Last month I posted a painting that I did a while back, and here’s another. Someone asked me once if I did any paintings of Poncho and my immediate reaction was “duhh…no”, like the two mediums would be impossible bed mates. But the idea always stuck with me, and I recently saw some art in Juxtapoz magazine that split the difference nicely and re-inspired me. So I’m going to try to do a few Poncho paintings and see how they come out. Check back here for results.
It is certainly not the policy here at virtual Pooch Café to post PICTURES of the ENEMY, but we’re making an exception in this case for loyal blogger Archie and his owner Lulu, who’s cat Oliver (below) won the Chicago Sun-Times “Top Cat Contest”. All cats look alike to us, but apparently Oliver’s tale of survival (he was found on an expressway with no claws, 106 fever, and a thriving playground of worms, fleas and parasites) won them over. So here he is. Enjoy. But please, don’t’ start sending pictures of mailmen or vacuum cleaners. We’ve got our limits.
It’s surprising sometimes – and by sometimes I mean often – what I can’t get away with on the comics page. Words and concepts that have been bandied about on primetime television for decades still get the big stone-walling on this final hold-out of Victorian-era thinking. The Simpsons, etc, employ a litany of words such as “ass”, “damn” and “bitch” that are denied me here at the P-Caf. I heard somewhere that Mark Tatulli was urging all cartoonists to join a campaign to put “sucks” the comics map, (have I used that word? I can’t remember). I couldn’t even have Poncho contemplate the meaning of the word “Goldmember”, although it was on posters and televisions all across the land.
Now a lot of these decisions are made not by the papers but by us (myself and the syndicate). We can put things in there and the newspaper might choose not to run the strip that day. Or they might run it and receive “angry letters” (the Krytonite of comic strips) and decide to stop running the strip entirely. We’re dealing with an area where the super(over?)-sensitive call the shots. So even though we all know what “poop” is, we can’t say it on the comics page.
All that said, I still try to move the boundary a millimeter at a time whenever possible, if only so that future generations my enjoy a good “boob job” gag during their morning read. To that end (and hopefully to a funny end as well) I used this “time of the month” joke you saw recently, and we were surprised that it seems to have gone through without the roof collapsing. Pooch Café busts through another barrier!! (can I say “busts”?)
Well the initial response from one of the higher levels of brass regarding the Pooch treatment has turned out to be less troubling than it initially seemed. The comment had not so much to do with the plot but the marketing catch. I’ve learned that animated movies are often given a “template”, which is a way for everyone involved to grasp the concept quickly and easily; for example, Chicken Run was “The Great Escape with chickens”. So far everyone seems to like the character-driven style of the Pooch world, which is great, but what they need to feel more comfortable is a clearer marketing angle. As we all know a quality movie without a catchy promo can still wind up tanking at the box office (say, Iron Giant), and vice versa (say, Wild Wild West).
Mew submitted by Karen Terenzi
Mew is a 12 year old cat that thinks she’s a dog. She comes running when the door opens, and mooches like Poncho (but only for white cheddar popcorn and ice cream). She won’t wear costumes as proudly as a dog does though. Love the color. And look at that death stare. I wouldn’t want to try to get this kitty into a catapult.
For some reason I just really love the look on Carmen’s face in this shot. Says it all.
The first Ringtales animated short is coming along nicely. I’m not able to put up any advance look at it of course (better for everyone to wait till the product is all finished up nice. One of the issues so far has been animating Poncho walking, as he doesn’t really have legs. Above is a little visualization on my part of how it might look, as well as the all important Poncho grimace.
Here’s another advance panel from an upcoming Sunday I kinda like. I never know how to handle drawing trees, I seem to switch around on how I handle the bark and the leaves. This is my tree style of the moment. Sorry ’bout the bad pun in the title.
I recently came across an internet poll asking who would win a fight between Batman, Iron Man and The Hulk. I think it was on some movie-related site, the question being obviously geared towards heroes that star in their own movies. There was a fourth choice, which was “I don’t know”. I remarked to my girlfriend about how slow a person’s day would have to be to bother logging in just to register a vote of “I don’t know.” She asked me who really would win between Batman, Iron Man and The Hulk. I said “Hulk, of course, easy, he’s pretty much unbeatable, the madder he gets the stronger he gets. The only one who could maybe beat him would be Thor, since he’s sort of a god.” My girlfriend enjoyed this immensely. She said she was hoping for a geek answer but this answer surpassed all her expectations.
