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| Slipped images and story © Michael Chevy Castranova 2015 |
Last weekend’s
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus events were great fun. I bought lots of books,
including Dylan Horrocks’s “Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen,” an entertaining
graphic-novel adventure about writer’s block and creativity and originality,
and had a good chat with Chris Schweizer while I picked up a couple of his
excellent sketchbooks.
Also there was
Bill Griffith, promoting “Invisible Ink,” his memoir about his mother and her
affair with cartoonist Lawrence Lariar.
I didn’t think I’d
ever heard of Lariar — until Griffith talked about Lariar’s mail-order
cartooning lessons based on the notion that all characters should start in the
shape of peanut. I recall even as a child thinking that was pretty ridiculous.
During his Friday
afternoon presentation, Griffith talked about how he’s taken the advice of
Ernie Bushmiller, of “Nancy” fame, when stuck for an idea: Griffith calls out
all his characters, then asks, “OK, who has an idea today? And Mr. Toad raises
his hand and says, ‘Me, I have an idea today.’”
Which reminded me
of when I working through the two most-recent chapters of “Slipped,” 351 and
352. I couldn’t see a credible way to motivate Tyler and Mendacity to take up the adventure
Delacroix had proposed. Then the characters just acted it out — the
sisters would brave the wildebeest’s dubious plan, they said, to find their
father.
And Cartier herself decided she should be part of Tyler’s quest.
Though, frankly,
Tyler has never liked sharing, just as she makes it known if she thinks she
hasn’t been the focus of a story for too long.
Whose comic strip
is this, after all, she’s asked.
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