Is it Friday again? Time flies! And occasionally stumbles. I’m still adjusting to, and complaining about, the time change. I do like that my phone and my desktop don’t require me to update their clocks. It would be handy if the rest of my timepieces adjusted themselves on their own but I really don’t need more objects connected to the web.

Thank you for joining me again. I hope you are well and happy.

Greeting Card Conversions

We start, as usual, with the before (scans of the original hand drawn art) and after (digitally corrected and edited for print) versions of the greeting card designs I’m posting in my Zazzle store.

Hil(arity)raiser

You’ve solved the puzzle and summoned the tormenter. Your giggles will be legendary even in Heck.

Keep your shoes on! Wear a heavy sweater! Stomp your feet and protest. He can only tickle you if you let him. Bunny cenobites require consent to torture you. They’re polite that way.

Out for a Stroll

Spring is on its way. So I’m told. It’s a mix of rain and sun and warm and cold here in Seattle. Dressing for the weather means taking a gamble at being too hot or too cold, often on the same day. But, heck, you might as well dress to show off and take your chances. You’ll look good for a few minutes at least.

Every season has its moments. Enjoy them as they come.

Fancy a Game of Catch?

After spring comes summer and with summer comes baseball! Teamwork! Batting! Throwing! Catching! Running! Yelling at the umpire! Nothing more American than yelling at some guy for having the wrong opinion.

Make sure to pick that frog kid for your team. He’ll never let a fly get past him.

A Dragon Indeed

This critter doesn’t hoard gold or diamonds. His favorite treasure is cookies. He doesn’t eat them. He takes them back to his cave and stacks them in neat piles. Then he sighs with satisfaction.

Chocolate chips. Oatmeal raisin. Peanut butter. Coconut maroons. He loves them all. They may get stale but they stay free of ants. When they show up the dragon eats them. He likes their spiciness.

The Panel Jumper Does Octobriana and the Heap

I got an email on Sunday from Cole Hornaday reminding me about his Panel Jumper series of videos. The main videos are neat little documentaries about various aspects of comic book history. In particular he has episodes focusing on two of the weird heroes I’ve appropriated for … whatever …
Click these links for histories of:
Muck Men (including the Heap)
Octobriana

After you’ve checked out those videos spend some time listening to the Perfect Bound podcast. It’s an entertaining and informative way to spend your quarantine!

Face the Face

The Face had a simple premise: radio announcer Tony Trent puts on a scary mask to fight crime. I like the basicness of the concept. Trent had no supernatural powers and his adversaries were primarily just ordinary crooks. The Face was featured in the anthology Big Shot Comics, appearing in 62 stories. In issue 63 Tony Trent stopped wearing the mask and went on to have another 40 adventures until the Big Shot was cancelled with issue 104.

This is the third time I’ve spent time (re)designing the Face. I did one version here and a second here.

I started with the idea that I was going to just update that second version but it wasn’t clicking. It didn’t look scary. So I went back to the original Big Shot design – short hair, no eyebrows – and played around with different variations..

I do like the horrifying version with all the exposed teeth but I ultimately decided on a look that wouldn’t require a lot of prosthetics (or magic) to pull off.

The original Face fought crime while wearing a blue tuxedo. It’s not a bad style. I went with a brown suit that, I think, more emphasizes the weird green and red mask. In the 1940s wearing a tuxedo made the Face stand out. Suits were the standard uniform of even the lower classes. These days suits are less common so fighting crime in one would be unusual. And, to me, more comfortable than the spandex and leather that most superheroes put on. I also think that, these days, a plain brown suit makes the Face look more like a middle class crime fighter. I get that the “hero with a secret identity” originated with rich guys (The Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, Batman) but I’m not a rich guy and, the older I get, the less sympathy I have for rich guys.

I honestly don’t know what, if anything, I’ll do with the Face but now I have a standard version to use.

News from the Night Forest

A couple of updates on the Mighty Nizz project –
Sarah wrote a vignette and it’s live on the site.
Unless something goes wrong, Nizz will be the star of my 2022 calendar. Zazzle has a calendar template that I should be able to make work for my preferences. I’m hoping I can customize the template to include people’s birthdays but I haven’t really looked at that yet. I will update you as I figure it out.

These Days …

Last week I forgot to do an “Influences” section. This week I’m sort of putting that section and this one together. After I’d written about Bill Peet I thought about other chlidren’s book authors I might want to feature and, of course, Dr. Suess came up. His books were ubiquitous for kids who grew up when I did. Obviously his work had some influence on me.

Right?

At first my answer was, “Kinda. Sorta.”