George, submitted by Paul
An Italian Greyhound and Poncho Look-alike, apparently likes making friends with cats. We here are Pooch Cafe do not approve.
I’d heard that all you needed grade-wise to get into art school was a grade 12 with a 60% average, which I accomplished by taking the easiest courses I could get away with and dropping out of any classes I couldn’t pass without studying. It is not necessary to not study to become a cartoonist, it’s just the path I took. I spent the extra time drawing superheroes and submitting samples to comic book companies.
So it was that I arrived at the age of 17 for the interview at the Ontario College of Art with a portfolio full of drawings of Thor, Hulk, and Captain America. Much to my surprise this was not considered to be “art”. My “fall back” was Animation at Sheridan College. This pre-dated The Little Mermaid’s rekindling of the animation biz, a time when one could still walk into Sheridan’s animation program with a drawing of a cup and saucer with passable elliptical perspective.
This wasn’t really the program for me, though. Granted I had a few great teachers who introduced me to things like life drawing (it’s quite an eye-opener the first time a model gets naked in front of you and your fellow teenagers… it’s funny to see all these drawings of a male nude that slowly blur away into nothingness around the genital area) and line control, etc.. But the monotony of repeating the same drawing over and over with only the slightest variation in order to produce after weeks of work a 2 second film clip of a bouncing ball was much too painstaking for an impatient person like myself. I knew halfway through the first year that I’d meant to take Illustration instead of Animation.
So for my second year of college (still too young to attend any college socials involving alcohol) I switched over to Illustration at the other campus, still bent on superheroing my way to stardom. But many of the classes seemed designed to steer me away from my Fantastic Four destiny. I was forced to learn things like letter forms, color theory, photography, wood-cutting, litho prints, and a course called “Research Drawing” taught by a bizarre hillbilly-esque man who gave us assignments along the lines of “place the lima bean on the blank page. Now put your index finger on the bean, close your eyes, and move it around the page until it feels “right”.”
Now all of these classes (with the possible exception of lima bean pushing) were of definite value to my growth as an artist, but I couldn’t see that at the time. I met another kid who was just as enthusiastically uninterested in these things, and together we clowned around, skipped classes, handed in shoddy assignments, and wrote and drew our own comic books (one was called Phlebitis Man, about a guy who dosed himself with chemicals and attached a lightening rod to his head during a thunderstorm thinking he would be endowed with the power to run fast a la The Flash, but instead just got a severe case of vein inflammation… man, I wish I had a copy of that comic now). My parents, who had been supportive because of my hitherto one-tracked mind, were speechless when I got a report card full of Ds. My pal and I discussed dropping out and going to take film-making at another school. I actually went so far as to fill out an application before I came to my senses: wait a minute, doing art is all you’ve wanted to do since you were 8 years old, and people who try to become film directors in Toronto end up becoming doormen. I had to get back to art school and start drawing my pants off (figuratively).
Next: Step Aside, Thor
Funny somebody should mention Poncho and Mickey Mouse (okay, I mentioned it, but Archie hypothesized Poncho’s opinion of the well-regarded rodent). The subject came up in a question about the legal pitfalls of using other people’s characters. Disney is reputed to be on the front line of litigiousness, so I had to run my idea of dressing Poncho up like Micky for a Sunday side-panel by my syndicate. There was some humming and hawing, but it was decided that since he was just standing there not doing anything particularly offensive we could possibly get away without the Disney lawyers coming to take our houses. Here’s hoping we’re right.
Coinciding nicely with a certain box-office busting movie that’s out right now, MountainFreshScent has sent in this unidentified pooch he found while trolling for Halloween costumes. KA-FLANG!!
Another new section: Guest drawings! Over the years some fans have sent me drawings of Pooch characters, and it’s always fun to see other takes on the guys. This here’s a Poncho gesture doodled by my little cousin that I went over with a magic marker.
Here, by popular demand, some of the strips following Poncho’s night of pre-surgery jitters. Nothing terribly revelatory, just survival and, of course, the infinitely hilarious dog-cone (the Rosetta Stone of dog comic-strips) which I run with a for another week after. 
