All the Monoliths in the Universe
After starting my first job out of college, I discovered science fiction fandom. Doing art and especially cartoons for a fan publication then, turned into a mania, which has continued off and on for many years since. Being an occasional cartoonist has left me with an interesting perspective on things for good part of my life. I really didn’t realize how much it has impacted it until I was asked to provide some commentary about my cartooning to add to a recently published collection of some 40 years of cartoon work.
What I wrote in some 24 short essays, (essentially blogs like this one), was a mini-biography. I had no idea what I had done until the editor of the book strung a number of them together as prefaces to each of the five books that I did and were presented in the collection. My little biography was a revelation to me, I had never thought much about those early years of my work and life before. To stop and think about those times and how I got a newspaper cartoon strip and eventually five books of cartoons was an interesting moment for me. The realization that I also took my wife and child on a wild ride with me, for better or worse, was also an uncomfortable admission that I had to make to myself.
The book, ‘All the Monoliths in the Universe,’ plays off the title of my original book of cartoons, ‘Who Was That Monolith I Saw You With?’ All the Monoliths is actually all the cartoons I have done, some 600, over that period of my life with my intense love/hate relationship with cartooning. The most interesting part is, I am not sure that I am done with drawing cartoons yet. I have a tentative offer of publication for two proposed books of cartoons, one of which is a dinosaur cartoon strip that I did 50 cartoons as a test, many years ago to see how it would look. It was called ‘Dino Trek, An Unnatural History of the Mesozoic.’ I have always wanted to finish it and now perhaps I will. The second is another longtime project I have had on the books, (so to speak), titled ‘101 Great Moments in Science Fiction,’ humorous moments to be sure, but it could be fun. It might work out if I can just settle down and work on it, and also if I can possibly get past that love/hate thing about cartooning once again.
(‘All the Monoliths in the Universe’ is available from Hemelein Press at hemelein.com. They also have published a number of other great books and collections, it’s well worth a look.)
