Music for a Ridiculous Ensemble

See if you can spot Dylan, Daft Punk, and a digeridoo. I recently did an interview with a great blog called Illustration Concentration - check it out for some intimate secrets about how Incidental Comics are made and a couple previously unreleased sketchbook pages. For an extended musing on the above cartoon, keep reading.

The recent death of Ronald Searle and the 100th birthday of the late Charles Addams got me thinking about how much The New Yorker has influenced me as a cartoonist. During my sophomore year of college my brother brought a stack of back issues to our apartment. I'd never opened the magazine before, but I quickly became obsessed with it - especially the cartoons. To someone raised almost exclusively on newspaper comic strips, the humor was understated and often weird. The drawings were especially appealing - the best cartoonists had a unique style that couldn't be mistaken for anyone else. I remember puzzling over a full-page spread drawn by Roz Chast, probably in the yearly cartoon issue. At first I couldn't decide whether I hated it or was just mildly annoyed by it. It grew on me, though. A few months later, she was my favorite cartoonist.  

The comic I posted above is from mid 2010, but it was directly inspired by old New Yorker cartoon collections. I loved the highly-detailed drawings of full orchestras, rendered in gray ink washes. I was also listening to a lot of Steve Reich at the time, and I wanted to merge the lush experimental sound of a Reich piece with the visual gags of a New Yorker panel. I'm still happy with the way it turned out.

An Old Family Portrait

Please excuse the somewhat outdated music references - I drew this comic way back in 2008. It still holds true, although my parents have a few more gray hairs and my little brothers are now taller than I am.

There will be no encore.

Warrior Poets

Incidental Comics is now on Tumblr! You can follow me at http://incidentalcomics.tumblr.com/. My plan is to post a brand new comic every Thursday, with some sketchbook outtakes, process posts, and other projects thrown in the mix.

I've been reposting some comics from my archives (like the Roz-Chastian attempt above) on this blog every Monday, but for now these won't appear on my Tumblr. I want to track the progress of my work, rather than looking back at when I had a rougher drawing style and better sense of humor.

Museum Rules

This week on Incidental Comics: chaos and exploration in the art museum. For today's comic and Thursday's comic, I used rough sketches (pencil only, please) and photos (turn off the flash, sir) from visits to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Denver Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, and Art Institute of Chicago.

Last Night's Show

This fictional venue is modeled after The Granada and The Bottleneck in the idyllic college town of Lawrence, Kansas. But it could be any other bar where sweaty fans and loud bands congregate. Maybe I saw you there? 

The Feuding Death Metal Band

One of my favorite songs of the past decade is "The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton" by The Mountain Goats. This cartoon is nowhere near as good as that song. But then, not much is. Someday I hope to draw a comic that approaches the pure manic energy and disarming wit of a John Darnielle song lyric. Someday!

Art History

Sustainability

When Water Towers Dream

I'm a strong proponent of the personification of buildings and man-made structures, a theme I'll return to in a drawing later this week. If the dreams of the first two water towers are reminiscent of scenes from the movie Super 8, it's likely because director J.J. Abrams read this comic when it first appeared in the newspaper or on the blog last year. So yeah, just a coincidence. 

Finally: if you ever decide to make an Incidental Comics-inspired pilgrimage, you can actually visit the last two water towers.  They sit just a few miles down the road from each other in Derby and Mulvane, Kansas. Though I'm pretty sure the cornfield is now a big box store or strip mall. 

Château for a Cartoonist

When I've drawn my millionth cartoon, published my memoirs, and sold the movie rights, I should have the financial resources to make the blueprints for this home a reality. I'll have to find an architect equally versed in escalators and observatories. I'll need a landscaper with a thorough knowledge of truffula trees. And a decent zookeeper or ex-lion tamer for my collection of exotic pets. 

The murals and sculptures will all be created by the original artists. This will require some scientific advances in order bring back the late George Herriman (1880-1944). It won't be cheap to fund research in the long-neglected field of corpse reanimation, but the result will be worth it. If you can name all the artists I reference in this drawing, I will give you a job tending the koi ponds.

The Portland Oregon Trail

I drew this comic in 2009, a time when I was still concerned with depicting and satirizing "indie" culture. It has new relevance, however. Like the star-crossed band in this drawing, I am embarking on a voyage west. In a month, I'll be moving from Kansas City (near the city in the first panel), navigating I-70 (passing through the college town in the second panel), and setting up camp for two and a half years just outside Denver, Colorado (not far from the location of the third panel). So please understand if the comics I draw over the next couple months keep repeating this theme of transition, travel, and new beginnings. And the frustrations that inevitably follow.

Checklist for an Epic Summer

One box I forgot to add: draw a comic influenced by the legendary Bill Watterson. Check!

Meet the Band

Drawing Hands

"Drawing hands is hell." 

-Picasso or somebody

I try to avoid rendering anatomically correct hands whenever possible. You'll see one of my rare attempts at hand drawing in last week's "Career Path Generator." Which is probably why I decided to repost this exercise in evasion. 

Also: you can now follow me on Twitter @grantdraws. 

Ode to an Aging Rock Critic

Not so long ago, I wrote a number of freelance concert reviews for a local music blog. It was a pretty sweet gig: see a show for free, take a few blurry photos, and scribble notes during the set like a true music expert. After returning home from the bar/club/hipster lair, I would transcribe my scribblings into an overly-detailed account of the performance. 

The review was due at 8 AM the morning after the concert. Sometimes I wouldn't finish writing until after 4 AM. Then I'd lay awake in bed, physically exhausted, my mind still lit up with journalistic prose. This was the closest I came in school to pulling an all-nighter. Weeks later, a small paycheck would arrive in the mail. I have no idea if anyone besides my editor ever read the reviews. I did get to see some great bands for free, though. And some terrible bands. 

Suburban Anarchy

Love & Fonts

In combining the best elements of romance novels and typographic criticism, I could have made this comic much, much racier: "She felt the oblique, sinuous curves of his letterform. Their passion was legible. But could it ever be justified?"  At least I didn't stoop to making fun of Comic Sans.

An Education

Two years ago this month, I began drawing a weekly comic strip for my outstanding local newspaper, the Kansas City Star. I called the strip "Delayed Karma" - this was an obscure fusion of a John Lennon song and my mother's maiden name, and by no means an attempt to sound "all metaphysical." I'm not going to attempt to repost all of the early strips I drew. Most are painful for me to look at. The text is incoherent, the characters' heads are poorly proportioned, and I can't read them without finding dozens of things I would do differently if forced to redraw them. But I still enjoy a handful of these comics, so I'm going to start posting one a week in addition to my new work. In doing so, I may save a few brave souls the trouble of wading through the Incidental Comics archives in search of sketchy sustenance, or I may just boost my creative ego. Either way, enjoy the new old drawings, at least until the decent ones run out.

Beard Madness!

The selection committee has chosen the best beards from this year's highly competitive field. The last four out were Leo Tolstoy, Zach Galifianakis, Ben Bernanke, and the dude from Iron & Wine. As this blog's resident bracketologist, I forsee some intriguing second-round matchups: Jesus battles Darwin over who has more convincing bumper stickers, Shel Silverstein challenges Dumbledore to see who brings more magic to the hearts of young readers, and Abe Lincoln and Kenny Rogers duke it out for control of The South. 

To order as a poster, email gsnider11@gmail.com. More details here.