Pride.

Another sign of my living in San Fran - my first Pride Parade brought me these two jokes - the first one is, regrettably, another dick joke! Aye carumba! And the second is one of those "I can't believe no one has made this joke before" kind of moments. My husband and I were talking in the park and everybody was just plastered with stickers, and I thought that we all looked just like Nascars - I think these days I would have gone with that idea in another couple of strips, but it's pretty funny the way it is. BUT! The execution - I think I should have made the stickers much bigger, and probably something recognizable like ribbons and the equal sign. Also I cheated in giving Tad a white shirt instead of his usual chest strip. Ce la vie.

But since I'm being gently self mocking, here something else I can't take my eyes off: their hair. Zen's looks like a dead jellyfish and Tad's...if you ever want to be a cartoonist, don't try to apply real world representation - shirts, hands, eyes, and hair need to service the joke, not lie naturally as things would in reality. I spent so much time trying to design things as if they were real, and then one day I realized, why? It's not real! Their hair is ridiculous, but it's easy to draw when you have to do it over and over and over. The next time you see your comics (in those newspapers you are reading back in 1985), look at how many ways the characters are distorted. It's easier to draw.