National Cartoonist Society Weekend, Part Three

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had drawn a comic in honor of the 2013 Reuben Awards, the National Cartoonist Society's award for outstanding cartoonists. This year's awards were held in my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

I'm not an NCS member, but The Pittsburgh Toonseum hosted some NCS events and sold some VIP passes to the general public as well. I bought my ticket before they were even advertised.

My VIP pass entitled me to attend three different events on three different days: The opening of the Reuben Winner's Comic Exhibit on Thursday, Cartoonist Karaoke on Friday, and the Comic Arts Festival on Sunday (The Saturday events and award ceremony were for members only.)

As there were three separate events, I will be writing about my experiences in three separate blog entries.

I'd like to thank the Pittsburgh Toonseum for hosting the event. I have never purchased a VIP pass to anything before, but the Toonseum gave me every penny's worth and treated me like royalty.

Sunday, May 25 - The Comic Arts Festival

This one was not exactly a VIP event. The Comic Arts Festival was a free street festival that took over the Toonseums's block for most of a day. However, my VIP pass covered my admission to the museum gallery, saved me a seat at the panels and got me a place in line for cartoonist autographs.

But I'll get to that.

The festival itself was spectacular. Artist and vendor booths lined the street. Balloon sculptures of popular characters stood on tall balloon pedestals. And the whole street was quickly covered in chalk drawings, as the Toonseum staff passed out sidewalk chalk and invited guests to add to the scenery.

I drew Saber.

Then some kid drew an animal that looked kind of like Saber.

(But, clearly, his name was Spike)

But this was not just a day of drawing on the road. I also met a slew of cartoon celebrities, many of whom gave me sketches. All of whom gave me stories.

First, I met Mutts cartoonist Patrick McDonnell, who drew Mooch and a turtle for me.

This sketch was made in honor of my own pets.

("Oh, that sketch is an easy scene to renact. Ajax and Noko Noko can do that in five seconds," said no one, ever.)

Patrick must be sick of people telling him stories about their pets, but he was very polite and took the time to ask a few questions about Noko Noko (Noko's so interesting.)

Then I met Brian Walker, the son of Beetle Bailey's creator, Mort Walker. Brian takes the lead on the Hi and Lois comic, but I asked him to draw Beetle anyway.

I didn't want to miss Jan Eliot, creator of Stone Soup. We talked a bit about imaginations and she said I was "an absolute joy to talk to." <3

I got a sketch from John Rose, who currently draws Snuffy Smith. (This sketch was partly for my dad, who once knew most of the Barney Google theme song.)

Next, I met Brian Crane, who draws Pickles.

I also snapped a nice photo of Brian next to the Pickles-themed balloon sculpture. Apparently, he didn't know that he was stationed next to his sculpture until I mentioned it.

(The light was a little uncooperative, but that's a balloon sculpture of Opal and Earl dancing a waltz.)

Greg Evans, who draws Luann, asked me if I had a favorite character from his strip. I chose Bernice. I mentioned that Bernice probably has quite a following of fans who like geeky girls (like the guys who think Velma is cuter than Daphne.) Greg acted like he had never thought about that, but I can't imagine that I'm the first person to bring up that idea.

(For the sisterhood of girl geeks!)

Finally, I met the man himself. The president of the National Cartoonist Society - Jeff Keane (AKA Little Jeffy)

(That's right. He's the president)

Jeff asked me if I drew comics, then personally assured me that there has no longer any bad blood between syndicated newspaper cartoonists and web cartoonists. Those days are ancient history. You heard it straight from the top, folks.

After the signings, it was time for the panels. At this point, my cousin and habitual partner in crime, Kristine, joined up with me so I have at least one eye witness for the things that happened next.

We attended the first panel "Women in Comics." Lynn Johnson (For Better or for Worse) Cathy Guisewite (Cathy) and Hillary Price (Rhymes with Orange) told some amazing stories about starting their careers and which of their comics were based on personal experiences. If you ever get the chance to hear any of these people talk, I suggest you take it.

"Women in Comics" was well-organized, thoughtful and heartfelt. Then we attended Dan Piraro's panel... which was different.

(There are no words for what, exactly, happened here.)

Dan Piraro (Bizarro) talked about his comic, what it means, and what people think it means. He also talked about whatever was running through his head at the moment. Kristine and I ran into Dan afterwards and we got to tell him how much we liked his act. I didn't get a sketch, but it was one of the most fun conversations of the day. This was one of those rare cases where words are worth a thousand pictures.

