Sketching with John Klossner and Bill Woodman

 

Four years ago this month I was in the Maine Mall, sketching people. 

I am remembering Bill Woodman, who passed away about a week and a half ago. Bill came along to the mall as well that day. And the funny thing is that I need the battery replaced in my MacBook now. Read on ....

From February 2018: Sketching with John Klossner and Bill Woodman:

I had a good day yesterday, sketching people at the Maine Mall with fellow cartoonists John Klossner and Bill Woodman. We spent a couple of hours there, at the food court, sitting together at a table. No one noticed us (which is what I want). We drew people walking by, people eating, the men and women behind the counter, the maintenance workers. So many people.

I have to thank John and Bill because, honestly, I was the only one who NEEDED to be there. I was had to be at the mall to get my phone battery changed out at the Apple store. It was a process that took over two hours. A few days before, I proposed that we all hang out, and they very kindly agreed. So, yesterday, we talked shop and drew. John drew in pencil and pen in his large spiral-bound sketchbook. I drew with a Micron Pigma ink pen 005 on a small pad of cheap newsprint. Bill had brought some folded sheets of copy paper and drew with a ball point. We ate some lunch, I got the phone. A good day! Bill, a man of few words, said as we parted, "We should do this again."

If we do it again, I'll ask John and Bill if I can add their sketches to the blog here as well. In the meantime, here are a few of my sketches.

  

 

EDIT: We did it again in the same month. I asked John and Bill and they said it was OK to share drawings.

 

Here are a couple by Bill Woodman. He adds the non-sequitur word balloons later. I love these.

  Just one page of the many the John Klossner was creating.

 

Related: 

Bill Woodman 1936 - 2022 Facebook Page

 

Dan Brooks: How Garfield Helped Me Make Peace With a Culture in Decline

Above: illustration from the February 21, 2021 New York Times Magazine. Clockwise from top left: Illustrations by Lan Truong, Mark Ochinero, C. W. Moss, Clare Lewis, Ohni Lisle and Lorenzo Gritti.

 

When the Garfield newspaper comic strip debuted nationally, back in 1978, there was no such thing as the web. Now, with Garfield mostly read online, and his image digitized, it's easily copied and manipulated. There are more than one popular variations of Garfield. 

For instance, there's the long running Garfield Minus Garfield, in which Garfield is erased from the comic, leaving just the supporting cast reacting to ... nothing. 

The New York Times' Dan Brooks writes about this in "How Garfield Helped Me Make Peace With a Culture in Decline." He recommends

 

" ... you might try getting into Garfield variants: remixes of the original strips that testify to the internet’s limitless invention and similarly uninhibited attitude toward copyright. Perhaps the best known is Garfield Minus Garfield, which removes all evidence of the title character to yield a comic about a lonely man talking to himself. Relieved of the pet that is at once his antagonist and his companion, Jon might sit silently for two panels before saying, 'I dread tomorrow.' Without Garfield, the strip shifts to a register of psychological realism in which Jon’s circumstances become horror instead of comedy."

 

When writing about the popularity of Pipe Garfield (the Garfield web variant where the last panel is always, always, always Garfield smoking a pipe), he cites a cinematic theory:

"What’s strange is that it keeps making sense. Pipe Garfield relies on what cinema theorists call the Kuleshov effect: the tendency of audiences to invent a narrative connection between any two images in sequence. This phenomenon is the basis for not just modern film editing but also several Garfield variants, including Garfield Thrown Out the Window, which intensifies the Kuleshov effect considerably. The final frame of each strip, in which Garfield’s body flies through a pane of broken glass, implies vigorous activity between panels. The difference between Pipe Garfield and Garfield Thrown Out the Window is a matter of existential disposition: Smoking a pipe is something Garfield does, but defenestration is something done to Garfield. Both variants exercise the mind’s capacity for sense-making, inviting the reader to devise a story from found materials."

