Tick

Apologies to Mr. Shakespeare.

Hurting, financially

Winded

Whittle Shop of Horrors

Ill eagle

Stilwell - Lonely knights

Another digitally restored comic from the strip "Stilwell," drawn and published in the Cleveland State University student weekly, The Cauldron, from 1971 through 1973. I didn't invent the phrase "typical Cleveland girl." It came from guy talk overheard on the social scene. I found the women at Cleveland State to be largely guarded and unapproachable; I found myself to be painfully shy around them; together, that was a recipe for social disaster. Suggesting that CSU had a lock on this type of female further illustrates my naivity. At any rate, in my fantasy cartoon world, at least misery loved company. I think the setting here is supposed to be Fat Glenn's, the basement on-campus bar that served 3.2 beer swill and gristleburgers. It got in the paper on Jan. 11, 1972. My notes indicate that this was "based on a real-life dating bar experience," but I have long since repressed whatever that referred to. And while I'm pretty sure there was a CSU chapter of the Society of Creative Anachronism -- people who liked to dress up like medieval folks and have jousts and stuff -- I don't believe we actually had a dude randomly walking around on campus wearing a suit of armor.

If Jesus had a dog

No, this is not money laundering

Hack kneed

Resuming summer Facebook page reruns (but newly posted to this blog) while I draw more.

Stilwell frogs -- The war winds down

Here's yet another in the continuing digital restoration project for "Stilwell," the comic strip I drew for the Cleveland State University student weekly, The Cauldron, from 1971 through 1973. This was quite a cheesy pun that I couldn't resist. (If you've checked my other posted works, you already know that there are few that I DO resist.) As for the context, of course, the shadow of the Vietnam War had followed us baby boomers through college. As 1973 began, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger were hard at work on ending U.S. involvement in the very unpopular war, and, in fact, on the very day this cartoon was published, Jan. 23, 1973, Kissinger and North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho signed a ceasefire agreement emanating from the Paris peace talks. Two months later, the last of the U.S. combat troops pulled out of the country. The military draft also ended that year. And, as we know, Nixon would pull out of public office the following year. So, despite my inanity, the subject matter was making front-page headlines at the time. For the record, to my knowledge, there was never an incident at Cleveland State's Stilwell Hall cafeteria involving a slice of pie being tossed up and stuck to the ceiling for months. There is some historic accuracy to it, however. During summers in my college years, my best friend from high school, John Gulczynski, his brother Bill and I worked at a steel drum manufacturing factory, where his uncle Dan worked in management. (Pays to have connections.) We used to eat lunch while sitting on stacks of steel sheets in the warehouse of the factory. One day, I was particularly unenamored with what I think was one too many balony sandwiches that I had packed for my lunch. With a mighty toss, I flung the half-eaten sandwich up into the rafters of the warehouse, where it stuck and remained, perhaps forever. Heck, it might even still be up there. F.C. Thornton is long gone, but last time I checked, the building was still standing in the Polish ghetto of southeast Cleveland.

Fair game

This may not be the funniest cartoon I ever drew, but it is one thing worth remarking about: It's the 100th cartoon in this picture-pun series, which I started early in 2011. Many are posted on this blog, but I haven't posted all of them on here yet. I plan to, by and by.

Stilwell - Encounter Groupie

Another in my series of digitally restored cartoons from "Stilwell," the comic strip that ran in the Cleveland State University student weekly, The Cauldron, from 1971 through 1973. Encounter groups were a campus phenomenon at the time, under the auspices of at least one professor in the Psych department. These groups of students met supposedly to benefit psychologically from their group setting. A couple of people in my small circle of friends participated in these. I was a psych minor, and I remember being interested enough in them to inquire about joining one, and I have this vague memory of talking to the aforementioned CSU prof, in a one-on-one interview situation. I also remember him deciding that I wouldn't make the cut, though I don't remember what it was about the cut of my jib that didn't measure up to encounter group material. In any case, after that experience, I think I felt a little left out and thought that these groups might have been a bit cultish or at least cliquish, and I didn't need to be associated with either type of group, so there. I did work the subject into one of my cartoons, published on Feb. 22, 1973. The sarcastic reference to "Mister Peepers" is obviously a reference to the eye-contact games mentioned in panel 2, those being an example of the kind of exercises they'd do in these group meetings. But it's also a reference to a 1950s-era sitcom starring Wally Cox. Nostalgia freaks can see clips of the show on YouTube. I wasn't really making fun of the groups as much as I was merely referencing a campus phenomenon and contriving a joke to go with it.

More Stilwell -- The Academic Centers

Continuing the digital restoration of "Stilwell" cartoons, the comic strip that ran in the Cleveland State University student weekly, The Cauldron, 1971-73, this one was obviously ripped from the headlines of the student rag back in the day. As I recall, CSU's honchos, or the Board of Regents, whoever, had made a decision to close down the university's satellite campus operations in the suburbs of the Cleveland area and concentrate operations on the main campus just east of downtown. You can glean from the dialogue that the satellites were penciling out financially, but that perhaps the quality standards of classes there were not as rigidly adhered to as they were on the main campus. It appears, from the lettering on the bulletin board, that the setting is Lakewood High School, repurposed for college classes at night. And the implication of the gag line is that those attending classes in the suburbs were unhappy about the closings, in part, because they worried about the crime rate of the downtown campus' environs. After 40 years, I have no idea how many of the aforementioned details are accurate, but there's your context. This one ran on Leap Day, Feb. 29, 1972.

If tableware could talk

More "Stilwell" -- A final shot at student government

Another digitially restored comic from "Stilwell," the strip I drew for the Cleveland State University student weekly The Cauldron in 1971 through 1973. (In previous posts, I mentioned that '71-'72 was the span, but I discovered in this one that I did push the strip into 1973. Oops!) I see that I kind of mailed it in for this one. It was bloated to eight panels instead of the usual four, the detail and lettering is sloppy, and the gag is stolen from an old Warner Bros. cartoon. I always depicted CSU's student government as being a nearly irrelevent body with no significant power or purpose except to maybe waste people's time trying to convince them otherwise. This was my final shot at them.

You'd be fiery, too!

Running gag