Frog Blog

Fine Balance

There's a fine balance involved when you introduce a new character. This one appears June 11.

More Idiots

If anyone's curious, I've posted more samples of my Idiots strip at the website.

Out of the Box

If anyone cares to backtrack, I've revamped the Spot website a bit. You'll find -- or not find -- the usual assortment of missing pages and broken links, since the site is fresh from the model kit box and still being assembled. But you might find something to catch your eye.

Secret Messages

Mike Lynch, who packs more into his blog in a day than I do in a week, who could probably have his blog accredited as a college course in cartooning, mentions this article on cartoonists and their secret correspondence.

Cartoonists are like castaways on improbably tiny desert islands that exist only in cartoons. Sending winks and hellos to other cartoonists is akin to corking messages into bottles and tossing them out on the tide.

More Da Vinci Code Mystery

This impressed me. I have enough trouble operating a spray can of one color

Morning Music

The perfect way to start a Monday.

The Not-So-Silent Penultimate Panel

I've been enjoying a blog called The Silent Penultimate Panel, even though I've never had the good fortune to appear there. Until today.

Yesterday's Spot was designed for two reasons: the first was to aim a wink in Arnold Wagner's direction. The second was to send a nod in SPP's direction, with a silent panel set into a strip of white panels.

Matt Gill makes a good point about the penultimate panel. There are times when the next-to-last frame is an unnecessary beat before the punchline. I kept a hammer at the drawing table for many years, pounding in that pause every five strips or so. When I switched to the three-panel format, the penultimate silent panel became a harder fit (though not impossible -- sometimes you need to see a character think, and sometimes the joke deserves a break.) Having learned my trade by reading Peanuts, taking that penultimate break felt as natural as drawing a breath before finishing a story. (incidental thought: I wonder if I was also influenced by decades of sitcoms, where so many punchlines are delivered when the laughing audience, canned or otherwise, takes a breath.)

With luck, some day, I'll find a way to write a penultimate panel that sits in a strip of completely empty panels. The ultimate penultimate silent moment.

Tie-Breaker

A few words on technology. Sometimes it fails, sometimes the person using it fails. Sometimes both.

This morning I see that the sunday Spot has a missing graphic. In the last panel, there should be a little asterisk to suggest that the person speaking the last line is now in Spot's stomach. It's missing because I mistakenly erased it when I prepared the line art file for the printer. My fault.

I'd show you a picture of this, but TypePad won't let me load the graphic. Technology's fault.

So now we're tied. But the day's young. I suspect I'll deliver a tie-breaker by lunch.

White Space

Today's strip is dedicated to Arnold Wagner, admirer of snow fleas and white space.

Spring Peepers

A few readers wondered if snow fleas were my invention (they weren't). If Spring Peepers leave you in similar wonderment, here's further proof that my imagination, on occasion, is a lazy one.