.
For Better of For Worse - Lynn Johnston lives in Corbeil, Ontario, age 61.
Dilbert - The most recent addition to the RGJ's Sunday Comics. Scott Adams is a vegetarian & will turn 52 years old next month. He lives in Dublin, in Contra Costa County. Dilbert celebrated its 20th Anniversary this year.
Cathy - Cathy Guisewite is 58 & lives in Los Angeles.
Hagar the Horrible - Dik Browne died in 1989 at age 71. His son Chris, aged 55, now draws the especially unfunny Hagar. He lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which Forbes magazine named "#1 Best Small Place For Business And Careers in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009".
The Family Circus - Bil Keane is 86 years old & has lived in Paradise Valley, Arizona, since he began drawing The Family Circus forty-nine years ago.
The Wizard of Id - More like, the Wizard of STUP-Id. Grant Parker & Johnny Hart co-created it in 1964 & both died in 2007 (at ages 86 & 76.) Jeff Parker, Grant's son, took over in 1997 & lives in Front Royal, Virginia. Does anyone know when he was born?
Shoe - Jeff MacNelly died in 2000 at age 52 of Lymphoma. He lived in Flint Hill, Virginia, & later in Key West, which is also home to Ernest Hemingway's six-toed cats. Shoe is currently written by Chris Cassatt, Gary Brookins, & Susie MacNelly, shadowy humorless figures of darkness.
Doonesbury - Garry Trudeau is sixty years old & lives in New York City. He was the first comic strip artist to win a pulitzer prize, in 1975.
Sally Forth - Greg Howard created Sally Forth in 1982 & passed it over to Francesco Marciuliano in 1999. Marciuliano lives in New York City & also writes for the Onion. The Wikipedia does not tell us any of their birthdates, but it does explain that "Sally's name is a play on words - 'to sally forth' means to set out on an adventure." (It occurs to me that this strip was added to the RGJ later in my life also...)
Mother Goose & Grim - Mike Peters is 65 & lives in Dayton, Ohio.
B.C. - Johnny Hart is the same cartoonist from The Wizard of Id, & his daughter Perri Hart & grandson Mason Mastroianni took it over in 2007.
Ziggy - Tom Wilson lives! & is 78 in Montgomery, Ohio! But Ziggy has been drawn for two decades by his son Tom Wilson II (pictured to the right), who lives in Loveland, Ohio.
Dennis the Menace - Hank Ketcham died in 2001 at 81 years old. It is now written by Marcus Hamilton and Ron Ferdinand. The punchline in today's strip is "Her cookies are NAG-FREE."
Blondie - Chic Young created Blondie in 1930, & died in 1976 at age 72. His son Dean Young, age 70, is the current head writer. The head artist since 2002 is John Marshall, who lives in Binghampton, New York.
Prince Valliant - Hal Foster died in 1982 at age 89. He was a Canadian & lived most of his life in Chicago. William Randolph Hearst allowed Foster to retain full ownership of Valliant when he commisioned the strip in 1936. Current writer Mark Schultz, age 53, lives in Northeast Pennsylvania. Current illustrator Gary Gianni is 54 & a life-long Chicagoan. I didn't realize that Prince Valliant has had a continuous narrative since the 1930s. I have never successfully read a whole strip.
Beetle Bailey - Mort Walker is 85 & still does Beetle Bailey with his sons Greg & Brian. His studio in Connecticut employs six of his nine children. I love his website here.
Frank & Ernest - Bob Thaves died in 2006 at age 82. It is currently done by (beginning to recognize a pattern?) his son Tom Thaves.
Marvin - Tom Armstrong created Marvin in 1982, & lives in Florida. Why is it so hard to find out anything about the mysterious Mr Armstrong on the internet??
Born Loser - Art Samsom died in 1990 at age 70. His son, Chip, now writes the strip from a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.

What have we learned! My thesis that these stale comics were drawn by old people was MOSTLY WRONG. More than half of them have been taken over by younger old men, & a full eight of them are done by the original artists' sons or daughters. Who knew that comic strips were such a patriarchal business, each one of these shadows of thier father like a powerless Kim Jong-Il, daily toiling to make America laugh. I wish the best to all of the above mentioned working artists & funnymen. But in the words of Robert Allen Zimmerman (Age 67), "Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall!"

Sayings of Cactana No. 1

I was lying, down below, when I said I made those drawings as illuminations for Walt Whitman's Poem "A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown". They were actually sketches for a comic strip, possibly limited-edition, I'm premiering today, called "Sayings of Cactana". Introducing Cactana!

