Ho-ho-homicide

'Tis the season for my first new cartoon in a few months! It's good to be back (if even for just one week) after my brief hiatus. I'll try to get back to weekly postings again in 2020. For now, though, here's a little holiday treat.

All my iconography defaults to the 1970s.

This week's quick-sketch cartoon was most emphatically not drawn in front of the television. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

"Not a puppet!"

Ripped from the headlines...

Guilty as charged

Autobiography at its finest.

The planet is on fire and I (don't) feel fine

Obviously this was inspired by the recent swath of fires in the Amazon, but this isn't just a Brazil problem (there are also massive waves of human-set fires in the Congo, Indonesia and other parts of the world), nor is it just a fire problem (we're destroying so much else, in so many other ways). But it all adds up, and it's all...not very smart.

Here's hoping my next environmentally themed cartoon touches on something a wee bit less despairing!

Now that's putting your neck out

This is a bit of a callback to an earlier cartoon. (I definitely have my themes...)

"I am consumer, destroyer of worlds"

A super-quick sketch I'll draw in more detail one of these days, but for now -- hot on the heels of Earth Overshoot Day -- this will do.

I felt like drawing a cute whale (but then things got a little dark...)

Grainy images of the past

Remember the satisfying THUNK of a tape getting sucked into a VCR?

Tremors (not the movie)

True story...

Drama

Cattitude

I'm getting into my brushes lately (even though I'm still figuring out what to do with them).

Well that was bleak

Geez, sometimes my cartoon sketchbook is just maudlin, you know?

The only national debate we should be having this week

Found this in an old sketchbook. Where does your candidate stand (or sit) on this issue?

My worst pun EVAH

An old ball-point-pen sketch found in a long-forgotten notebook -- perhaps one that should have remained forgotten?

(Nah, this still cracks me up -- but not enough to redraw it!)

Perplexing

An experimental little oddity that really just materialized because I felt like drawing a big question mark with a brush.

Hobbies are important

A rare pencil sketch found in an ages-old sketchbook. I thought it was too charming to ink.

Survival skills

Adapt or die, amirite?

(A quick two-minute sketch. I'll probably redraw this at some point, but it's good enough for now.)

Amphibian Fight Song

No gag this week -- instead, here's a silly, quickly drawn illustration inspired by this essay I edited for The Revelator about sports teams using endangered species as their mascots (but not sharing appropriate conservation messages about those same species).

What other sports teams and mascots could be rebranded for conservation purposes? I've got a few ideas.

The Green Bay Packers could become the Green Bay Pachyderms.

The Chicago Cubs would change their name to the Chicago Grizzlies, while the Bulls would become the Chicago Tamaraws.

The members of the New York Yankees would soon play for the New York Yellowhammers or the Clubshells (a type of mussel).

The Boston Red Sox would have a lot of choices: the Boston Red Wolves, Redwings, Sockeyes...the possibilities are endless.

The New Orleans Saints could be the New Orleans Gopher Tortoises (a local species).

I could go on...but I think this is a good start!

Why I hate clothes shopping

Free hugs

This week's super-sketchy cartoon.

True story

Okay, this one isn't so much a gag as a nice piece of art/introspection, but I'm glad to finally get it posted.

True story: this was one of the first ideas that I sketched out when I started drawing cartoon ideas en masse back in 2012. At the time, I was stupidly using a ballpoint pen and filling up a notebook that had ivory-colored pages. Some of those ideas were both good and fairly well-drawn; I could have scanned and posted them right away except the ballpoint didn't create very good lines and I didn't know how to whiten the scans of those off-white pages.

Well, I finally figured out how to resolve that second problem, and this piece is about a ball-point pen, so up it goes -- just a few years after I drew/wrote it.

And there I wrote ten times more words than the drawing contains in order to explain the drawing. Remind me not to do that again!

Bite me

Live fast, die young, leave a confusing headstone.

Better or Worse?

I drew this during cold season...

...and now it's just as appropriate during allergy season.

Otherness

(A super-quick sketch, but I like it. Oh, other than the whole emotional content, you know.)

I really should work out more

(Fun story -- I filled an entire sketchbook with drawings before I realized the pages were so off-white they scan funny. This came out pretty well, all things considered.)

Blast it!

True story. Yes, I did sketch this out after a particularly ill-advised walk the other day.

Rumbly in the Tumbly

Ouch.

(Stop me before I pun again.)

Note to self: Use photo reference more often

Guilty as charged.

Identity

(Who doesn't?)

This week's sketchy cartoon. Probably drawn some time after my puggle started howling.

Another brick in the wall...

I'm sure I'm not the first cartoonist to think of this "Kilroy was here" riff about Trump's border wall, but I had to sketch this out once it popped into my head. (I probably should have made the handwriting bigger and more florid.)

Stop him before he sips again

(Another quick sketch on the back of a business card. I was going to revisit this full size, but this dude's expression just cracks me up.)

Seeds the day

(A quick cartoon I sketched on the back of a business card.)

A hate-love relationship

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Open the flood-gates

Have things gotten busy around here or is it just me?