Finally we have one of the supporting characters, the Annoying Teenager. Annoying Teenager was one of Put Upon Dad’s students in PUD’s role as a high school teacher. He was probably also a neighbor. Annoying Neighbors had important roles in a lot of comic strips.
I don’t think I’ve had a neighbor I’ve known well enough to be annoyed by in 5 or 6 years. Times change.
Pets are popular elements of comic strips so, of course we had one. The dog wasn’t meant to talk or behave like a human being. He was supposed to go on lively adventures with the Crazy Kid. But you never know how he might have evolved.
Put Upon Dad was, of course, married to a Screwy Mother. That’s been comedy gold since before I Love Lucy. The TV show just helped to solidify the concept. It’s probably not the path I’d have gone if I’d been writing the strip but, as I’ve mentioned, I’m not good at thinking in comic strip gag bits. And the sort of strip I’d have come up with would probably have been unsalable to the comic strip syndicates 🙂
Since the Put Upon Dad was the main character I did few more sketches of him than other characters. I was also trying to keep my art for the strip as simple and easy to produce as possible. That meant simple character designs and bold brushwork in the final art.
The designated main character of a comic strip is not necessarily the one that readers get attached to. If we’d managed to sell the strip and if it had had any kind of run who knows which character would have got the spotlight. With many strips the breakout character is only a minor part of the cast. Sometimes they aren’t even in the original cast. Popeye, Snoopy and Opus were all late blooming stars of their respective strips.
If I’d been the writer I’d have gone with the Crazy Kid as the main protagonist. I have a great fondness for psychotic little girls.
In the beginning at least our protagonist seemed to be the Put Upon Dad. He was the viewpoint character in all the strips I drew.
Back in 1998, we, the members of the Labor of Love Artist’s Collective who were active at the time, were trying to figure out creative ways to make some money. The first version of Glyph, the magazine, had collapsed. LoL was taking in graphic design jobs but most of us were more interested in doing comics than in doing more graphic design.
(Word of warning – it’s not a great idea to run a creative business – in our case, graphic design – that you don’t have a lot in interest in to pay for another business – publishing comics – that you have a lot interest in. It’s not that we did bad work for our design customers. We didn’t. We put our all into it. It’s just that there wasn’t a lot of satisfaction in the design work for those of us who didn’t aspire to be designers. Once Labor of Love quit publishing and moved to straight design those who were interested in design really flourished.)
One of the writers proposed that he and I put together some comic strip samples and see if we could sell a strip to the syndicates. If we didn’t sell the strip we could always publish it ourselves somewhere.
I’ve always admired good humor comic strip writing. I don’t think well in three or four panel gags. The writer was pretty good at it. His idea for the strip was nothing really innovative – Put Upon Dad, Screwy Mother, Crazy Kid and Goofy Pet – but he knew how to pace a joke and he was fun to work with. I’m looking for the strip samples I drew but in the meantime I’ve got some character samples to show.
This is the Crazy Kid. She was somewhat calvinesque in her character, living more in her imagination than reality. I’m sure we must have named the characters but, at the moment, I can’t remember what those names were.
It’s unlikely that any aliens we encounter will be as homogeneous as the ones that populate most science fiction films and television shows. Just as planets have diverse ecosystems so will intelligent species have a variety of political, religious and economic systems. They’re unlikely to all be warriors, all worship one set of gods and all be communists. If they all had the same beliefs they’d likely never build a civilization and never leave their home world. Intellectual and technical progress is much more likely to happen when multiple cultures are competing and trading and fighting with each other. When everyone gets along, when one lives in a Golden Age and everyone agrees that it’s a Golden Age, then life is likely to be kind of static. It might be an awesome, wonderful, even enriching status but a status it will be. Because if everyone is happy no one is likely to make an effort to change that status.
That doesn’t address what’s going on in this sketch (from 2003) other than to suggest that if there are Burrabb utopias this sketch doesn’t depict one. Or if it does the Burrabb idea of utopia involves a lot of snarling and waving of claws.
Back to the sketchbooks –
This one was probably done in 2003. Part of the fun of world building is creating the details of a planet, a species, a culture. What do they eat? What do they wear? What kind of manners and religions do they have. What are the differences between the various cultures. Of the species in the Sentient 39 universe the Burrabb are the ones I’ve spent the most time thinking about and there’s still so much room in the picture for me to find color and nuance.
This sketch is the result of considering what sort of beasts of burden the Burrabb might have. A civilization is likely to need domestic animals in order to become a civilization. Species probably don’t go from hunter gatherers to space farers without a lot of steps in between.
Yesterday I got a check from Chaosium. It’s been deposited and I expect it to be good. I may have heard a lot of complaints about the company recently but bouncing checks doesn’t seem to be one of them. I’d gotten an email from Charlie on Friday saying that the check was in the mail but I wanted give the check time to arrive before I posted anything here.
I’ve also heard from other contributors to Strange Aeons 2 and they seem to be getting paid as well. Folks outside the US probably won’t get their checks for a few days yet but hopefully their payment are on their way. I’ve asked them to let me know what happens.
I’ve added a link to this post to my previous posts but left them otherwise untouched. In this age of online news and social networking it seems like bad manners not to share my experience, positive and otherwise. I thinks it’s important for creative people to look out for each other. That this situation is resolved should be noted but I can’t promise that there’s no further quicksand ahead.
One question I asked of others was, given their frustrations, would they work with Chaosium again? Some would. There are apparently worse RPG companies out there to deal with. Others seem to take the … negotiation … process in stride.
