Tall Tale Features / Tall Tale Radio

This one was fairly obvious, at least to a cartoonist doing a single panel strip based on literature.  I mean, where DID that phrase come from? It’s not like Dickens was writing horror novels…”scared the Poe” out of you, I’d understand. “Scared the Gorey” out of you…fine. But Dickens?  Sure, he haunted my freshman year of high school when “Great Expectations” was unceremoniously dumped on us. Granted, I’ve since come to appreciate ol’ Charles a lot more as an adult, but the scars from freshman English run deep.

I like the layout of this one, and the drawing of Dickens is pretty good.  He’s in a great “falling” position, and I think you can tell who he is, which is key.  And I like that he’s sort of “phasing” out of that guy’s calves. I’m not thrilled with the other two guys, but the tree is decent. I like drawing trees. Hmmm…a comic strip about a tree…someone get Scott Metzger on the line.

I also like the surreal idea that there’s a classical writer inside all of us. Who would you like to inhabit you? Shakespeare’s an obvious choice for me, but I’m going with P.G. Wodehouse. Damn, that guy was funny.

I’m not one for predictions, psychics, and fortune tellers. At best, I’m with Yoda…”always in motion is the future.” I find some of that stuff fun to read about, and certainly, there are some interesting coincidences and weird occurances. But if I wrote down a bunch of predictions for the futures and someone read them 200 years from now, I’m bound to have gotten some right. Besides, does the position of the planet Neptune REALLY have any effect on my finances? I mean, c’mon. (Jupiter, now…that would be a different subject.)

I’ve always thought that if there are real psychics…and there may be…they’re not opening stores where they read sucker’s palms for $5 a pop.  They live in Monaco, Vegas, or Reno.  They play the stock market. They’re at the horse track. They are rich, enjoying life, and could care less about your palm.  The best way to test this would be to go to one of those psychic’s stores, sit down across from them, and then suddenly try to smack them across the head with a rubber chicken.  If they calmly raise an arm to block the chicken, then you know you’ve got the real deal on your hand.

Then, say “well done,” and get up and leave. Because I can’t think of much creepier than knowing your future.

I have a book called “Shakespearean Insults.”  Yes, that’s right…there’s so many of them, they could compile a book. Now, a lot of Shakespeare’s language and phrasing goes right over modern audience’s heads, even those of us with English degrees who are supposed to understand that stuff. It really is like a foreign language…I’ve found that when I’ve been reading or seeing his plays, I get back into the groove and rhythm of the words, and I have no problems keeping up.  But if it’s been a few years, man, I’ll sit there with a quizzical look like the guy next to me who was obviously dragged there by his girlfriend in vain hopes of instilling a drop of culture into his neanderthal mind. At least people die on a regular basis in most of the plays.  That I can keep up with.

Anyway, I had a blast writing this one.  I’m a baseball fan, and thinking of Bill back there shouting Elizabethan obscenities just cracked me up. And who doesn’t like the word “wastral?”  I mean, c’mon.

From a cartoon perspective, unlike the recent 7 dwarves joke I posted, I have never liked this drawing for a second. I have no idea why I didn’t redraw it. The composition and layout isn’t too bad, but I just don’t like the execution.  Too lazy to draw a crowd, too, I suppose. What, is Bill the only guy standing behind home plate? and there’s no fence or netting? Where IS this game being played?  I feel that this strip is just another sign post on the “you should be writing and leave the art to more talented folks” road.  To paraphrase Opus the Penguin, “Maybe it wasn’t that bad, but Lord it wasn’t good.”

This one and the Edgar Allen Poe one did send me down an interesting creative road, though…I have had an idea for a comic strip called “Writer’s Block” where the conceit is that the action takes place in an apartment building where all the tenants are famous literary figures. It started with the idea of an “Odd Couple” pairing of Edgar Allen Poe, the Felix Unger of the idea, and Bill Shakespeare, the boorish actor/writer Oscar Madison type.  I don’t know why, but the idea of them as roomies just felt rife with comedic potential.  Look! I created yet another unsyndacateable idea! I think I just wanted to put those doodles I did of Bill Shakespeare in my college English classes to good use….

Maybe I should save this one for that new Disney coming out…”Tangled.”  At the time I wrote this back in the early days of “BookSmarts,” I was locked into the fairy tale world. I would later expand this out to be more generally about literature and even movies, but my first thought was this would be a single panel “Fractured Fairy Tales.”  (If you don’t get that reference, children, check this out.)

Bottom line here is, fairy tales are often about death. So why not Rapunzel? I mean, if she’s got hair long enough to come out of a huge tower, it’s probably got a bit of heft to it. Perhaps our Prince didn’t think of this when he called up to her. Not exactly a romantic thought, to have your body crushed into a million pieces by a huge pile of hair falling from a great height.  And really, what sort of life would you have with a woman who is obviously this much into her appearance? Imagine the wait when she says “I’m going to go wash my hair before we go out, honey.”  Geez…just turn on “Lawrence of Arabia” or the 12-hour version of “Lord of the Rings,” brutha, because you’ve got time on your hands.

According to many of my friends, this is my best work. I remember distinctly chuckling at the thought when I came up with it, and the drawing sealed the deal.  I like the blasé look on Poe’s face, calming scarring children around him with his grim visage. I thought the balloon raven was the perfect button for the gag, too. (I’ve had people point out the rabbit skeleton in the hat as their favorite part, too.)

Of course, this was also one of my first batch, so if it was my best, I peaked a little early. But it still makes me happy when I see it, so there’s something to it. Also, I’m a huge Edgar Allen Poe fan. I remember reading so much of his stuff; getting chills the first time I read “The Mask of the Red Death” and just loving that last line I still remember: “…and the Red Death held dominion over all.”  It’s interesting…I don’t consider myself a “dark” person, but I have always had a big old soft spot in my heart for people like Gahan Wilson, Edward Gorey, and Charles Addams. “Lio” by Mark Tatulli is one of my new favorites for the same reasons. What is the allure, do you think?  My family has a lot of Irish blood in us, and you should see us at funerals. We’re all about the dark humor. I’m sure it’s partially a coping mechanism, but at the same time, there’s a real joy in the darker side of humor, isn’t there? I find the stuff that makes me laugh most maniacally is the stuff that’s a little more off-center, leaning darker than light.

How about you guys? Have you read some Poe? What do you think? How about Edward Gorey? I can’t wait to show my daughter the “Ghastlycrumb Tinies.”  I wonder if she’ll be able to sleep for a week after that?

(Oh, and by the way, clowns are plain creepy. Just sayin’.)