All the comic strips, from the greatest to the least, eye the weather for material. Try staring out the window for hours, straining to think of something to scribble about, without the weather coming to mind. You can’t do it. Indeed, comic treatment of the elements is as seasonal and as anticipated as the colors of autumn and the tender green buds of spring. Which is kind of strange when you think about it. In anything but a locally distributed cartoon, the weather being experienced by readers at a given moment is going to vary wildly. It doesn’t matter. There is a universality to our interest in the weather that goes back farther than we’ve been human. That’s what cartoonists hope, at any rate.
You may have noticed I left the maintenance page up longer than planned yesterday. Yesterday turned out to be a “classroom day,” when I learned some things and learned there are some things I have not yet learned.
8 responses to “Speaking of the weather”
I went to college “to learn how to learn”.
My dad, who wanted to go to college, but couldn’t said ” The more that you learn, the more that you realize that you need to learn”.
And, the more I learn, the more I learn that I don’t know a damn thing.
JJ-
One of the things I like about A&J is the mix of gag-a-day strips and week-long arcs (and even longer arcs like the Cuban travelogue). I appreciate your struggle at times to keep up with the grind of the gag-a-day strips, but what your process for the longer arcs? Do you think of an idea and set it aside, adding to it when you can until it is ready for publication, or is it more of a burst of inspiration which you knock out all at once. The recent reflection on life in the hurricane zone seems like it was in response to the recent hurricanes in the Gulf area but could that have been something you were thinking about for a while?
Good questions, Blinky. I’m looking forward to addressing this sort thing as soon as I’ve worked through this beta version of the “new” blog. I’m almost there, I think.
Glad to see you back up and running! It always seems to me that even simple things with computers always take MUCH longer than the time I estimated they would!
London’s works usually focused on the survival of the fittest. I wonder if he thought about that as he lay on his own deathbed.
Connection for me: For London’s boat named “Snark”, a youngish Martin Johnson signed on as cook, although he couldn’t {saith the ‘net}. Martin was a photographer who later achieved world fame with his wife, Osa, because they spent a lot of time {years} travelling and made a photographic record of areas like the SW Pacific and E Africa. The Snark did not finish the assigned trip – unsure of London, who became rather ill – but Martin took advantage of already being in Australian waters to complete a trip around the world and back to Kansas, then eventually eloping with Osa.
Years later, IIRC, they went to Africa. They knew George Eastman of Kodak fame, Carl Akeley of the Museum of Natural History, and were even visited by the couple who became King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. They presented pictures and lectures of their work and Osa wrote several books, four of which I have owned. I learned to read from her “Four Years in Paradise”, detailing the E. African times. Their joint purpose was to preserve a record of the natural world, including the people.
Excellent information! Thanks!