The Stupendous Richard Thompson!

Richard Thompson Tells You « Why Things Are »

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« Before the incalculable capacity of the Internet to answer nearly any question put to it while allowing a legion of pedants to hold forth without constraint, getting the facts of the matter took some effort. »

Weekly column ‘Why Things Are‘ ran in The Washington Post from 1990 to 1996. During these diverting (at least as far as the common topic is concerned) years, WOT favourite cartoonist Richard Thompson tackled such various brain bafflers as ‘what does the inside of your nose smell like?’ or ‘why does overdrinking cause a hangover?’ These, at any rate, were the questions posed by Joel Achenbach, staff writer for TWP, questions from which Thompson bounced into sometimes altogether unexpected directions. « The column was fundamentally zany », explains Achenbach in the introduction to the collection of Why Things Are, « though larded with real information and interviews. Richard, it turns out, had crammed his brain over the decades with all manner of esoteric information. The cartoons sang – and sing to this day – with the perfect pitch if the slightly demented intellectual. » There are few things closer to my heart than a non-sequitur with a pedantic bent!

Here is a selection of cartoons from the aforementioned collection, published in 2017 by Picture This Press. While these illustrations need no further accompaniment, the questions submitted to (or by) Achenbach are included under each image. Enjoy!

Why do sexual turn-ons vary so greatly from person to person? Undated (circa 1990-1992).
Why is some cholesterol good for you? Undated (circa 1990-1992). The cholesterol chap looks Klibanesque if not in line, then in spirit.
Why do beer companies brag that their products are ‘cold-filtered’ or ‘beechwood-aged’ or ‘drybrewed’ or ‘genuine draft’ even though no one knows what these terms mean? October 31st, 1993. Given the influx of shitty ‘artisanal’ beer produced by huge companies, I think modern society really needs an official term like ‘Pabst-smeared’.
Why do some people think watching birds is fascinating? February 6th, 1994. When one hits thirty, one is supposed to acquire a set of hobbies only appropriate for people who have suddenly waded into the category of ‘vaguely old’ – gardening, knitting, and, yes, bird watching. I plead guilty to all three.
Why didn’t the Black Death kill everyone in Europe in the fourteenth century, rather than just a third of the population? Undated (circa 1990-1992). I couldn’t resist the adorable Roger Mortis.
Why doesn’t sugar spoil? Undated (circa 1990-1992).
Why is rain sometimes dreary and depressing, and other times wonderfully romantic? April 18th, 1993.
Why can’t they invent pantyhose that don’t run? May 30th, 1993. I recently stumbled across a ‘new’ colour, ‘greige’, a beautiful amalgamate of grey and beige. In a world where several shades of grey are on offer for items from radios to cars (battleship grey, steel grey, stormy grey…), I am not sure we needed this particular variation. As for rip-free tights, they do exist, but you pretty much have to sell one of your kidneys to get your hands on a pair.
Why did people once upon a time believe in vampires? Undated (circa 1990-1992). This guy reminds me both of our last company-wide meeting with an uplifting speech from the CEO and, in more pleasant associations, of Daniel Pinkwater‘s Vampires of Blinsh (illustrated by Aaron Renier).
Why did Freud think women suffer from ‘penis envy’ when that is obviously absurd? January 16th, 1994. Well, that’s easy…
Why do owls seem to turn their heads 180 degrees without turning their bodies? August 1994. A lot of owls can actually turn their heads 270 degrees!
Why do the ‘f’ and the ‘s’ and the ‘p’ and the ‘t’ sound so similar over the phone? February 26th, 1995.
December 4th, 1994. If you’re not yet aware of the great and deliberate lemming fraud, just read this… or go jump off a cliff.
Why does hot water freeze faster than cold water in an ice-cube tray placed in the freezer? April 9th, 1995. Tax season is fast approaching – have you prepared your family-size package of prosciutto?!

~ ds

Christmas With the Otterloops!

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« Gaah! » — Petey Otterloop

Given that it’s Christmas Eve, it seems fitting to parade some of our favourite things, and Richard Thompson‘s (not to be confused with his musical homonym) Cul de Sac (not to be confused with Mr. Polanski’s 1966 psychological thriller) belongs front and centre in that festive cavalcade.