From the Dick Buchanan Files: Snow Cartoons 1938 - 1962

My friend Dick Buchanan showcases a small portion of his gigantic collection of vintage magazine cartoons for your enjoyment. Look, you can't do anything about the snow and ice and freezing rain and school closings, so you might as well laugh about it. Thank you, Dick, for sharing.

--

LET IT SNOW!
(1938 – 1962)

No doubt about it, snow is funny. That’s why we have reached deep into the Cartoon Clip File and retrieved some gag cartoons about snow and ice. One thing’s for sure, snow is funnier when viewed from afar so stay inside and enjoy these cartoons from the past.


1.  JOHN BLUTO.  The Saturday Evening Post  January 25, 1958.

2.  CHON DAY. Collier’s January 30, 1943.

3.  AL KAUFMAN.  The Saturday Evening Post  March 9, 1957.

4. REAMER KELLER. Collier’s  March 12, 1938.

5.  STAN HUNT.  The Saturday Evening Post  January 6, 1951.

6.  DICK ERICSON.  True Magazine  March, 1952.

7.  BRAD ANDERSON. The Saturday Evening Post  January 6, 1951.

8.  BOB BARNES.  The Saturday Evening Post  January 6, 1951.

9.  SCOTT  TABER.  The Saturday Evening Post  February 8, 1958.

10.  AL KAUFMAN.  The Saturday Evening Post  February 11, 1950.

11.  CHON DAY.  The Saturday Evening Post  February 8, 1958.

12.  JAY IRVING.  Collier’s  March 2, 1940.

13.  DAVE GERARD.  Collier’s March 6, 1952.

14. TED KEY.  Collier’s  The Saturday Evening Post  November 29, 1949.

15.  HERB GREEN.  True Magazine  March 1962.

16.  NED HILTON.  Collier’s  December 23, 1950

-- An edited version of the blog that originally appeared three years ago today, February 21, 2019.

The Wretched Mess News

 

The Wretched Mess News, was created in 1962 by ad-man David Bascom, as a jokey little journal about fly fishing and camping. It was silly and cheaply produced with either Mr. Bascom's sketches or "found" art. Bascom was more than just an ad-man, he was president of the Guild, Bascom & Bonfigli, Inc. advertising firm in San Francisco, "the world's most lovable advertising agency." Also: he was one of the founders of Fisherman's National Bank.

"'In times past,' Bascom said the other day, 'some noncultured but well-heeled folk—the sort that constitute prime prospects for an advertising agency—looked upon my Wretched Mess activities as proof that I was 100% nuts and thus singularly ill-fitted to direct, or even to participate in, serious business matters.' At first Bascom tried to convince them that The Wretched Mess News occupied only 5% of his time and thus proved, he claimed, 'that I am not more than 5% nuts.'" -- A Wretched Mess of Type, Mostly About Fishing by Robert Cantwell, Sports Illustrated, December 20, 1965.

The Wretched Mess News was around for a number of years, with informational tongue in cheek articles like 

Is Smokey the Bear a Communist Spy?

How Robt. Fulton, Thos. Edison & Irving Schwartz Did Not Invent Keel Flies

The Wonderful World of Worms

Wretched Wreviews

How I Solved the Earwax Problem 

I always thought it akin to Monty Python or The Goon Show. Just way-out there humor. It's only recently that I found an issue of the The Wretched Mess News ("Vol. 8, No. 4, Fishmas, 1970") and bought it at the flea market in Arundel, Maine. And recenter (That's not a word.) still that I looked into how it was created and who really was Ed. & Pub. Milford "Stanley" Poltroon? As a kid, in Lawrence, KS, I had a Wretched Mess calendar that someone (Dad?) gave me as a present. It was very silly and there were crazy events and an extra month. Fast forward a couple of decades to that flea market, and I saw a complete issue -- along with that "Free Moose" insert. Here's the entire issue.