David Malki ! Here are a couple of my favorite sketches from recent conventions! (Click for bigger versions.)
This was for a “Monsters and/or Robots” themed sketchbook:
I think this was my own idea, I can’t remember if there was a suggestion that prompted it:
“Gax hugging Mr Meanscary”:
“Polar bear with a nosebleed” (for a polar-bear-with-a-nosebleed themed sketchbook, I think):
BONUS LINK: At TCAF last weekend I met Tamara, who made a bunch of webcomics-themed cookies! Adorable!
(Photo by @donutage)
Good news! My Hyperbolic Upgrade Stickers (one of which is pictured above) are now available at TopatoCo. So, if you want to bundle a sticker order with greeting cards, you can get them from me, or if you want to bundle them with posters or shirts, get them from TopatoCo!
Also, I’ll be in Toronto this weekend at TCAF, and I made some special prints for the show! (Pictured above.) I’d be happy to sign one for you and draw a word balloon indicating what words of advice Gax has for you. TCAF is a free show held in Toronto’s Downtown Reference Library, and it’s a ton of fun! I’ll be on the second floor waving my arms furiously.
I’ll also be at the TopatoCo Book Release/TCAF Kickoff Party on Friday night! Come say hello! Hooray!
(Letters by Stack)
When I was a kid learning the alphabet I believed that certain letters were “weird letters.” In the same way that letters could be divided into consonants or vowels, or single-syllable and multi-syllable (everything else vs. W), I believed that letters could be divided into regular letters and weird letters.
I don’t know what the criterion for labeling letters “weird” was. It might have had something to do with rarity — my weird letters are mostly the ones with high Scrabble points.
I didn’t think much of it until one day when I visited my cousins. I was probably around eight or nine, and my cousin made an offhand reference to J as a “weird letter.” In that instant I thought: Is this common knowledge? Are the weird letters an actual thing that everybody knows about?
Since then I’ve never heard a reference to any canonical set of weird letters, nor have I kept the torch alive. But for the record, my weird letters were:
Weird: J K Q V X Z
Kind of weird: G W Y
So here are my questions for you:
1. Does this make any sense? Is there a logic to it that my child brain sensed that I can’t make heads or tails of now?
2. Did anybody else think anything remotely similar?
3. What’s a weird way that you made sense of the world as a child?
Leave a comment with your thoughts!
Apropos to my recent post about The Grizzly-Bear Chair, reader Jessie B. wrote in to share this Horn Chair from the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. It’s attributed to Wenzel Friedrich, one of the great longhorn furniture makers of the nineteenth century.
Friedrich was born in Bohemia, but moved to San Antonio and became a cabinetmaker. Between 1880 and 1890 he created chairs, hatracks, tables and more out of horns. This Longhorn Museum site describes a Friedrich chair featuring a “horn-veneered seat frame, inlaid ivory star, back seat cushion, with cat hide covering”:
More info on Friedrich here. And the Internet Archive has preserved a delightful engraved catalog of his pieces from 1890 (click for bigger):
No. 11. OFFICE CHAIR.
This chair is very useful and comfortable, contains 24 horns, cane seat, walnut frame, with best tilting iron, price $60.00.
Any style chair made into office chair, additional cost $10.00.
Awarded first premium at Southern Exposition, Louisville, Ky., 1886, for Best Horn Furniture.
No. 13. FANCY HORN VENEERED SOFA.
Contains 42 horns, guaranteed strong and comfortable, will make cushion backs if preferred. Upholstered in jaguar skin, price $200.00; in silk plush, price $175.00. Sofa, without horn veneered frame, upholstered with fox and catamount skin like No.2 chair, price $150.00; in silk plush, with fringe, same price. [Note: The points of the horns in this sofa have been tipped with acorns.]
No. 14. IMPROVED HAT RACK.
The style and general outline of this Hat Rack will impress you at once with their striking originality and pleasing effect. It contains 36 horns; all frame work is horn veneered, has best French plate mirrors, beveled edges, also a drawer. The cane receiver is silver plated metal, price $275.00.
Awarded First Premium at International Exposition, San Antonio, Texas, 1888, for Artistic Horn Furniture.
Browse the entire catalog here!
AMERICA: Where immigrants can show up, work hard, and make a career out of the creation of horn furniture. I bet the Statue of Liberty would shed a proud tear if she could.
Those of you with Wondermark Calendars may have noted that earlier this week marked the ninth birthday of Wondermark. Huzzah!
Nine years ago, in 2003, I was working the night shift at an advertising agency. One day, after reading Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics (and having consumed a fair amount of “Get Your War On” and “Red Meat”), I sat down in the apartment I shared with my girlfriend, opened a book of clip-art, and thought “I wonder if you could make comics out of these?” (I think I made ten the first day, and twenty in the first week.)
Nine years later, the girlfriend is now my wife, the clip-art book has led to a collection of 50+ volumes of Victorian newspapers and magazines, I’ve published seven books, and I have a studio dedicated to this nonsense. I guess the central question — “is this possible?” — has become rhetorical by this point as well. But I hope I never lose that curiosity — constantly asking myself “What could this become?”
Thanks for hanging out with me! I’ll be around for a while yet — I’m always the last to go home.
Best,
– David !