With a pencil in my little hand, I liked to draw characters in larger size, each one on a separate piece of paper. I made good use of my eraser, too, scrubbing out those misplaced eyeballs or fingers. Occasionally, I would trace the body or face to get the hang of the shapes, but I always felt like I was cheating. Most of my troubles started when it came to colouring my drawings. Crayons were good but watercolours turned out messy and not what I had in mind at all. (Sigh. I still have that problem.) An older, distant cousin of mine was a wonderful source of inspiration for me. She was a whiz at drawing the Peanuts characters. On lined notebook paper, she drew Charlie Brown's head, his orange shirt with black trim and the baseball glove on his hand. She then used coloured pencils to complete the picture. It was amazing to an eight-year-old kid to see the treasured comic come to life, even if it wasn't by Charles Schulz' hand.
When my first son was about two years old, I drew up a small series of strips about family life. No doubt it was much too familiar to Lynn Johnston's For Better or For Worse. One of the panels featured the smiling parents cheek to cheek, but far apart at the feet because of a smiling little fellow pushing through. The caption read "Something's come between us!" The strips were rejected by the local paper, but the editor took the time to craft a letter about how many strips are received and rejected. He also included two pieces of the stiff material that was embossed with comic strips and fastened onto the drum to print. The information was fascinating but not encouraging.
Even yet, I find comic strips, panels and cartoons to be an absolute necessity for a good life. Cartoonists can import the practical messages, they can say what needs to be said about church and state and get a laugh at the same time. They entertain by satirizing or exaggerating, such as The Simpsons by Matt Groening. Or they can just help us feel that we are not alone, that someone else has thought about a similar problem, even if they are a cartoon character. Those comics that strike a note find a special place in our house - the fridge door.
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