I’ve gathered most of the yule-themed Cul de Sac Sundays… one of these days, I might devote an entire post to Madeline Otterloop’s Christmas sweater dailies.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

RT: « The creepier side of Christmas. A German Expressionist Christmas has been done by someone, somewhere, I’m sure. » December 11, 2005.
RT: « Taking down Christmas is always so hard. I like the timing here. » January 1st, 2006.
RT: « Petey dreams of Christmas with music by Tchaikovsky. » December 24, 2006.
RT: « Santa Claus commands a lot of fear and awe in children. I could never get a coherent sentence out when sitting on his lap when I was a kid, and I doubt I could today. Thank God I don’t believe in him anymore! » December 23, 2007.
RT: « The first appearance of Dill’s mysterious, malignant, poignant, and possibly educational toy. I just wanted something that’d be easy and repetitive to draw, because I was behind. » December 30, 2007.
RT: « What I like the most is the tree seller’s resemblance to a mortician. » December 21, 2008.
December 28, 2008.
RT: « Drawn from life. Nothing more need be said. » December 19, 2010.
RT: « Petey’s faith in his commentaries’ scathing qualities is misplaced. » December 4, 2011.
RT: « Doing this was a joy. The hard part was doing it in pantomime. » December 11, 2011.

-RG (and ds!)

Don’t Feed the Sooti!

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« I used to be Snow White, but I drifted. » — Mae West

Spring has most definitely arrived, even up here in the Northern latitudes.

Last week, while wandering the neighbourhood on a gorgeous, inviting day, we roamed farther afield than usual, and happened upon a mostly-deserted parking lot flanked by a humongous pile of sooty snow. I’ve always been fascinated by these filthy behemoths; where I grew up, increasingly crusty and grotesque snowbanks would endure midway through June each year.

It always made sense to me that, being dark, these mounds would absorb more heat from the spring sunlight and melt faster than pristine snow. Counterintuitively, they just stuck around. As it usually turns out, there are more factors at play than one might initially suspect. Here’s a handy scientific explanation.

Another individual who shared my bemused interest in the phenomenon was incredibly-gifted cartoonist Richard Church Thompson (1957-2016), who bestowed upon the unsightly obsidian lumps some intriguing bits of mythology, as he so often and compellingly did to the base materials of the everyday.

This Richard’s Poor Almanac entry « … predates Cul de Sac by some years, yet keen eyes will note the kids in silly hats and the pile of parking lot snow, which have both found their way into the strip. »
Thompson: « CUL DE SAC began as a Sunday-only feature in The Washington Post Magazine in 2004. I painted them in watercolors instead of the process color needed for most newspaper comic strips. »
The syndicated strip remake, from Sunday, January 9, 2011. Rats! Now we’ll never hear about the bathtub drain bogy…
Alice retells the Sooti legend with some slight distortions… but you just wait until Dill recounts it his way. Sadly, this was the final allusion to these mysterious creatures. This is the Cul de sac daily from Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2010.
We set off on a quest just yesterday and indeed, there are abandoned shopping carts by the score… if you know where to look.
And a bonus seasonal entry to wrap things up! Then it snows.

For more Thompson marvels, do check out our general category, The Stupendous Richard Thompson, and expect massive doses of both awe and amusement.

-RG

Hallowe’en Countdown IV, Day 8

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« Superstition, the mother of those hideous twins, fear and faith, from her throne of skulls, still rules the world. » — Robert G. Ingersoll

Feeling a tad superstitious? Today, as it also happens to be Richard Thompson’s birthday (coïncidence? hardly!), we combine two fabulous flavours into this confection of sheer frightful delight. Careful you don’t bite your tongue or deal yourself a case of whiplash.

  • Thompson « drew it for the Washington Post Weekend section back in September of 1996 and it appeared on Friday the 13th. » I believe!

Take the quiz and quell, at least for a time, those vicious neighbourhood rumours concerning you. For further such priceless resources, do take a gander at our prior Thompson posts, including this Hallowe’en-themed goodie and this fair sampling from Richard’s Poor Almanac.

– RG

Hallowe’en Countdown II, Day 19

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« You know what I wish? I wish that I when I got mad I could pull my own head off and throw it at people. » – Alice Otterloop

There’s simply no justice. Richard Thompson (not the former Fairport Convention guitarist, béret enthusiast and all-around musical authority) was, in my view, the greatest cartoonist of his generation, and, in his prime, his voice was stifled by Parkinson’s disease. Sigh.