So, that concludes my review of the NCS weekend and the Pittsburgh Comic Arts Festival. I hope to see all of your there next year.

-Marj

www.lepusstudios.com

National Cartoonist Society Weekend, Part Two

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had drawn a comic in honor of the 2013 Reuben Awards. For those of you who don't follow comic strip culture, The Reuben Awards are the National Cartoonist Society's annual awards for outstanding cartoonists. This year's awards were held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My town. Naturally, I had to get in on it.

I'm not an NCS member, but I figured that there would be a few events open to the public. As luck should have it, The Pittsburgh Toonseum (that's "Cartoon Museum" in case you haven't figured that out) announced that they would be holding some NCS events and they would be selling some VIP passes to the general public as well. I bought my ticket before they were even advertised.

My VIP pass entitled me to attend three different events on three different days: The opening of the Reuben Winner's comic exhibit on Thursday, Cartoonist Karaoke on Friday, and the Comic Arts Festival on Sunday (The Saturday events and award ceremony were for members only.)

As there were three separate events, I will be writing about my experiences in three separate blog entries.

I'd like to thank the Pittsburgh Toonseum for hosting the event. I have never purchased a VIP pass to anything before, but the Toonseum gave me every penny's worth and treated me like royalty.

Friday, May 24 - Cartoonist Karaoke

The second event I attended was a private karaoke party at the Tilden Lounge, a little place near the Toonseum. The NCS members had attended a full day of panels and meetings to prepare for Saturday's big award show. The Karaoke party was their chance to unwind.

I was the second person to arrive. It turns out that the guests of honor were still finishing their last panel. They all showed up about twenty minutes after the doors opened. I was more than a little star-struck, but when the place was packed, I couldn't recognize anyone. To be fair, everyone was wearing a name tag (many of the artist had sketched their own characters on their tags) but in a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd under night club lighting, reading name tags was not a possibility. And not everyone there was a cartoonist. There were relatives, publicists, significant others, and anyone else you would want to take to a night on the town.

For the first hour or so, I didn't talk much. I just watched. It was enough just for me to be there. But through out the night, an odd thing kept happening to me. I was wearing my VIP pass (as per instructions) but none of the real guests seemed to know how one obtains a VIP pass. So every one assumed that the VIP's were local prestige artists or museum contributors. No one knew that I had just saved my pennies and bought my way in. There was only one thing to do. I scribbled some of my characters on my VIP pass, and started acting like a real cartoonist.

And I had a few good conversations with some notable folks. I met Ryan Pagelow, who I think I annoyed by declaring my love for his discontinued projects while saying very little about his current ones. I met the man behind GoComics, who voiced some interest in running my comics (I'll think about it.) I even toasted the event with Sandra Boyton's son, Keith, a playwright and an absolute pleasure to talk to.

The evening grew late and I was pretty sure I had wrung every bit of fun out of the experience. Many of the artists had already gone back to their hotels to rest up for the big day tomorrow. Some of them had probably just moved on to quieter venues. But there was still enough of a crowd for a party. All night, people kept asking each other "Are you going to sing tonight?" It was sort of a running gag. Obviously, the outgoing artists needed no encouragement, while the shyer ones never had any intention of going anywhere never that stage. I was in that second category. Or so I thought until an unexpected thought entered my mind: "If you were to sing karaoke in front of the National Cartoonist Society, you would never be intimidated by anyone else ever again."

Then I had to do it.

I picked out a song I knew and… I wasn't great or good or even forgivable. In fact, I probably ruined music and for that I apologize. But sounding good and being impressive was not the point (actually, I think I did get a bit better the more a sang, but still not the point.) I set a new high bar for my extrovert self.

Okay, I don't really believe that I'll never be intimidated ever again, and I know I kind of cheated by waiting until the end of the evening when everyone had left or was distracted, but it was still a pretty bold move, so you be quiet and let me have this.

Plus signing in front of famous strangers did make it seem like less of a big deal to ask for their autographs the following Sunday.

Please return for the third and final installment of my NCS blog, which will run on Friday.

-Marj
www.lepusstudios.com

National Cartoonist Society Weekend, Part One

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had drawn a comic in honor of the 2013 Reuben Awards. For those of you who don't follow comic strip culture, The Reuben Awards are the National Cartoonist Society's annual awards for outstanding cartoonists. This year's awards were held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My town. Naturally, I had to get in on it.

I'm not an NCS member, but I figured that there would be a few events open to the public. As luck should have it, The Pittsburgh Toonseum (that's "Cartoon Museum" in case you haven't figured that out) announced that they would be holding some NCS events and they would be selling some VIP passes to the general public as well. I bought my ticket before they were even advertised.