Would I work with them again? That’s tricky. I have no real animosity toward Charlie or anyone at Chaosium. I don’t think I’ve held a grudge for anyone since I was a teenager. (I save my hatred for people who are actively horrible to others.) In previous years I’ve worked with other folks because the work was enjoyable and they communicated regularly. I had the Day Job so I could think about building up a body of work without needing to pay as much attention to whether the work would pay my bills. With the Day Job gone and having established at least a tiny reputation for my work I’m much more focused on what I put on my plate.
There are now enough companies who have a CoC license that if I want to do Call of Cthulhu illustrations I can work them instead of Chaosium. Chaosium has some books in the works for their BRP system that would be fun to illustrate and, previous to this experience, I’d planned to lobby for the jobs. I’d love it if I could still get those jobs.
This experience has made me be more rigorous in how I work with clients. I’ve put in place a process to make sure that both of us are in agreement before I get too far into a project. I think I’m better at managing expectations. If Chaosium wanted to work with me again I’m certainly open to discuss the possibility. If payment and communication issues could be worked out, I’d be happy to do more illustrations for the company.
Stay tuned.
I suspect that Frankenstein has endured so long for two reasons.
One, it’s a simple story. A person can relate the plot and theme to another person in the space of a paragraph.
Two, the story is complex enough that that paragraph can be a very different one each time. It all depends on the reader/writer.
I’ve heard plenty of times that the theme of the story is the dangers of Presumption, of Man daring to play God.
Rubbish. Frankenstein is an admonition to be a good parent, to take responsibility for the things one creates. The mistake that Frankenstein makes is not in creating the Creature but in abandoning him when he fails to be the beautiful thing that Frankenstein thought he had built. Yes, the Creature is a killer. He’s a dangerous being. And maybe he would have been if Frankenstein had “raised” him with love and attention. But he didn’t. He was a self centered, self pitying, self deluded coward.
But that’s my version. Part of the fun of watching the different movie adaptations and reading various sequels is experiencing other versions of the story.
I’ve just finished The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Theodore Roszak. It’s probably the last Frankenstein story I’ll be reading for a while. Without my daily commute I no longer have the time or inclination to read that I once did.
As with most of the other Frankenstein sequels I’ve read, Memoirs changes the events of the original novel to fit the story the current author wants to tell. Gone are little William, Justine and Henry Clerval. Victor’s brother, Ernest, remains but so little attention is paid to him that he seems like a character that the author forgot to write out of his final draft.
The story purports to be the edited diaries of Elizabeth Frankenstein, a foundling adopted by the Frankensteins. The diaries have been collected and edited by Robert Walton, the explorer who encountered Frankenstein at the North Pole. In his search for the truth of Frankenstein’s story Walton has researched the Frankenstein family and interviewed surviving witnesses to the events. Walton footnotes the diaries for historic context and to give his stuffy opinion of all the perverted and obviously unlikely things that Elizabeth does. This from a guy who got all crushed out on starving crazy man who brought a patchwork corpse to life? Pot? Say hello to kettle.
In Memoirs Elizabeth has been adopted in part so that she can be the eventual wife of Victor. Caroline, Victor’s mother, is an adept in a women’s mystery cult and believes Victor to have the potential to be a mighty alchemist. As children Elizabeth and Victor are trained in the alchemic mysteries with the intention of them eventually performing a Chymical Marriage that will somehow heal the world. Needless to say things don’t work out as planned.
I wasn’t bored but I can’t say was engaged either. If this hadn’t been a library book that I’d run out of renewals for I would have set it aside for more exciting fare. It’s hard for me to hang on to a feeling of suspense when I know when and how the main character ends up dead. Except for a short sequence where Elizabeth runs off and lives feral for a few months the girl is mostly at the mercy of and a tool in the plans of others – her adopted mother, Seraphina the wise woman, young Victor and finally the Creature.
Part of what kept me reading was the hope that the novel would have a different end than the original. Frankenstein was perfectly capable of lying to Walton. Maybe Elizabeth was going to run off with the Creature and Victor killed her to prevent it. Or something. Given that Roszak had left out three of the original novels most significant characters I was willing to let him give the story a new ending.
Nope. Elizabeth ends up with her throat crushed here as well. I’m sorry if that’s a spoiler. If you’ve read the original novel it shouldn’t be
The book has its moments. The setting of late 18th Century Europe with its upheavals in scientific, philosophical and political thought helps to ground the story and gave me some more historical context for the culture at the time the original novel was written. Victor remains an ass but Elizabeth’s views of him allows me to have sympathy for this version of him. The Creature strongly resembles Shelley’s version even if he’s not the nimble demon of the original. That lets me have more good will for the book than I might otherwise.
I am left wondering though. In Memoirs we get a good account of Victor’s medical training at Inglestodt. We read his descriptions of the dissection of cadavers including those of pregnant women. While medical science at the time hadn’t quite worked out the whole sperm-and-eggs-and-chromosomes-combine-to-make-a-baby thing it did understand that the baby needed a womb in which to grow. The reason that Victor destroys the Mate that the Creature has begged for is that Victor doesn’t want to take the chance that the Creatures will breed little evil Creatures. So why doesn’t he just leave out the womb when he makes the Mate? The Creature probably wouldn’t have known. Not if Victor included the other parts.
Oh. Right. Victor Frankenstein is a brilliant chemist and scientist but he’s still a self involved, myopic ass.
