This is a local cartoon drawn for the FXBG Advance, which is looking into the ways Trump’s Executive Orders will affect the 540 region.
I think it’s funny when readers of mine who don’t live here mention Gary the Goose. A lot of people were making Gary the Goose the region’s mascot, but I wasn’t aware of that until he disappeared. Maybe he didn’t want the job and that’s why he left. Or, maybe he heard about Trump’s tariffs and planning to make Canada the 51st state, so he protested by flying back to Canada. Or, maybe when the otters came back, they said, “Beat it, Goose.”
Or maybe Gary, who got used to being around humans, paddled too close to the Stafford side of the river, which is full of yee-haw fuckers, and Gary the Goose’s goose got cooked.
Creative note: I was thinking last week that I needed to get the train bridge into a local cartoon. I also got a Rappahannock Otter into a cartoon. I asked my editor, Martin, if Gary was starting to get a little long in the tooth. Is he still relevant? He’s been missing for about a year, I think. We decided that if it’s funny, then we still go with it.
Also, a proofer didn’t get the cartoon and neither did a friend. I was like, whaaaaat?
Dear Laura: I got your check for a paid membership (anyone can do that), but I can’t find your email address. Please email me at clayjonz@gmail.com so I can get you up and running. We want your comments. I’m starting to think Gary the Goose will be found before we find Laura.
Another update: When I publish these cartoons for the Advance, I make sure to state on social media that they’re on local issues. I don’t get upset when readers who don’t live here don’t get the local cartoons. Why should you understand it? What does make me pull my hair out is when readers complain they don’t understand it even though I left a comment with the cartoon on social media that it’s on a local issue. Sheesh. Now if you do live here and don’t get it, that’s on me.
This interview appeared in a small zine, and it’s appearing here as well. Check out Charles Brubaker’s LAUREN IPSUM on this site! He does everything on paper!Read on Substack
INTERVIEW WITH NANCY BEIMAN SEPTEMBER 1, 2023
By Charles Brubaker
Nancy Beiman is best known for her decades-long work in animation, having animated for Warner Bros., Disney, Bill Melendez Productions, among others. However, on December 2022, at the age of 65, she ventured into a world of cartooning she hasn’t tried yet: a comic strip. The result was FurBabies, which made its debut on GoComics.com on June 5, 2023. The strip features Kate Buffet (pronounced boo-fay), an imaginative 9-year-old girl who can talk to her pets, dogs Stella and Shawm and their puppy Sirius, and Floof the kitten.
I interviewed Nancy about the comic via email. The following interview took place between August 12 to 16, 2023, and has been lightly edited for clarity.
What were your earliest cartooning influences?
My influences in animation were Chuck Jones, Charles M. Schulz, Robert Osborn, and Walt Kelly. I loved Zoltan Grgic’s work for the Zagreb animation studio. I was very fond of the UPA style but at the time did not know any of the artists’ names.
I met two of my influences and worked for one of them.
Speaking of Schulz, I remember you discussing your work on It’s the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown (1988) and how you animated Spike for it. What was your most memorable experience on that special?
Just working on a pantomime character was a liberating experience. I asked Bill Melendez who was the lead animator on Spike, and he said “You are. He’s never been animated before!” I loved using my knowledge of silent film comedy to block action on Spike. He walked like Chaplin (with those big feet) and did deadpan comedy like Keaton. He was a lot of fun to animate. That film is the most obscure of the Peanuts specials and should not be. It combined live action and animation (with the animated characters considered a ‘normal’ part of the live action world) two years before Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But CBS didn’t see any opportunity to sell toys, and it was not associated with any holiday, so they did not broadcast it until after Roger Rabbit was a hit. The Girl in the Red Truck was there first.
While you were getting started in animation did you think of doing comics? Were you published anywhere during your early days in the field?
I never considered doing comics at any time before December, 2022.
So FurBabies really is your first in the world of comics? What was the development process like? Which characters were created first?