I may ditch the sparkly pen for Cactana, so I've also prepared it small in black & white, (for fantasy syndication):

A Few Notes about the Mimosas Witnesses

In discussing our religion, the Mimosas Witnesses, an acquaintance was shocked the other day when I mentioned there was an original New Yorker cartoon. Yes, our entire faith can be traced, not to some science fiction novel, but to a cartoon by Danny Shanahan published in the January 9th, 2006, issue of The New Yorker, which I realize is copyrighted by cartoonbank.com. This image can also be purchased on an ugly white t-shirt or a "Delux Framed Print" for $350. As the Archpope of Transubstantiation & legal seagull for the Mimosas Witnesses, I assure you that we are not in violation of Shanahan's copyright, as (with the minor exception of tithing the incomes of our proselytes) we have never made a cent off of our missionary work. I love Shanahan's detail of the pamphlet titled "Wake up!" It was the inpiration for the Shepard Fairey knock-off to the right. Shepard Fairey, of course, has had his own copyright issues with his Obama poster; & I expect to hear shortly from Witness "Big Mama" Raleigh's lawyers for the use of her photograph in the Faireyization of Mr Mary for my Mimosas Witness posters. Ah, copyrighting, the just protector of art & artists!

Also, in regards to the spelling of Mimosas Witnesses, I have recently been spelling it without the apostrophe. I was told that the Jehovahs Witnesses sometimes go by simply Jehovah Witnesses, but in my attempt to research that, I can't find any evidence that this is the case. They appear to be always "Jehovah's Witnesses" with an apostrophe. Anyone have any idea where I might have gotten that? However, aestetically, I like spelling it simply Mimosas Witnesses, in tribute to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which is often referenced with an incorrect apostrophe in the title. The Witnesses & the Wake share many a kindred interconnection.

Still in full-swing Palin Mode with thirty hour count-down to the Veep Debate:

I just saw Doonesbury's above strips from last week, which are in a similar vein to my below proposal for a Sarah Palin video-game. (If they're too small, just go HERE & read all six.) Trudeau has a nice conclusion to the strips, with B.D. (the former football playing, war veteran, who used to be gung-ho for Nixon in the '70s) enjoying the cognitive dissonance of what type of roll-model Mrs Palin can aspire to be. His grin is priceless, I haven't seen him this happy since he lost his leg & helmet (it had to be surgically removed.)

Sarah Palin is often mockingly compared to Northern Exposure, but I'm not convinced that Wasilla (a suburb of Anchorage & fourth-largest city) has much in common with David Chase's lovely fictional Cicely, Alaska. Palin's hunky-dority is sometimes reminiscent of the character Shelly Vincoeur, tho - like, calling her husband the "First Dude" is totally something Shelly would do. Anyway, CNN just did some investigation into the claim that the Governor has ever seen Russia from Alaska, one of her oft-repeated credentials for foreign policy experience. She's never been to the place you can see Russia - the tiny town ("at the end of the road" as Tom Bodett would say, or far past it in this case) of Diomede, with only 150 residents, which can always see twenty-four hours into the future, & the various residents in this short clip reminded me much more of a real Cicely:



I apologize to anyone who spent all of last night trying to view this blog, you really should have given up & gone out. It's unhealthy to spend all night trying to load non-responsive blogs. It seems that Blogger has fixed whatever problem it inflicted on many of the Blogosphere's finest. Also, because it was buried a few posts below, I invite you to listen to Hotel Universe's new album 19 & 74, from Grainne's partner in Brooklynood, Nick Szydlowski: Download it an unzippable file HERE!

RELATED UPDATE: The shape-note score has been added to the song TOXICODENDRON below.

And please meet us here at 6pm Western Time for the VP debates.

List: Songs We Sang

I am in Portland, at their lovely huge old library with tall pink walls. Last night, I met my friend Mrs Smith & hiked for most of the afternoon in the country where those tall waterfalls go into the Columbia River. It's nice round there. It threatened rain, but we decided to put up our tent & be optimistic. No veggie dogs were roasted on no campfire. We hid in our tent with a box of wine for the entire night while impossible amounts of water fell from the sky. At one point, we made a dash to get the capo & the ukulele. If the omnipotent gods of music are curious & read blogs, here are some of the songs we sang:

-Longer boats are coming to win us (Cat Stevens)
-Where do the children play? (Cat Stevens)
-Indiana (David Yazbek)
-TOXICODENDRON
-EL CERRITO (coming soon to http://www.itwaslost.org/!!)
-some of our old Shakespeare numbers
-A la clare fontaine
-Dancing with the Mountains (John Denver)
-Others I forget about

Tonight, there will be some Portland Sacred Harp, followed by fire twirling at Reed College. Outward! Stop, drop & roll!

Sam Amidon's blog Speak, Peppery points us to these existential Garfield Without Garfield comics:

Ocular Proof Comics XX thru XXII

These three Ocular Proof comics were drawn this spring when I was working at that book store. If you click on the image, it should be big enough to read. Introducing Petalbo Tylan, a sort of rhyming used-car salesman of the soul: