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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Broom-Hilda Tries to End the Fed

I sometimes get asked where my anti-authoritarian, libertarian streak comes from, and I always have to answer, 'Well...lots of places.' One early influence in that area had to be comics and cartoons. Bugs Bunny is about as anti-authoritarian as they get. Every politician portrayed in Bloom County was shown as corrupt and incompetent. Even Garfield had nothing but contempt for Jon, the only 'authority' figure in his life. One of my favorite comics when I was very young, was the Wizard of Id. The King in that strip was a lowlife. He was corrupt. His people despised him. The King is a fink! I found this book in a used bookstore a couple of weeks ago, it is the very first Wizard of Id collection, full of anti-authoritarian goodness:

Alongside that book I found this one from 1982:
Now, I've never really read Broom-Hilda, but is was only $2.00 and skimming through it, I found I liked the art, and the gags were funny. I'm always on the lookout for good comic reference material. Once I got it home and started reading it I was delighted to find a 6 day sequence about Broom-Hilda and her friends trying to 'End the Fed'. I love it when my interests and passions collide in weird ways. Click images for Larger.
I love the not-subtle-at all name of Senator Bullbleep. We can all fill in the bleep, I'm sure... The message here is as relevant today as it was then...the Government can't and won't do anything about inflation, since it causes the problem in the first place with terrible monetary policy. Good stuff. As I continued reading I found a couple more strips with Libertarian appeal:
I have no idea what politics the strip's creator, Russell Myers holds, but these strips have really piqued my interest. The collection also had a series of strips about banks, one about solar energy, and several appearances by a group of Arabs and the power they wield with their oil money, all fairly political stuff in a strip about a witch, a troll, and a buzzard. This book is out of print but is available used. There don't seem to be any contemporary reprint collections of Broom-Hilda available either. I enjoyed the strips, and am going to seek out additional Broom-Hilda collections from this era. I'd like to see if there are any more gems with a pro-liberty message like the ones presented here.

Monday, August 27, 2012

The Inevitable Meeting of Death and Taxes

They say only sure things in life are Death and Taxes.


Ham fisted, like all political cartoons, to be sure. I'm just stretching my drawing muscles a bit while working on my new ongoing strip to be announced soon...

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Discordian Quote Comix: Quote 00052


This is the last episode of Discordian Quote Comix so as an exclamation point I decided to feature Eris herself. I decided to end the series with the original Discordian quote, brought on by the Original Snub, the words that kicked off the whole blessed thing. In a wonderful bit of Discordian synchronicity today is 5/23. DQC began as a personal training exercise a year ago, vowing to do a panel a week for one year, in an effort to improve my art, work on a schedule, and eventually work toward more narrative comics.

I learned quite a bit on this project, mainly that my art will always be a work in progress. I also learned that setting goals is a good way to produce, that having a publishing schedule that needs to be met will assure that things get done. One nice side effect of DQC was the launching of SPOILED! a weekly gag strip at Major Spoilers, that spun out of my Bistrips-based Major Spoilers Adventures. I now literally have a new project on the drawing board, and I'll say more about that when the time is right.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Tales From The Gag Master

I found THIS the other day, printed it out and built one. It's called the Gag Master and it is from a 1963 book titled: How to Make Money With Simple Gags.


I've always liked the idea of random elements as inspiration and constraint for making a comic. See my 24 Hour Comics with their random song-title titles.  Today I did my first Gag Master Comic, using the random elements presented by the wheel. Each selection on each ring of the wheel is numbered. From the outside in, here is 68, 34, 08.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Past Disasters