I’ve added a new section called “Interviews, etc” on the left column. There are a couple of online interviews, the first one done with Suzanne Tobin of the Washington Post when they picked up Pooch a few years back. You may note thinly disguised questioners Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) and Darby Conley (Get Fuzzy) having some fun with the queries. I’ve also linked to the podcast interview I did (for those who feel they need a full hour dose of my soothing, supple voice) and a link to the Pooch Wikipedia page (for which there is a standing invitation to all Pooch affectionados to tinker away on).
And here’s another advance panel:
This is the series that was taking place when the Hong Kong paper cut Pooch to make way for Sudoku and got in trouble with fans of the strip. As I understand it Pooch disappeared the day after Poncho was lying in bed at night contemplating life and wondering if he was going to die (bottom strip shown below). Couldn’t have been more perfect timing as far as leaving readers hanging and prompting maximum response. The HK paper brought Pooch back and found some other place for those nasty, comic-destroying Sudoku puzzles.
Here’s another take on the Cat Catapult sent in by Gerald Lippert. Excellent use of available items, and I especially like the signs pointing the direction of the final destination. You do the dogs proud, G.L!
From the “Trivia” thread, here is the strip in question. I did a Halloween Sunday years earlier where all the dogs were dressed as various things that are frightening to dogs — many of your trivia question guesses were represented in that one. I’ll post it closer to Halloween time. 
Another advance panel, this one from a daily, so it won’t be as long before it shows up within its proper framing. I’m finding snipping these panels from the strip they’ll appear in very interesting, gives them a different perspective.
As I mentioned this other Jaws strip (which predates the Jaws strips below) was originally written for an earlier comic I developed called “Plank” (which I will fill you in on when I finally get to the next installments of “My Path To Syndication” — long overdue, I know) and as I said I don’t think it fits very well into the Pooch Cafe world. It’s a joke almost any characters in any other strip could have made, perhaps much more appropriately than a young dog. As a colleague pointed out as well, that super-scary Jaws shark music surely emanated from a stringed instrument larger than a violin, but that’s another matter.
Quite a while back – 10 years plus, in fact – a friend introduced me to Sean Wise, a lawyer living in Ottawa who had an idea for a comic book series which was, essentially, a “Law & Order” for superheroes, and he was seeking an artist to collaborate with. I thought it was a sweet idea, and we had a blast coming up with this series together. Ten years ago bringing real-world elements into superhero books was still novel.
Alas, none of the comic companies bit, in some cases they had similar series already underway, and our concept went into hibernation. Sean made a vow that one day, no matter how long it took, our book would see print.
Well, that day took 10 years, but he was true to his word. About a year ago a Canadian company called Arcana became interested in the project. By this point I’d become much too busy with other things to participate any further, so a new artist and writer were assigned to bring our concept to light. And the results are in. The concept doesn’t seem as novel these days, but I still think it’s a fun little tale. For all my early efforts and enthusiasm about getting into superhero comics, I never managed to break in and finally moved on to other things (as you may know), so it’s a gas to finally have my name on a superhero comic book, along with Sean, who has become a dear friend, and as it turns out, a fulfiller of vows. (Cool cover by Greg Horn, eh?)
Below is a series of strips about Poncho taking Fish to the movies. For some reason that ignores what year it is “Jaws” is playing (must be a rep theater, which would also explain why they let a dog and a fish in without question). Like many others I saw this movie when I was still young and it scared me for life, removing my ability to swim comfortably in the ocean or listen to the cello. I did a Sunday back in year #2 with Poncho representing my childhood fear of the movie. I had originally written this for another strip I created before Pooch, and I don’t think it fit well into the Pooch world so didn’t include it in any book (at least I don’t think I did). I’ll post that later. Here, in the meantime, is the Fish/Jaws series:
Nothing Pooch related today, but as I’m sure none of you know I dabble in the painting field from time to time. Here’s a sample:
Here’s a panel from an upcoming Sunday showing Poo Poo in his “natural environment,” and wearing his famous pink bow once again. Poor little guy.
Here’s one of the rough ideas I came up with for MAD that didn’t float their boat. I’ve found that even though MAD has felt sympatico enough with my humor style to invite submissions and print some of my meanderings, some of my favorites have not made the MAD grade. This one rough, some of you may recall, I turned into a Pooch Sunday a few months back.
