More like Funky Winker-MEAN (Part 1 of 2)

I’ve always loved comics. I love comic books. I love comic strips. The former has been mentioned before. The latter probably hasn’t. Nevertheless, I remember being a little kid and spreading out the full color Sunday funny pages to pour over the funny pages. I still have a number of anthologies of my favorites, Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side. Their creators, Bill Watterson and Gary Larson, respectively, inspired me to nurture my own creativity, writing, and artwork.

While I was in college, I had the opportunity to attend the triennial Festival of Cartoon Art at Ohio State University. That was 1998 (the list of events/speakers is still available online). For a comic guy, it really was a blast. Kind of my own one-man adventure. I heard the legendary Will Eisner (creator of The Spirit) speak. That alone would’ve been worth the trip. But that wasn’t it. I also heard and greatly enjoyed hearing Dave Coverly (creator of Speed Bump), Patrick McDonnell (of Mutz), and Ted Rall (editorial cartoonist for Rolling Stone, NY Times, Washington Post). My only regret is that I didn’t stick around for the second day to hear Jeff Smith (creator of Bone) and Art Spiegelman(creator of Maus). [Sigh] Unfortunately, I’ve only recently become interested in these last two artists and writers. FYI: The 2007 Festival of Cartoon Art is coming up near the end of October.

My love of comics went so far as to prompt me to submit my own comic strip for syndication. The strip was promptly turned down by…well…ALL the syndicates. It was heartbreaking but, looking at my old copies of that strip, I can certainly understand why it wasn’t picked up. First and foremost, it wasn’t any good. I probably don’t need to expand on that though I will look for my original character sheets. I'm somewhat hopeful they were lost in our recent move. Not really.

Anyway, there’s my history with the funnies. I know it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the negative title of this blog entry. It'll make more sense after I post Part 2 which will focus more on what I don’t love about comics. Stay tuned. That sounds about as much fun as reading the latest Funky Winkerbean.