Archie and Veronica

Well, I was always a Betty guy myself. Even over Wilma.

But this is a standard comic book trope nowadays. Flash marries Iris. Flash dies. Spidey marries Gwen. Spidey reboots. Reboots again. Superman (yes he did) married Lois. Reboot. Superman dies.

So Archie is going there too. Archie marries Veronica. Archie dies. Reboot.

Welcome to Spudtopia

The community built around Tuber Gigantus Butleriana

Spudtopia, an offshoot of this genus of giant potato, Tuber Gigantus Butleriana, was founded around the turn of the century. After discovering that giant potatoes could be grown, there was much hope for solving the problems of hunger and homelessness – after all, now, not only could everyone afford, they could simply grow their own sustenance and housing! Anyone who came to this community was given spoons and yearly, granted a huge potato from the annual crop, thus they not only ate well, but carved their own dwellings while so doing! Alas, in The Great Bake of 1912, when fire spread so disastrously throughout it, the promise of this grand utopian community ended.

The Arctic Snow Turtle

This article: Tropical Turtle Fossil Discovered in the High Arctic on Wired prompted the memory of an image I worked up for a Christmas card in the late 1990’s.

A strikingly preserved tropical turtle fossil discovered in the Canadian High Arctic is giving scientists a look into an ancient, carbon-dioxide-warmed world.

The freshwater turtle, dubbed Aurorachelys, was an Asian species that researchers believe migrated across the North Pole 90 million years ago as temperatures were peaking. The find suggests that animals moved into North America via a polar route rather than around Alaska, as was previously believed.

First Past or Proportional Representation?

Mad eccentrics or exceptional cartoonists?

David Apatoff does some fine posts, and really likes great pictures. I must direct any visitors here to THE MAD ECCENTRICS. 

In the course of just 100 intense years, comics have displayed the personalities of some deeply odd people …Why is this? Perhaps the medium combines the privacy for artists to sit alone at their drawing board– a little incubation chamber for their neuroses and quirks– with a wide daily audience for the resulting work product. Or, maybe the pressure of putting out a daily strip for decades simply drove them nuts. 

Killer Bees Poster

This is a special super bonus for you Londoners brave enough to venture out onto the internets and actually come to this blog, a special treat for all you Barber, Baechler, Branscombe, Bryant fans – or detesters – for all you fans of the Killer Bees, a special poster just for you. Click that picture on the left, or this link to see the 8.5 by 11 inch ‘colour-it-yourself’ poster image of the Killer Bees!

And hey! You’re welcome to save the image to your computer and print it out. Use freely on your refridgerator or dartboard.

Killer Bees Poll; A force for good or evil? And just a reminder, my cartoons are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. This means you can copy, print, share and use for your own non-profit use.

 You can get Killer Bees cups and cards online. 

Update Sunday; November 2, 2008: The Poll!

Canada’s true portrait gallery

I caught the last half of an interview by Kevin Sylvester on Sounds Like Canada with Sarah Lazarovic, illustrator, about her founding of The Montrose Portrait Gallery of Canada.

The Torontoist post fill in some details.
Sarah sounds like a fun person, and while we wait for Bev Oda to decide what to with $45 million, she set up this gallery in her garage. I lived for a time on Crawford Street, so I know that garage.
BTW Kevin, that is a great portrait of our dear Stephen.

Cougar by the fire

Bones of prehistoric water monster found in Alberta

From this story at CBC.ca News, an artist’s rendering of the creature.

Good Old-fashioned Developer Love Comics

Chainsaw Monkey Madness

Permits? Permits? We don’t need no stinkin’ permits!

Little Green Car

While digging about in old stuff in the basement for some other purpose, I came across this old illustration. I found it at Ernie Rentz’ downtown ‘Ye Olde London Antiques and Junque Shoppe’, that he opened after selling the bookstore – some 20 plus years ago… really… wow…I bought it because it was the illustration in a grade school reader from a story I remembered, likely early 1960’s? I couldn’t recall the gist of the tale right now, but it involved this unfortunate little sedan which wound up towed to the garage, for what was, in hindsight, likely a transmission problem. I think he just couldn’t make it up the hill, or something.It is on a piece of 10 inch by 15 inch High Art #79 illustration board. The 3 1/2 scale guide measures 4 inches, or 12.7 cm for the Imperially-impaired. A small line of pencil written copy in the upper right says “little green car” and the writing at the lower right says:Gears & Gasolinetop l h pagep 12That is where the illustration was in the book, on the top half of the left hand page.There are various bits of wonderful tight brushwork, white, likely gouache, which was used at the time, to sharpen black edges, add detail and lighten the hatching in the tow-truck body shadows.Large image of the artwork