Here, then, is a trio of seasonally-and-thematically pertinent excerpts from his Richard’s Poor Almanac, a feature that made its august début in The Washington Post in 1997. Mr. Thompson is somewhat better known for his (other) masterpiece, the beyond-brilliant suburban family comic strip, Cul de Sac (2004-2012).

ThompsonSpooktacularAThompsonSuburbanMythAThompsonNeighborhoodA

And since I brought up Cul de Sac, and insolently pilfered a panel from it for this post’s preview image, I would be remiss in my duties were I to not include the strip in its entirety. Here you are.

ThompsonBooA
This one originally saw print on Sunday, October 26, 2008.

For more of Mr. Thompson’s Almanac, check out, if you will, this earlier post on the topic.

-RG

Richard Thompson’s Far-from-poor Almanac

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Richard Thompson*, cartoonist extraordinaire and an exceptionally kind and talented man, tragically passed away in 2016 – and I don’t like to throw the word “tragically” about without good cause. His was a rare combination of wit, imagination, and style – think of how often one comes across an excellent writer whose material suffers from his poor drawing ability, or an artist whose beautiful art is like en empty shell, with nary a story nor convincing characterization in sight. Thompson had ideas, tons of ideas, and he was able to translate them into visuals with a dynamic pen-line and elegant watercolours.

His first truly successful strip was Richard’s Poor Almanac, which ran in the Washington Post for seven years or so from 1997. These little gems have been collected in “Richard’s Poor Almanac: 12 Months of Misinformation in Handy Cartoon Form” in 2004, but sadly this wonderful volume is quite out of print. You can get your fix from GoComics, however, as they’re re-running the whole thing here.

*not the musician.

Here’s a few strips from Richard’s Poor Almanac that always make me chuckle, no matter how many times I see them.

RichardThompson-HotNHumid

The sprawling, madcap Almanac presented “misinformation in handy cartoon form” on subjects ranging from traditional almanac fodder like weather phenomena and local fauna to entertainment and political news. “The ideal cartoon for the Almanac was made up off the top of my head with no research, with only its own comic logic holding it together,” noted the artist in The Art of Richard Thompson. (Andrew Farago for the Comics Journal.)

RichardThompson-CarTrip

RichardThompson-CountyFair

RichardThompson-SpringGuide
It may not be spring anymore, but this is still perfectly relevant. Just trade “magic bean-stalk” for “zucchini”.

You may have heard about the Almanac thanks to the fame of “Make the Pie Higher”.

«Upon learning that George W. Bush had opted not to invite an official poet to his inauguration ceremony in January 2001, Thompson composed his own poem from Bush malapropisms, and assembled them into a free-form verse entitled “Make the Pie Higher”. The cartoon was widely circulated online over the next year, was set to music by multiple composers, and earned its own entry on the fact-checking website Snopes.com. » (source)

RichardThompson-makethepiehigher

~ ds

Hey, Easy With the Jackhammer!

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I understand that this image has to do with the tradition of greeting the new year by banging on pots and pans and generally making a racket, but I presume that both sailor-garbed primate and pneumatic drill were optional, particularly in times of scarcity.

FamousFunnies138A

Art by Stephen Douglas, from Famous Funnies no. 138 (January, 1946). FF number one (July, 1934) was likely the second comic book issued, and the first one *sold*. It was published by Eastern Color / Dell Comics.

Read the issue here: http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=35200

And while we’re on the subject of ushering in the New Year by making a hellacious din, let’s treat ourselves to a couple of relevant Cul de sac pieces. The first returns us to the strip’s formative, water-coloured years, when it appeared weekly (2004-2007) in The Washington Post‘s weekly magazine section.

CuldeSacNewYearsA
The Washington Post Magazine, Dec. 31st, 2006. Richard Thompson: « From when Petey played the trombone, and I found it too hard to draw. »

CuldeSacNewYears2008-09
The master tackled the theme again in this brief sequence from Dec. 31, 2008- Jan. 1st, 2009.

Nothing left to do now but to wish a joyful 2018 to all you monkeys and assorted critters!

– RG

Tentacle Tuesday: Groping Vines and Other Shenanigans

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What better way to start Tentacle Tuesday than with the Big Pop-Up Book of Giant Squids? Sensitive people may want to skip this one.