I first got the idea for a comic strip about a kid who can talk to her pets as family members (rather than pets) in mid-December 2022. I drew up some sketches on December 24 and got Stella, Sirius, and Shawm immediately. They have changed very little since then. Kate has changed a lot. Here are the first sketches of her.
“Catt” drawn on December 24, 2022.
Floof is adapted from a cat design that I made for an unfinished film, Old Tricks. I used only the head and redesigned a kitten body. Floof has changed a bit since then. The head was that of an adult cat; she became more kittenish and cute after I drew about 10 strips. I had to go back and redraw some early Floofs when the strip was picked up by Andrews McMeel/GoComics. Kate was the hardest to create, and she was originally named Catt. She is inspired by Pippi Longstocking and a few students I have known (and they don’t know.) I had the character lineup, with Kate as Catt, on December 23, and changed her name to Katt, then Kate, on December 29. That’s when the characters were copyrighted.
Lynn Johnston saw the lineup on the 29th and instructed me to write 24 short story outlines, one sentence or so each, with dialogue. I got them done on New Year’s Eve. “You’ve got something. Can you keep this up?” Lynn asked me. I answered “Yes”. “Then draw 24 comics and let me know when they are done.” The first FurBabies comic strip, which is actually the first one on the GoComics site, was drawn on January 4, 2023. I used a 1926 Esterbrook “Radio” 914 pen nib once owned by Charles M. Schulz, on hot pressed Bristol board. It’s a gorgeous nib, but it is difficult to use a dip pen when you have inquisitive cats in a small apartment/studio. All subsequent strips were inked with a Pentel brush pen. All character art and backgrounds are drawn on paper, then scanned.
While we’re on art tools used in the comic, how big do you draw the strips? How do you color the comics?
I don’t draw ‘the strips’. I do rough scribbly thumbnail layouts for them, the most detailed are done for the Sundays. Each Sunday strip has a different layout. The characters and backgrounds are inked on paper, all of them separately. I use old animation paper or Italian hot press paper and draw a light rough, then ink with a Pentel brush pen. Characters can fill the entire page or be smaller, depending on the complexity of the drawing. I’ll do a drawing over if I don’t like the first one, and sometimes modify the scan in Photoshop. The backgrounds are often reused. I save each image as a 300dpi .bmp file and composite them on digital templates for 2, 3, or 4 panel strips. The digital dailies are 17 inches wide. Sundays are 24 inches wide. The finals are saved as TIFF files at GoComics’ recommended size…which means they are half to 2/3 of the size of the PDF files I work on. Only the first strip (June 5) was drawn with characters and backgrounds all on paper, like a traditional comic…I work much faster using animation methods. I use whatever works, the technology is not important.
Coloring is done in Photoshop using brushes that mimic pastel and watercolor wash. I work on top of the black line to continue the illusion that it was ‘painted’ on paper. Even the borders of the strip are ‘fuzzy’ and characters sometimes break through the panels. Sunday strips are designed to be graphically pleasing and planned on paper but still done piecemeal, animation style.
Sunday strip, December 10, 2023.
The writing method Lynn Johnson suggested, with 24 one-sentence outlines, is an interesting technique for plotting out comic strips. What’s your overall writing method like once you got your strip off the ground?
I continue to follow Lynn’s method. It’s not a one sentence log line: dialogue and location, sometimes action, is always included. I often change things when I actually draw the characters since I still think in visual story, like an animator. Lynn’s method is the best way to keep a comic on track. It shows you where you are going and what characters can do. You can change the script order before you draw the strips.
Like animation dialogue, scripts and action for the comic are often changed when I get down to the drawing. Short scripts are the best way to get a series going, to plan when new characters are introduced, and develop characters. Lynn also suggested that I use a monthly planner (a book with the entire month on one page) to plan and time the storylines. That was a lifesaver. Several storylines have been moved since I started drawing the strip in January and wintry themes were out of place in June.
You recently introduced Pratt-L, an AI chatbot Kate uses to cheat on her homework. Do you have concerns about the use of AI in creative fields? What was on your mind when you wrote the arc?
