Austin Improv

arthursimone wrote:a cartoonist

I didn't exactly grow up wanting to be a cartoonist, but I used to spend vacations with my grandparents copying all the comic strip characters in the Sunday paper. And then I fell into doing a daily comic strip called Pseudo Intullectual in the UT paper for several years -- until I fell out of it again. Anyone who knows me from that time still asks me if I'm still doing comic stuff and then harrasses me when I say no.

Freshman year:


Shameless Matt Groenig rip-off/homage:


Sophomore year:


Junior year:


The beginning of the end:

part of it for me was, knowing I could never be as perfect as Watterson, as bizarre as Larson, or as minimalist as scott dickers' "jim's journal"

Yeah, the curve of greatness is pretty vicious in comics. Either you're one of the guys Arthur mentioned or everybody else, and everybody else would be doing the world a favor if they just stopped.

I love Jules Feiffer, but he takes up more space.

When I was a kid I passionatly wanted to be Thor - God of Thunder. I couldn't imagine anything cooler (actually still can't). That was the #1 goal.

I also wanted to be a pizza man. (Specifically the guy who flipped the dough up in the air). This goal I reached while I was in college.

So, one lofty and one not so lofty aspiration.

Oh and I also wanted to be a Mad Scientist.

And the Incredible Hulk (I had Hulk Muscles, they were these water wing/torso inflatable thingies you put under a kids t shirt, they had a pump on the side, so you'd be like "Hulk Mad!!!" (pump pump pump) and the shirt would start puffing up like you were going through the transformation). And I had this green body paint I'd slather all over my body while I was in the tub and roar incoherently into the mirror.

I guess no concrete adult goals as of yet.