Still Crazy After All These Years...

A couple weeks ago my grandma unearthed a very old piece of newsprint that held significant historic value to me. Given to her by a cousin of mine, it was the very first article ever written about me, dated May of 1987. Almost twenty-effin'-years ago. Back then, I was an introverted sixth grader at Shields Elementary with a noticable passion for drawing cartoons. A very kind and supportive librarian (love ya, Mrs. S.) brought wind of my artistic abilities to our local newspaper, The Township Times, and they did the following story on me:



Despite a couple misquotes (I never said I wanted to work for Marvel more than the Muppets. At age twelve I wanted nothing more than to work for the Muppets. And I can promise you I never told the reporter I liked the superhero "X-Man." X-Men, sure. But who the heck is X-Man?) and a woulda-been-better-off-left-out quote that while intended to make me look cute made me feel stupid (If 40 is old, then I'm eligible for retirement in the next eight years), this article was a real thrill for me back then. I especially like that they took my picture with my first drawing of Banzai Beaver, a character that I still use today.

Jump ahead roughly twenty years (a couple weeks ago, to be specific), and The Midland Daily News calls me up and says they want to do an article on me as their featured artist of the month for an entertainment magazine insert they produce for their paper. Let it never be said that networking and old college connections haven't yielded positive results in the life of the Foz. Anyway, I was interviewed the following week, and the end result ran in the news on early December of this year:



It was actually a very nice article; concise and with accurate quotes. And the photo of me has become one of my favorites, since it really wasn't posed and showed me in my natural environment, hunkered down behind my faithful old drawing board of the past seventeen years while scrawling out some inky monstrosity.

Looking at these two articles side by side, almost twenty years apart, I'm inclined to reflect on my life and career, and to consider my aspirations from 1987 and their status in my life in imminent 2007. I take note of the fact that, despite the addition of facial hair, glasses and college loans, I'm still that insecure introvert who hides behind his drawings. And I like that I'm still him. It means I still have hope and still have dreams. That I'm not through learning, exploring, and finding new things to fascinate and inspire me. I also take note of my accomplishments, the friends and allies I've brought into my fold (and whose fold I have been brought into), the love I've experienced, the life I've experienced, and all the fun, horror and excitement that adulthood has given me. Together, these two articles tell a very interesting and personal story. And now, onto the next chapter....

SHILLING FOR THE STUPID...

In my thirteen-odd years of doing freelance work for people, I'd have to say that by and large, most of my clients have been pretty intelligent. They listen to my suggestions, find my rates reasonable to the services I provide and, once they've given a loose guideline of what they want, allow me to run with it free of interference to do what it is that I do best.

Then there's the small percentile that not only fell out of the stupid tree and hit every effin' branch on the way down, but managed to land abruptly in the stupid pond and get soaked right down to the marrow.

Without naming names, allow me to recount the story of one such client. We'll call them Dumbass University.

Dumbass contacted me months ago to draw caricatures for a small event held in their commons today. They'd seen my work firsthand from a previous caricaturing event that they'd hired me for. During that previous event I was handed a check midway through my contracted time. Not only was the check for half the amount I was contracted for, but someone else's name was on it. I immediately brought this to the attention of my contact person, who then scrambled to cut me a new check before my contracted time was up. Fortunately, all was rectified in time.

So when I got the call to do this new gig for Dumbass, I thought to myself, "How good are the odds that something that unabashedly ignorant could happen again?" I later found out that the answer was: "Very good."

Trying to forgo any unncessary mishaps this time around, I called up Dumbass University to make sure I was all set for the event, which was an hour and fifteen away from commencement. The person I spoke with said that, while they were ready for me, they hadn't received a contract from me yet.

FYI, I informed them, I sent out a contract the very same day I was requested to perform, at least two months back, and had also received confirmation from my contact person that same day that the contract was received and that everything was set. So, I went on, it made no sense to me as to why now they were asking for a contract which I'd already sent and had approved two months prior. The woman on the other end asked me to call her back in a half hour so she could get things straightened. I agreed, and hung up.

A half hour later, the woman said she still couldn't find my contract, and requested that I e-mail her a whole new invoice, insisting that I would be getting paid at the event. I had no choice. I whipped up a new invoice, e-mailed it off to her, and headed off to the event at Dumbass University.

Upon arriving at Dumbass, I encountered my original contact person. I again asked how they not only misplaced my first invoice but also lost all memory of my having ever sent it. The woman was adamant that she never got it, until I told her that she personally sent me confirmation of her receiving it. She then said, "Now that you mention it, I think I remember seeing it when I got it..." Still, a new contract had been e-mailed anyway, so it was a moot point. My contact then told me that my check would not be given to me at the event, but mailed to me this coming Friday. I said that would have to do, and went about my business of drawing caricatures.

Midway through my first two-hour block of time (the event was broken up into two two hour blocks), an emmissary of my contact person comes up to me and asks when I'll be sending the contract to his superior.

Growing very tense, I calmly hissed, "I e-mailed it a half hour before I got here. She should already have it."

