Happy New Year from the greatest Anthro artist ever, Louis Wain.   Chin chin! https://youtu.be/0XYnoO9XBkM?list=RD0XYnoO9XBkM

     In 2001, I was cast as Captain Lesgate, the incompetent would be murderer in Dial 'M' For Murder.  This was at the Gaslight Theater in Lockhart, Texas, and was a nifty little production.  I decided that the play was not getting enough attention in my hometown of Austin, so I whipped up this poster and went about all the coffee shops putting them on the crowded notice boards there.  I had twenty and was posting the fifteenth when the news about the Twin Towers broke.  I got a large double shot latte and watched the television reports for awhile, then went home.  I just found this today along with another hundred pounds of comics I was missing. I chose the picture of the mole who died while tunneling through the bird as symbolic of the two would be killers in that play, and how their interaction doomed them both.  I came of age when punk rock was shaking things up, so naturally I thought a sort of  'Never Mind The Bollocks' approach best for this poster.  I&

My usual look in Austin was a camo field jacket paired with jeans and some lovely rockabilly approved Italian saddle shoes, all leather and bought new for 7 dollars when they went retail for 120 or so.   I made my entrance that morning cool as a cucumber.  "Who do I have to fuck to get a latte around here"? I sighed, demurely fluttering my eyelashes.  The stylish crowd went wild.  My silver studded Bianchi gunbelt with the Roman parade-sword buckle is the snappiest accessory I own, and I never get to wear it anymore.  The town I live in now couldn't swing if you hung it. Phooey. https://youtu.be/w_zaSKZks1A This is an old post from 2013 when I drew my rabbit with a ridiculously big tail.  In spite of it's artistic shortcomings, I feel that it has a happy approach and is worth putting up.

Upstate New York, 1949 Binghamgton, New York. 1948 Not Texas. The leading anti-comic book freak was Dr. Frederic Wertham, a German born Freudian. “I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry,”  he stated once.  1952, Scranton. http://www.lostsoti.org/ Doc Wertham.  After his death it was discovered that he came to his conclusions by giving juvenile delinquents comics and noting that they liked them.  Considering that any young criminals he would have been in contact with were incarcerated with nothing to do, I would guess his methodology suspect.   He produced a gay guy who testified in court that he would love to be either Batman or Robin.  (Anyone who wants to be Robin is queer beyond all understanding.  'Queer' does not mean 'gay'.  Back in the day when we would play Batman and Robin it was always a helpless little brother who had to be Robin).  He stated that Wonder Woman was a bondage thing,

Christmas had been a joyless affair, trapped in a town that he hated, Billy went and sulked in the cemetery.  He found himself caught between temptation, outright evil, and the unseen presence of his guardian spirit.  The protracted death of his father had taken from him something he never thought he would miss, continuity.  It was only a formality, his dad for all intents and purposes had been dead for years.   His guardian spirit has the thankless task of trying to make the stubborn rabbit appreciate what life he has left, not an easy job.

  Horace thumps on the door when he wants to come inside. "It is the usual fate of the Irish hare, a wild strain betwixt the Scottish and European varieties, to sleep by day in the hedgerows and by night to scurry through plowed fields in search of leafy delicacies. To live long he must be a wary hare, on guard always against man, his guns and dogs". "This might have been the life of Horace, the loveable hare, had he not fallen three years ago into the hands of Cecil S. Webb, director of the Dublin Zoo. Webb and his wife took Horace into their home to study the ways of small wild animals. They kept him on ... because they had acquired a wonderful pet, as intelligent, playful and domesticated as any dog". Life Magazine, March 12 1956 Horace. Carl Mydans, photographer. Mydans is probably best known for this heavily cropped picture. ...or maybe this photo.  A lucky rabbit... ...and a lucky man!

I'm afraid Toon Town has gone downhill ever since Walt died.

  Blind Man's Buff, 19th century postcard. Eugene Osswald, Fliegende Blätter , 1923.  'Flying Pages' is a good translation. Eugene Osswald, The Animal's Ball, 1017  The Brother Bears and Other Stories by Anna Williams Arnett, 1927  Aubrey Hopwood and Seymour Hicks. The Sleepy King, 1900 Cave painting from Lascaux, c.18,000 BCE. University of Chicago's 1908 yearbook. Signed 'Bate'. Winter Adventure, Theodore Kittlesen.  This guy rocks!  Diane De Groat, Little Bunny's Loose Tooth Kladderdastch Magazine, 1924.  By the Cincinnati born Arthur Johnson,  a Nazi. Krokodil, 1956.  I cannot find the artist, this is presumably encouraging people to grow and/or eat vegetables and/or rabbits.  Excellent drawing. Again with the Eugene Osswald! Osswald. Frank A. Nankivell, from A Book of Fairy-Tale Foxes by Clifton Johnson.  191