Dakota McFadzean,
Stripburger 58 "DRAWING, MY OLDEST FRIEND"
Drawing is my oldest friend, and I’ve
often wondered if cartoonists are more directly connected
to their childhood than the average person due to the act
of drawing. When I talk to most people my age, it always
seems like there was a point in their lives when they
stopped thinking about cartoons and cartoon characters,
and started spending more time thinking about adult things
like careers and mating. I guess that’s normal, but the
act of cartooning draws an unbroken line in the life of a
cartoonist—childhood never really ends and adulthood never
really begins. Which isn’t to say that we weren’t thinking
about money and sex once puberty hit, because we were!
However, most of us probably tried to understand those
things by drawing cartoons about them.
When you’re a kid, you’re in a constant
state of taking in new information, and each new piece of
information slowly solidifies your understanding of
reality. Cartoons are part of that reality. Drawings hold
a lot of power. I can remember books in my house that I
was afraid to touch because the drawings were too
terrifying (seriously, go look at the cover for Jelly
Belly by Dennis Lee, and you’ll see what I’m talking
about). It was as though the horror of the drawings would
spill out of the book and get me if I touched them. I also
remember wishing I could eat the food I saw cartoon
characters eating. Not a real version of a cake - the
actual cartoon cake. When Who Framed Roger Rabbit came
out, I fixated on the texture of the cartoon characters
set against real-world backgrounds. They looked like they
would feel rubbery, like a balloon but softer, and warmer.
I used to daydream that my body would take on the rubbery
properties of a cartoon character.
Most kids draw. Most kids find that
they can comment on and create reality using a pencil. I
love children’s drawings because they are not about the
finished product, instead they are about the process of
creating the drawing. The drawings are real, alive,
interactive. But most people also reach a certain age and
stop drawing for some reason.
For those of us who continue drawing,
we inevitably end up spending a lot of time drawing alone.
Most jobs force you to interact with a few coworkers, but
the life of a cartoonist is usually spent alone in an
apartment, drawing, and drawing, and drawing. Personally,
I like it that way. I usually feel energized when I’m left
alone with my thoughts to work on my projects, with
nothing but my pen and my brain to keep me company.
The act of drawing, especially inking,
is meditative. Your hands more or less work automatically,
performing practiced movements and gestures while your
mind wanders. And the mind often likes to wander to
familiar places. Memories. Things you said last week that
you regret. Things you thought when you were six years
old. Sad thoughts, fears, happy times. Your brain, like
always, is working to make sense of it all.
This is a long way of saying that this
reflection on the past, and childhood, seeps into my
comics one way or another. My story in this issue, The
Best Donald, is loosely autobiographical. My brother Jonah
(who also grew up to be a cartoonist) and I have always
loved comics and cartoons, and many of the games we played
together as kids involved reenacting cartoons we watched
(we had the Bugs Bunny cartoon Bunny Hugged completely
memorized). We especially loved Donald Duck. His emotions
were always so raw and unhindered, and uncontrollable
forces always seemed to conspire against him despite his
initial optimism and effort. Pretty easy to relate to when
you’re a child. Everything about the way we talked,
played, moved, and thought was informed in some way by the
cartoon characters we saw in books, TV shows, and video
games … even when we didn’t understand what we were
seeing.
The “Apple Core, Baltimore” word game
seen in my comic is a direct reference to the 1952 Donald
Duck cartoon Applecore. In this cartoon, poor Donald Duck
plays an apple farmer who is terrorized by those assholes
Chip and Dale. The characters play a word game in the
cartoon that involves Chip and Dale holding an apple core
and saying “Apple core,” to which Donald replies
“Baltimore.” Chip and Dale then ask, “Who’s your friend?”
and Donald replies “Me,” so Chip and Dale hit him in the
face with a rotten apple core.
Of course, growing up in the Canadian
prairies of Saskatchewan, my brother and I had never heard
of Baltimore, so we just said “bordabore” in our best duck
voice when we were reenacting this cartoon. I also didn’t
understand why Donald didn’t just name someone else as his
friend, thus (maybe) avoiding the apple core to the face.
I guess Donald didn’t have many friends. He probably just
wanted to be left alone with his own thoughts so he could
work on his own stuff. Though maybe I’m projecting a
little.
I like to say that drawing is my oldest
friend, but perhaps it’s more accurate to say that drawing
is how I’ve connected to almost everything else: my
brother and the rest of my family, other cartoonists, my
wife, and cartoon characters that can still seem real
sometimes. |