more often than not, someone will ask me where i get my ideas from. my answer to this question usually depends on the mood i’m in. no matter what words and phrases color my response, it all boils down to two words: my life. now, i’m not a jetsetter, i don’t travel all that much, i’m not indiana jones or some ex-navy seal… i’m just frank. as harvey pekar has shown us, ordinary people do a lot of living. there is a beauty in “the usual.”
sometimes, ideas are hard to come by. no matter how much life i experience, i just can’t seem to get those experiences into words, and ultimately into pictures. this past sunday, the ideas came to me … literally. a car lost control and plowed into my front yard, narrowly missing the cherry tree i planted almost 4 years ago. luckily no one was hurt.
the fire trucks came, the police came… all my neighbors came to see if they could help and if everyone was ok. once i found out no one and nothing was hurt i began thinking about how i would incorporate this into a comic strip. yes, you read that correctly…i was thinking about how to write a car accident into the comic strip. my cartoonist brethren and sisteren will completely understand. to add to the freaky-deekiness of the whole incident, the driver actually used to live in the house that i now live in… not only that, but lezley actually babysat for this person who was now plowing up my yard.
small, small world…and all i kept thinking was… what would bob say to all this?
