Scott McCloud's Blog, page 39

Taking a Holiday Break

I'm taking this week off from everything but drawing and doing Christmas-related stuff with the family. Look for more posts next week.

We celebrate Christmas, Hannukah and Ivy's B-Day all in December so life can get pretty hectic around here this time of year, but for those of you feeling a bit low on holiday cheer for whatever reason, I offer the above wonderfully insane video from many years ago (thanks to our friend Tom) as the secret to all happiness in the universe.

So Happy Holidays and, ...

Name that Movie

Here's a great time-waster spotted by our friend Lori:

Paul Rogers asks if you can name some of his favorite movies based on just 6 drawings in sequence (with no movie stars).

I did pretty well, how about you?

Happy 20th Birthday to The Simpsons!

The Simpsons first hit the airwaves 20 years ago today! Great excuse to congratulate its creator Matt Groening (rhymes with "raining," guys)  for all his great work over the years.

AND a good excuse to link to this wonderfully creepy image by Roberto Parada:

I Have Nothing to Say Today

So here is a picture of former U.N. General Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali:

That is all.

The Original Nancy Remix

Here's one from the vaults: The original Nancy collage that I made many years ago which helped inspire creation of the game.

I did a lot of strange things in those days.

Are You Insured?

"It turns out though, that because most of my friends are cartoonists, they're uninsured too…"

Julia Wertz on living with lupus and being uninsured. (link via Mike Lynch)

Ivy and I were uninsured for the first several years of our marriage. Then Winter swallowed a penny when she was two and it cost us seven hundred thousand pennies to get it out.

Getting health insurance is a really good idea (as is fixing the whole system, but that's a another topic). It's sad that so few in this business—at l...

"…the emergence of a mind"

You can accuse him of hyperbole if you like, but I think James Gurney is exactly right. The fact that this sort of thing is happening all around us with increasing frequency is both fascinating and a little spooky.

There's a sublime scene in the first Terminator movie where a hapless psychiatrist turns off a pager on the way out of a building just as Arnie's cyborg from the future walks in. Most viewers see the link: how the tiny, primitive devices of today lead to something far more...

Dude, Why Doesn't Everyone Do This?

Our friend Robynne has been photographing low-tech re-creations of her dreams! Such a cool and improbable idea. Check out her "I Dreamed…" section on Flickr to see the latest.

(Of course, for all I know this is a giant meme and they already have clubs for this in middle schools, but hey, it's new to me!)

…and Speaking of Google

As long as I had the privilege of helping to announce the original launch, I'd be remiss in not passing along the news that Google Chrome is now in Beta for Linux and Mac users (among which are probably 75% of the cartoonists I know).

Give it a try and see what you think.

The Free Flow of Credit

Today's Google logo featuring E.C. Segar's Popeye made me happy, though for a personal and kind of obscure reason.

I have this vivid memory of seeing the movie Annie in '82, probably with Kurt Busiek and other friends. It was the year we graduated college and were seriously pursuing our hopes of making comics professionally.

Annie was based, of course, on the popular Broadway musical, and the musical was based, of course, on the famous long-running comic strip Little Orphan Annie by Harold...