out of sight, out of mind

Hey, I'm still here. I'm still working hard, still working hard on a comic strip because that's what I do.
But the work is not ready for prime time; in fact it has 97% chance of failing and never seeing the light of day. Indeed, its immediate predecessor , 5 months worth of work-from April to August 2017--will never be shared-anywhere. And while of course there is some inevitable disappointment in that, it's something I accept as part of the process and the necessary task of "getting it right". I fully expect to work another 6 months to a year on this project before it's shown publicly. And even then, it may not pop its head above sea level. We'll see.
 "Jetpack Jr." was never right. "Babyheads" was better-in that it was itself,  fully realized for what it was, a work of parody and satire. But it lacked characters an audience could connect with, and so it floundered. But looking back on it, I think I achieved what I wanted with the strip-well, at least to some extent.Whether or not I was the only person laughing, I don't know. But  at least I was true to my vision, such as it is.( or was.)
But I don't feel "Jetpack" ever found its groove--primarily because the lead character was an empty vessel. I never found the right voice for him. Only at the end, when I started playing around with Trump as a character, did I feel I'd found an interesting lead. But there were problems with that too---I couldn't keep up with every tweet, every egregious act or statement, and it ultimately felt like a dead end.
So, I decided to pull back and retool. The surprising thing is, I've found I don't miss posting.I don't miss the "likes". I don't miss the scramble for an audience, the pressure to be "seen".  After awhile, as a cartoonist-- whose job it is to be part of the daily media onslaught-- you grow to think life and work and career are nonexistent apart  from those social tools; that you're nowhere unless you're seen on Instagram, FB or Twitter. But the truth is, the work exists independently-- and its failure and success-- as work--can be independent of its visibility. The work comes first. Why share just to share?  In the meantime, I continue to write and sketch and draw and ink and photoshop and when I think I've finally got something, I'll let it go and see how it floats. It might be 3 months, 6 months or a year. But-if it doesn't beat the odds, if like most endeavors it ends up a failed attempt at "something", it'll remain beneath the ocean with all those other beautiful wrecks, those decayed treasures of the imagination.  Wish me luck.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah! 53 years ago this week

A personal memoir: yeah--it's a cliche, but for me,there's never been a more true one; The Beatles changed my life. I was a toddler and too young to remember the first show, but I remember the excitement surrounding them, and-some of my earliest memories are of them-a glimpse on a b & w TV; the first time I heard them on the radio( in the car w/my Mom and sister, Cathy). In those early days--for me, and millions others, they embodied happiness-their sound and their attitude--was so much joy. They were surprise! And their life force was infectious. They made a popular music that was their own ingenious, creative and personal art--and by doing so they "fulfilled my most far-flung dreams of the power of pop music"--and by some miracle of osmosis they sent a vibe through the culture that suggested all of us were creative, all of us had this power within us and if we were lucky, we could each find a way to be who we wanted to be-even if so many of us just wished we could be a Beatle too. Though I might've been left-handed, and for a brief stint, played bass in the school band( two months, tops!)-I wasn't ever gonna be Paul McCartney--but I could find a way to be Geoff Grogan-and he could be his own artist, find his own way, through The Beatles,( and through Charles Schulz and Jack Kirby, and...and...). The Beatles (and later Dylan and Schulz and Kirby)-showed me that pop culture could be as great a platform for art as any other. The Beatles became very important to me very early on, and while they opened me up to lots of different musicians and types of music(ours was a musical household-thanks to my musician/artist Mom), they would-and will always be- my first love. Despite all the times I've heard their music and all the over-exposure,nothing compares to that sound for me. From the first time I heard them-it was like hearing a sound that had always been there somehow--yet lurking just behind the veil. After the music, in those painful first years after they had broken up, Paul and John showed me what it meant to be a loving husband. Later on, after John had gone, my wife and I bonded via The Beatles (and Dylan, and Star Trek). Deb and I were very fortunate to have the opportunity once to meet Paul( we can all cal him Paul, right?) -and when I shook his hand, the first stupid thing out of my mouth was "your music has meant so much to me"...duh. His eyes showed that he'd heard it a billion zillion times-something so easy to say, he probably doesn't believe it anymore. But if I never had a chance to say another word to him, I had to say that-because it is the truth. My life would have been very,very different if I hadn't heard The Beatles. I would rather not imagine a world without them--it's like thinking of the the sky without blue.

A matter of conscience, a matter of comedy

Hi Readers!
Beginning Monday, the story-line I've been hinting at in recent JJ strips begins to take shape, and I fully expect that in the next week or so I may lose half of the small readership I have. I don't have a big Social Media Imprint, so I don't expect that I'll be picking up new readers in large enough numbers to compensate, but then--I don't have all that much to lose, right?  In this case, my conscience overruled my better judgement and sense of self-preservation. I'm moving Jetpack in this direction at this time at the behest of some internal moral compass; I really don't have a choice. These are the thoughts, the ideas, the issues that are presenting themselves to me now-at this time, at this place. And Jetpack is my outlet, and so here they must go.
I can't begin to convey the depth of sorrow, futility, despair and disgust I've felt in the wake of our recent election. I know I'm not alone in this, but that knowledge doesn't seem to ease the stress level--and I find I'm having difficulty sleeping nights; my anger and fear are so great.  Make no mistake--I believe our recent election is an aberration; our President-elect a poseur and a con-man who ran a campaign based on intolerance and hatred; who preyed on weakness, fear, sexism and racism in the interests of lining his pockets and those of his his billionaire cronies, who together will gladly send our nation and world over the cliff as long as they can insulate themselves from the carnage. I needn't go into the details, the details are self-evident, and I'm not a political analyst or watchdog; I'm a cartoonist. And if my little comic strip is about anything, its about difference; its about an individual who does not conform to institutionalized concepts of "normality", and the various ways in which the people around him respond to those differences. At a moment in which we've elevated a bigot and a bully to the highest office in the land, and given license to an ever-growing number of expressions of hatred and intolerance in his name, we each have to do what we can to fight back in the name of justice, equality and diversity. I'm a cartoonist. and this is what we do.
We also do what we can to make it funny. That's our job too, maybe the bigger, tougher part of it.  It's easy just to rant--it's easy writing this. It's hard work to make something worthwhile, funny, and entertaining of one's little opinion or observation about something so disagreeable--but that's the task at hand. Because humor reaches people in a way very few Op Ed pieces can. And let's face it, demagogues are a rich comedic resource from which cartoonists have been drawing inspiration for as long as there has been pen and ink. To waste such an opportunity now would amount to a crime against my forebears.
I don't have any illusions about the power of comedy to change things.( Nor illusions about how many readers I reach.) Neither "Duck Soup" nor "The Great Dictator" could turn the tide against the rise of fascism, nor stop the war from coming. But they did contribute to the culture of resistance, and in doing so were among the things that gave life to the hope that all was not lost. Everyday now, the actions of the incoming administration give cause for the gravest of fears; it is not to make light of the seriousness of our predicament that we take pen to paper, but to give some sustenance to the flames of resistance, the light of hope.
All this high falutin' morality aside, I swore to myself that when I returned to JJ, I was doing it for the fun of it--and damn, if this isn't fun.