My VIP pass entitled me to attend three different events on three different days: The opening of the Reuben Winner's comic exhibit on Thursday, Cartoonist Karaoke on Friday, and the Comic Arts Festival on Sunday (The Saturday events and award ceremony were for members only.)

As there were three separate events, I will be writing about my experiences in three separate blog entries.

I'd like to thank the Pittsburgh Toonseum for hosting the event. I have never purchased a VIP pass to anything before, but the Toonseum gave me every penny's worth and treated me like royalty.

Thursday, May 23 - The Preview Gallery

The Toonseum announced that they had put together a comic strip gallery, featuring the big winners of past Reuben Awards. Keep in mind that there have been Reuben Awards for the past 67 years, so the exhibit had a lot of great comics to choose from. As I understand, the Toonseum moved heaven and earth to round up a fair sample of comics from all the great cartoonists and arranged them by era, with each artist's NCS biography card alongside his or her work. The gallery would be open to the public the following Sunday, but a preview gallery and reception was held that Thursday for the visiting NCS members, museum contributors, and VIP's. 

I arrived early, but there were already a few people walking around and admiring the art. In less than an hour, the galleries were packed. That night, I saw the greatest collection of comic art I had ever seen. The pieces and their curation would not look out of place in the Smithsonian. Seeing them in the local museum was mind blowing. The first room held mostly early works. The walls held classic versions of Beetle Bailey, Prince Valiant (by original artist, Hal Foster, of course) Dick Tracy, and Lil Abner - just to name a few. Right in the middle of this room, there was an original peanuts comic, which was almost twice the size of the other strips on display. I had heard that Charles Schultz liked to use a larger illustration board than most of his peers, but seeing this large Peanuts comic, dwarfing all the other little strips around it gave the work a sense of majesty. 

There's something strange about seeing original comics. When comics are published, you can only see the clean lines, but when you see the originals, you see every bit of white-out, every place where a new bit of art or dialogue was pasted in later, and every unerased pencil line. These early artists in the pre-Photoshop days used every trick at their disposal to finish their comics. In spite of this the quality of the art was undeniable.

The next room contained more modern comics from the 80's and 90's. As exciting as comic history was, these strips were more familiar friends. A hand painted "Calvin and Hobbes" stood in a display case, attracting many onlookers. I looked at original "Garfield" on the wall - it's lines so smooth and perfectly shaped that they could have been drawn by a computer. Why isn't Garfield drawn digitally? For whatever reason, it's a point of pride with the Paws staff that each comic still gets drawn and inked by hand. A Reuben Award-themed Fox Trot (obviously chosen for the occasion) showed such detail, you could almost see what pen Bill Amend used for each line. At the end of the row (a little overlooked, as it was right next to the bar) there was a Cul-De-Sac strip. I did not expect this one to strike me as it did. Cul-De-Sac cartoonist, Richard Thompson was forced to retire last year, due to the severity of his Parkinson's Disease. When I looked at that comic, I realized that every Cul-De-Sac strip that would ever exist in the world ever had already been made and the one I was looking at was part of a finite supply. The card below it said nothing of Thompson's retirement or his illness. It only wrote about how proud he was to have won the Rueben in 2010. I could not stop looking at that comic. I rather hoped the people around me couldn't see my eyes tearing up.

Later on, I found myself at the back of the gallery, contemplating wether I should get a soda or call it a night, when I noticed Joe Wos, the Museum Director, standing a few feet away from me. Suddenly, Joe was calling for everyone's attention. I felt like I should get out of the way and let the important people get closer to the event, but it was too late. The dense crowd was already gathering behind me. I had a front row seat for what happened next. Joe announced that he wanted to present a special award to a contributor. Apparently, the Toonseum has it's own local award, known as the Nemo Award, which is only given to people who make a great contribution to the advancement or preservation of the cartoon arts. I watched as the Nemo Award was presented to Jean Scultz - the wife of the late Charles M. Schultz - for her contributions to cartoon museums across the country. I watched as Jean worked her way through the crowd, which parted for her as best as it could, and she graciously accepted her award. It was during this magic moment when I realized that I had left my camera in the car.

So that was my visit to the gallery. Fun, inspiring, touching, and completely unforgettable.

I'll be posting Part Two of my NCS Weekend blog on Wednesday and Part Three on Friday, so don't miss it.

-Marj

www.lepusstudios.com