The blog of Richard Thompson, caricaturist, creator of "Cul de Sac," and winner of the 2011 Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

Monday, January 31, 2011

Today's Cul de Sac, January 27 to 30, 2011

Now, where were we?
Snow jokes, right. This might've been a little sharper if I hadn't shown the airborne snow in the second panel, leaving Dill's and Alice's reactions to indicate what was happening, But I like the idea of a snow blower trebuchet and I think it has a viable place in people's garages.
I redrew this a coupla times trying to make Alice as animated as possible and maybe one more time would've done it, but maybe not. Somebody, maybe S.J;.Perelman, said something to the effect that he reworked his prose to hit the perfect balance between the incoherent and the lapidary, and I know what he means. Or I did after I looked up "lapidary." And it was probably Mark Twain who said it anyway.

Ew.
This started out as a parody of shampooese: the weird hybrid language used on hair care products. I was going to have a conversation entirely in shampooese but I couldn't figure out how to carry it off and have it make sense. So I used the old plot-counterplot trick and wrapped it up with Petey plotting out a chapter of Toad Zombies. And yes, having a small child washing her own hair with a possibly volatile combination of products is a Bad Idea That Should Not Be Attempted in the Home.

4 comments:

Sam said...

These are fantastic as alway! But I think that Petey's final line should be "they said". I'm not sure if you have a billion editors already snatching this stuff up before it goes into a collection but I couldn't just stand by and say nothing.

Sam said...

And I'm SO glad that my comment correcting your typo includes a typo.

mike flugennock said...

Hmm. Sounds like Alice isn't lacing up her boots tightly enough.

But, still... y'know what's even more disgusting? Snot crust. I never realized just how disgusting that could be until I grew a moustache.

Double ew.

habamom said...

snow blower trebuchet = awesome.