The emmissary goes back to his superior, returns and again says she doesn't have my invoice. I then asked for my original contact person's e-mail address, thinking I'd have to re-e-mail her a new invoice (making it the third). Suddenly, thinking better of it, I grabbed a marker and hastily scrawled out a new invoice on a sheet of paper, handed it to the emmissary and told him to take this to his superior, make sure it's acceptable, then get confirmation that I'll still have a check for the full amount due to me sent out this Friday. He left immediately to replay the message and deliver the third invoice.

Five minutes before my shift is up, and the emmissary hasn't returned. His air-headed little associate is holding his post at the event, yakking away on her cellphone. I interrupt, saying I need to know where the emmissary is, if he delivered the invoice, if it will work and if I will indeed be paid my full amount and have it be sent to me this Friday. With a few pauses here and there, she managed to relay my message, and confirmed that all has been handled and the check will be in the mail on Friday.

I'm now on a two hour break before I return to Dumbass University to complete the second block of my caricaturing session. If I happen to see my contact, I have no doubt that, with absolute decorum but with a very stern manner, I will question her and her associates ability to retain important information an documentation regarding my work for them. To shed the rhetoric, I'm good and pissed off. I shouldn't have to jump all these hurdles and go through all this bullshit for an event that I had set up well in advance. A university should be better run than that, and should have more effificient people in charge of such matters. Dumbass University does not impress me. I have one more gig slated with them in May, and if anything goes the slightest bit wrong between now and the arrival of my check, not only am I going to decline my involvement for the future gig, but I'm going to tell them so with no shortage of words beginning with "F".

So please, use this story as a parable should any of you care to hire me for an event or a project. Don't be like Dumbass University. File the papers, dot the i's, write the correct name and amount on the checks. And above all else, do not screw around with me.

DEAD DUCK RISES FROM THE GRAVE!!!

Not counting his appearance in my thus far unpublished comic book, "The Herd," my character Dead Duck (and his sidekick Zombie Chick) is appearing in his first comic book story in over ten years! Y'see, it happened like this:

I recently got an offer from a local newspaper to create an ongoing comic strip for them. While this initially sounded like a good deal, the price I was offered for my services was completely out of the question. Still, I said I'd take a few days to consider their offer. In that time, I e-mailed several established cartoonists and asked them what they thought of the price the newspaper offered me. The ones who replied told me it was chump change and not worth it, which I expected and agreed with. One of those cartoonists was Frank Cammuso, the brilliant creator of "Max Hamm, Fairytale Detective." After Frank warned me that I was gonna get fleeced by that offer, be concluded his letter by saying, "P.S. Dead Duck is a great concept!" Now, Frank must have seen my website, seen my old Dead Duck strips and deemed them worthy of his kind remarks. This, plus the fact that I've been dying to return to Dead Duck and his world for a long time was enough to prompt me to create a three-page Dead Duck adventure in honor of Halloween. The results were both fun and fulfilling, and I offer up the fruits of my creative loins here (click on each page to enlarge it):





So there ya have it! I plan to occassionally do Dead Duck and Zombie Chick stories for my own amusement, and ideally, one day I'll compile them all into a graphic novel and self publish it. That's muh goal, y'see!

Now, back to the previously mentioned newspaper. So, I turned down the offer the editor made me for my cartooning services. He countered with the possibility of hiring me out to not just his paper but their "sister" paper one town over as well and thus splitting the costs of my services with the other paper. I'm going to submit five of my old "Stoutheart and Cholly" strips to him, he'll run them sequentially, then pole his readers to see what they think. If there's a favorable response, he says we'll "Talk turkey" and try to work out a better deal, presumably with the other paper at the bargaining table as well. So there's some news for ya!

Lastly, I've been doing a lot more work for Interlude Magazine lately, and they're becoming a monthly publication. That means more work for me, and hopefully, I may be able to work my way into a position as staff artist. Now, if that were to happen, then I'd probably have to choose between Interlude and the newspaper. I'm not going to worry about that right now since nothing's set in stone, but in the meantime, I kinda like the idea of for once having to choose where I'd like to work more doing the thing that I love most! So anyway, more news on that as it comes.

Happy early Halloween, everybody!

Love, Jay

I'M SO BACK THAT IT STINGS WHEN I PEE!!!

Whatever the hell that means. Anyway, rejoice in the fuzzy majesty of what is my first new blog in a couple months. Like I said before, I hate posting when I don't actually have any real news to share. I've got enough other outlets for inane blather and pointless rambling that I don't need to crud up this blog, by far my most important. So, let's cut into the meat and see what bleeds:

After an intense couple months of dogging Web-funk-and Tetris-master Foco to post some new material on my website, he finally got the hint (and only after five empty clicks of my gun's chamber! Whooda thunk?!). Check out my caricature, commercial art, comic book, photo gallery and sketchbook samples sections (the last located in the leftover section) for new stuff to paw through, ya friggin' grizzlies.

I just got my children's book, Pillow Billy, printed up at lulu.com, an online printing press that does a professional-looking-as-hell job, and at a fraction of what Kinko's would've cost. I ordered two copies initially, and sent one off to Boyds Mills Press, a children's book publisher in Pennsylvania. The other copy I'm keeping on hand just to show people, and to have a completed symbol of my efforts of the past two years.