I don’t remember wanting to draw like Suess. I couldn’t remember any specific Suess story that had an impact on me. I remember How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Horton Hears a Who from the cartoon specials rather than the books from which they were adapted. I’m sure the absurdity in his stories and art had an impact but I couldn’t come up with anything specific.

And then it was announced that some Dr. Suess books are no longer going to be printed. My first thought was, “Which books?” because the first few memes I saw didn’t say. Being a someone who prefers to know what he’s getting upset about I did some research and found the list –
1. And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street
Marco watches the sight and sounds of people and vehicles traveling along Mulberry Street and dreams up an elaborate story to tell to his father at the end of his walk.
2. If I Ran the Zoo
Gerald McGrew visits a zoo and finds that the animals are “not good enough” and describes how he would run the zoo. He would let all of the current animals free and find new, more bizarre and exotic ones.
3. McElligot’s Pool
A boy named Marco is ridiculed for fishing in a small, polluted pool, and tries to justify himself by imagining the fish he might catch
4. On Beyond Zebra
The young narrator, not content with the confines of the ordinary alphabet, invents additional letters beyond Z, with a fantastic creature corresponding to each new letter.
5. Scrambled Eggs Super
A young boy named Peter T. Hooper spins a tale of an incredible meal he created by harvesting the eggs of fantastically exotic birds.
6. The Cat’s Quizzer
The Cat in the Hat asks many, sometimes ridiculous, questions of the reader.

Of the six on the list I remember having read the first four. I don’t remember much about them. The summaries I’ve included came from the Suess Bibliograpy wikipeda page. I don’t remember racist imagery in the illustrations but when I was a kid I wouldn’t have noticed much. There was enough racist imagery all around me that such illustrations probably seemed normal. I was a white kid growing up in a mostly white community. I didn’t see a lot of examples of other races and cultures. The human beings in the good doctor’s illustrations were all pretty cartoonish. I didn’t have the awareness to know the difference between generally cartoonish and offensively cartoonish.

I did feel disappointment in hearing that some of the Suess catalog would go out of print. I especially felt a twinge over the loss of Mulberry Street. That was Suess’ first published kids book and had been rejected by multiple publishers before it debuted in 1937. It had been an example for me of success through determinated effort. I’m also attached to the idea that a book I liked once would be available for me to read again someday. But books go out of print all the time. Most of the books on my shelves right now are out of print. Before print on demand, most books got one, maybe two print runs and that was it. Mulberry Street was in print for EIGHTY-FOUR years. The Cat’s Quizzer, the most recent of the books, first saw print in 1976. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to buy a copy of it or any of those other Suess books.

Theodore Guiesel aka Dr. Suess passed away in 1991. His widow, Audrey Guiesel, passed away in 2018. His books and the licensing of his characters is now managed by Dr. Suess Enterprises. It’s a nonprofit company but it exists in a capitalist world. It’s a property management company. They could have had the books edited to change or remove offensive content. Suess himself did it slightly once with Mulberry Street. I’m sure there would have been outrage at that. But the money to made with Suess’ work isn’t in publishing books. It’s in licensing. Licensing for toys, film and television adaptations, games. It’s in recognizable characters like the Cat in the Hat, Horton the Elephant, the Lorax and other non-human creations. Those characters can be sold to any parent of any race and ethnic background. Those characters can be marketed internationally.

It’s been over a week since the announcement and the internet has moved on to other outrages. I have a lot of time to think while I deliver mail and I’ve devoted more time to thinking about Suess in the last couple of weeks than I have in the last twenty years. I realized that, yes, I did have some favorite Suess stories. The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Green Eggs and Ham. The Pants with Nobody in Them. Horror stories for children. 

Most folks probably wouldn’t consider them such. They all have happy endings. I don’t remember if any of those stories gave me nightmares but they are fuel for such. Pants, in particular, has haunted me through the years. I’d forgotten about Bartholomews adventures until I read the Suess bibliography. Pants was a story that I’d use as an example of a really creepy children’s story. I was disappointed to discover that it’s not actually titled The Pants with Nobody in Them. The proper title is What Was I Scared Of? That telegraphs the pleasant resolution. I did remember that the pants and the narrator became friends. But I remember more the disturbing idea of being stalked by a piece of empty clothing.

I don’t need to own those books. I need to let go of a lot of the books I own now. I love having a big library but eventually we’ll have to move and it will be a lot easier to do that with a lot less books. Those Suess books that are no longer being published will, sooner or later, enter the public domain. Mulberry Street will do so in twelve years, in 2033. At that time anyone will be able to publish the story. They can publish the original version. Or they can redo it to fit their own taste. It will be interesting to see the variations we get.

In the meantime, I hope you own the books you love and you have time to read them. See you next week!