With the ice-breaking introductions of last week out of the way, we now find ourselves on a second blog date, where the drinks go down a little easier and fill up a bit more frequently. I’ll scoot my chair closer, so I can “listen” to your hopes, dreams, lies and frightful realities, while you can gaze into my now tipsy eyes and wonder at what point you’ll have to subdue my growingly inappropriate advances, with a can of mace and basic training combat techniques.
Ah, the joys of an awkward, new relationship…
How is everyone, really? Did you all have a good week of reading comics? Did you see that Disney bought Marvel? How many Scrooge McDuck/Iron Man mash-up jokes have you heard on Twitter?
How many of you had to install corks on your forks, for safety reasons?
HA!
In all seriousness, let’s get down to business. The serious business of comics is a serious thing, with serious consequences and should be discussed seriously, in serious clothes, at serious venues.
So, seriously, here are some things I’d like to see come out of this blog in the near future:
- A public awareness of what it means to be a cartoonist in today’s chaotic society.
- An explanation of the comic process, including and probably not limited to, my own.
- Funny, for funny’s sake, though unique conversations with cartoonists, editors, comedians and if at all possible, my dog, Norman.
- Pie.
- A regular paycheck*
* Should be filed
under October’s “unattainable goals in comics and comic strips” post.
So, maybe we should begin with a bit about how I go about doing the comics that I do. Perhaps a short description of the formation of an idea and then we can share the advancement of that idea into comedy gold through later posts.
Okay. We’ll do that, then.
THE MAKING OF AN IDEA, EPISODE I: DAILY DOOM AND DESPERATION
Bill Watterson once said he spent “every waking hour” thinking about jokes for his comics. Clearly, he didn’t own a house, have a family with laundry or pets with stomach problems.
Don’t get me wrong, I think about jokes all the time, I just have other things I think about all the time, which leads to a broken head, even broker deadlines, lack of sleep and an unhealthy relationship with barley and hops.
So I’ll twist Mr. Watterson’s claim by saying, “I spend every waking hour thinking about EVERYTHING… Usually at some level of panic.”
Feel free to use that. Just footnote me when I’m dead.
What’s my process, then? How do I get my ideas? What jumpstarts the Fake Rockstar train wreck? The answer is simple:
I HAVE NO EARTHLY IDEA.
Some say they need a quiet room to think. Others need music at a Spinal Tapped “11” volume. I’ve heard some claim they sit and watch people for hours, where they “wait for the muse to strike”. Some say, “Great coffee” or “Never read other’s strips” or “drunk”.
I can honestly claim no one single thing. I can write in a bar, on a subway or from the trunk of Tony Soprano’s car. I don’t need a quiet office, candles or the music of the ocean. I can also write when I’m drunk, but no one’s allowed to read the result. NO ONE.
And look, I’m not bragging, here. I just have no time to “prepare” myself for the “muse to hit”. I’m always late with deadlines, so when something needs to get done, there’s no time for self-doubt or personal introspection. That sort of mind bending saved for drinking time after the fact.
In summary, I guess you can say my process, if I have one, is in this order:
- Wake up.
- Feed dogs.
- Panic over coffee.
- Draw 28 comics and think of the dialogue later.
- Adjourn to the pub.
I’ll use the details of how #4 happens to fill a future post.
Thanks for reading and reacting,
Corey “FRS” Pandolph
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