I've been drawing caricatures quite a bit. In fact, 2006 has been a banner year for my career in caricaturing. I've had at least one gig per month since January, which given Michigan's crappy economy is saying quite a bit. I'm actually a little bit ahead financially right now, and for this time of year, that's rare. So I'm happy about that. I have a couple gigs lined up for September (at a mall in Novi) and in November (at Northwood University here in Midland. Let's hear it for short distances and less gas-spending!). I feel like my caricaturing is reaching a new plateau. I've adopted a somewhat more detailed, kinda illustrative style which emphasizes detail while still striving for simplicity. Some say it's a step away from my normal cartoony style, but that side of my ability isn't hurting for attention anyway. I think the cartoony style will always be the standard I'm most recognized for, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I've been approached to help illustrate an independant comic book published out of Shepherd, MI. I'm not sure whether I'll get aboard that or not. The work I've seen of it thus far (specifically illustrations) are top notch, and I'd be creating a comic strip of the established characters, which is tempting. But if it's not worth it financially, then there's no point. If I wanted to do something purely for the exposure and the art, I'd self publish my own stuff. So that's still up in the air.

I've also been posting artwork on Deviantart.com pretty regularly. The only problem there is that many of the other people who post on the site are considerably younger, and don't necessarily "get" the references I kake in some of my cartoons. Take the following one, for example:

Now, obviously anyone this side of a playpen has heard of Peanuts, regardless of age. However, not everyone is of deciding age to have seen or rented David Cronenberg's film, A History of Violence. So while I feel that this is a really funny idea and a great tribute, a lot of the kids on Deviantart just don't get it. Sigh. Such is the tragic case of ten year old trapped in a 31 year old's body. Guess I need to start playing with the older kids.

So that's about it for now. Hopefully I'll be back much sooner than last time with another update or something really cool to yell about. Talk to you then!

Jay

Shadows of the Past....

Back in summer of 2004, I was living with my girlfriend (now fiancee) Laura in Mt. Pleasant, preparing for our last year of college at CMU. At the time I was holding a few jobs, one of which was staff cartoonist for Central Michigan Life, CMU's school paper, a gig I maintained for my full 3 1/2 years there. Generally, the summer edition of CMU was weaker than the yearly edition: not as much big news to report, minimal student activity and we only published once a week rather than three days a week during the school year. So coming up with material for my editorial cartoon, WASTE PRODUCTS OF A WARPED VISION, got really tricky considering how little was actually happening on campus. But then the night of June 25th rolled around, and suddenly I found my editorial inkwell filled to the lip.

A guy named Damarcus Graham was set upon by a mob of people outside a Mt. Pleasant bar and breaten unconcious. Not surprisingly, interviews from the police would result in tight-lipped witnesses claiming ignorance to the whole situation. Also not surprising was the death of Graham three weeks later, having never regained conciousness from the beating.

Despite the lack of witness testimony, two facts were made immediately apparant in the case: there was no shortage of witnesses that night, and CMU football players, historically the most revered and protected group on campus, were involved in the attack.

At CMLife, as my editors and staff writers scrambled to hammer out stories about Graham's beating, I sat at my drawing table at home, creating my own response to those responsible for the attack. What follows is four of my editorial cartoons that were published in the pages of CMLife around the time of the case.








The last cartoon was actually based on an unrelated incident, but was intended to show a related string of occurances at CMU at the time. Before the Graham case, a kid named Jacon Showalter was attacked in the street outside a CMU frat house and horribly beaten. This went to trial as well, but the assailant regretfully got aquitted. Then after the Graham case, two guys in an apartment building were beaten outside their door while neighbors kept their doors locked and did nothing to help. This case is what prompted me to make the resulting cartoon.

I'd just gotten fed up with the thug mentality that ran rampant at CMU, and moreso with those responsible who were being covered for and those in positions of authority to do something about it sitting on their hands and doing nothing. So I lashed out the only way I knew how: through my cartoons. Understandably, I pissed off some people, either those who were friends with the accused (and presumably, the accused as well) or those in charge whom I felt were as responsible as the players whose scholarships and team positions they sought to protect. But in editorial cartooning, pissing people off is the real payoff. We seek to get the bad guys by making them look stupid and crooked in print. So I was as satisfied to have done my part as I imagine the guilty were to have seen me graduate the following Christmas of 2004, relieved of my editorial cartooning duties which made them look so bad for so long.

The reason I bring this all up now, two years later, is because on July 19th 2006 the Damarcus Graham case came to a close. Many of the football players involved in the beating have earned themselves sizeable jail sentences. But two of them, by all accounts those most directly involved, pleaded no contest to a lesser charge and will consequently receive much, much weaker sentences than they deserve for their actions. A recent CMLife photo shows them leaving the courtroom all grins and elation, convinced of their success and planning to celebrate. Celebrate a murder.

So, being a graduate two years out the door and no longer having CMLife as my soapbox, I feel powerless to make my voice heard as per the injustices that still surround this case. So instead I dig up my spent ammo shells of past battles and display them here, to show that though I'm no longer in the fight, I still know a just cause when I see one....