PopUpTentaclesA« Dirk Dragonslapper », other than making me giggle every time, sounds like an actual character from some fantasy trilogy, which may be a comment on the state of fantasy these days (hint: it’s not fantastical). I’ll go with the cephalopods, thanks!

Incidentally, there’s a lot of dreadful fantasy covers out there (and that’s quite out of the scope of this blog, anyway), but I can’t resist sharing this one with you.

Swords-In-The-Mist-cover

Poor Fritz Leiber! An octopus holding a bunch of swords at completely ridiculous angles, a squat muscle-bound freak with a bare ass and some booby green-and-purple women floating a distance away. Thanks, Peter Elson.

TentacleTuesdayIcon

Let’s take a break from cuteness. Next up is some serious cause for alarm from Tom Sutton, who’s excellent at psychological horror. His weird art is full of details one can sink into; his sketchiness and sweeping lines leave one with the disquieting impression of being inextricably pulled into a distorted, nightmarish world.

ABuddingEvilTomSutton1
Damsel in distress from « Budding Evil », Haunted no. 17 (July 1974, Charlton), both scripted and drawn by Tom Sutton. Tell me you can look at the girl’s face as she’s getting strangled by tentacles and not get goosebumps.

ABuddingEvilTomSutton2
The meat-eating flowers have seriously disturbing “buds”… the best of us would have fainted!

There’s an inspired essay about Sutton here which I heartily recommend! I’ll take the liberty of borrowing a great Sutton quote from it (itself taken from a 2000 interview by Jon B. Cooke for Comic Book Artist no. 12). Voilà:

« They published weird stuff, and I have always been fascinated by weird stuff, and the weirder the better….  I do owe a certain amount to Charlton, because they allowed me to write a lot of ditties of my own, to paint a lot of horrible covers, and they never, ever, ever remarked on my technique. »

TentacleTuesdayIcon

Brr. I think we need an example of straightforward macho heroism to counter-act the icky impression left by the creeping horror glimpsed above. Here’s Doc Savage to the rescue, as usual. Watch the epic struggle between muscled man and malevolent tentacled beast!

DocSavageKenBarr
Original cover art for Doc Savage no. 8 (Marvel, Spring 1977) by illustrator Ken Barr. And no, I don’t have the answer as to why Doc Savage’s normally bronze hair looks like a white bathing cap here. However, Barr seems to have enjoyed painting it – just look at that glistening musculature!

Let’s see the cover as it was published:

DocSavageCover8
A bit too much text, guys. C’mon, you have a tentacled monstrosity with indubitably evil eyes, a man with rippling muscles and bulging veins… We’ve figured out that Doc is its next victim (just as surely as we know that he will come to no real harm).

Interestingly, upon opening the magazine, the first thing one sees is a Tom Sutton illustration. Small world! The cover story, « The Crimson Plague », is an adaptation of a novella published in Doc Savage Magazine in September 1939, and most likely written by Lester Dent (as Kenneth Robeson), who’s responsible for most of the classic Doc Savage epics. It’s an « adventure in which Doc Savage and his team deal with kidnapped scientists, captured comrades, and the deadly secret of the Octo-Brain » (sounds exciting, doesn’t it?) and is illustrated by Ernie Chan.

~ ds

Borborygmi phobia

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Yes, “borborygmi” is actually a word.
Borborygmi [bawr-buh-rig-mahy]
a rumbling or gurgling sound caused by the movement of gas in the intestines. Did you know you could have a whole conversation in borborygmese? But don’t take my word for it:

PoisChichesClaireBretecher
This page, entitled “Les pois chiches” (Chickpeas), comes from a comics collection called “Tourista”, published in 1984, about, what else? Tourists and their behaviour in foreign climes.

Claire Bretécher is a socio-satirical cartoonist from France, best known for her comics dealing with women and gender-related issues (Les frustrés, Aggripine…) Lots of them have been translated into English. A quick rundown of her career: her work has been published in Spirou and Pilote in 1972, and she co-founded the Franco-Belgian comics magazine “L’écho des savanes” (Echoes of the Savannah) together with Marcel Gotlib and Nikita Mandryka. She also has a pretty good handle on Weird Body Things and how people react to them.

And speaking of odd stomach noises, this pertinent little gem comes to mind:

cds090203
From Cul de Sac, an awesome comic strip (February 3, 2009) by the tragically deceased and much-missed Richard Thompson (1957-2016).

~ ds