I tried out AI’s writing and art programs when they were available for free trial and found them completely incompetent. Pratt-L combines the worst features of both. It is the perfect villain for this strip since the main conflict is between organic lifeforms and technology. This conflict developed as I got to know Kate better. She was the hardest one to write for.
Some modern comics have child characters that never stream videos, play video games, or use cell phones. Tauhid Bondia deliberately set Crabgrass in 1985 before these things became common and life changed for children. Kate Buffet is nine years old, lives in the 21st century, grew up in the age of smartphones, influencers, and streaming videos. Kate is not lazy or stupid but has a quirky way of thinking that does not match what is expected of her, especially in school. She has a lot of curiosity and it’s only natural that she would try the new AI technology. She has the latest digital technology. I made the rest of the apartment furnishings very dated, to show the contrast between Kate and her parents. There are some subliminal messages (family friendly ones) in the backgrounds. For example, the refrigerator is a Calder, named after the artist. Pratt-L wants to be a friend, is completely incompetent, sometimes snarky, in need of constant approval and self-pitying (depending on what it is scraping), but not a dangerous threat the way it is in real life.
There will also be an ‘influencer’ in FurBabies. It will not be human.
AI is not a matter of concern; it is literally going to be a matter of life and death. There is a bill in Parliament recommending that it be allowed to write medical prescriptions in Canada. What could possibly go wrong? People are not taking it seriously as a threat because artists and writers are the first ones affected by it, and most people do not consider art to be a ‘real job’ (My Labor Day strip addresses that issue.) I am most surprised by artists who keep insisting that it is ‘a tool’ like Photoshop. There is a difference. Photoshop allows you to personally modify artwork and photos. I use my own photos for backgrounds, and I sometimes use pictures from the Web for dogs and cats, but always redraw and redesign what I see. Photoshop does not use a bot to ‘scrape’ material from a million other artists and then ‘create’ art which you claim as your own.
My biggest surprise is that some artists think that it is fun to play with it. I think that they are like rabbits admiring the scales on the snake that is about to kill them.
Pratt-L’s quotes are from an actual ‘robot press conference’ held in Zurich a few days before this strip was published.
There’s a strong “family” theme in your comic, with how Kate views her pets to Sirius and Floof referring to Stella and Shawn as their mom and dad. Will this dynamic be explored more further as the strip continues?
The animals are definitely a family. The Dog Family has accepted Floof as one of their members. Kate is a link between the Dog Family and the Human family; she can speak to both, but only one of them understands her. She knows that she really is not a Dog or a Cat. It’s an interesting dynamic, and since the characters generally ‘tell’ me what they will and will not do, I am not sure if Kate’s situation will change. I also don’t think the human parents will appear, except as offscreen character voices. It’s not that they don’t interact with Kate…I just don’t find them interesting enough to include in the strip. It’s told very much from the animals’ point of view unless Kate is in school without them.
June 5, 2024. The Dog Family.
Early in the run most of the strip focuses on Kate and her pets, although newer strips start to include more characters, like in the recent Scavenger Hunt story arc. In addition to Kate’s classmates you also had her interact with Little Fingers the raccoon. Will we see more of Kate interacting with other kids in her class, and more of Little Fingers and other animals Kate can talk to?
Optima “Poppy” Populare and Iris, the two girls on the scavenger hunt, are not interesting enough to do much more than snark. “Poppy” returns in school and in some Halloween strips. There will probably be a few more kids appearing later on, with their own pets, probably in the dog park or maybe in the apartment building. Little Fingers the raccoon returns in November, but he’s a wild raccoon. He won’t ever interact with the other animals.
You indicated in your newsletter that you have a backlog for your comic. How far ahead are you currently?
I am currently working on strips that will air in October. I am proud to say that not one of them involves a pumpkin! (Charles M. Schulz covered that territory very well.) I like to stay about two weeks ahead of deadlines, and originally was two months ahead due to the late start in 2023! That gave me the option of shifting the cartoons, or changing them, as I got to know the characters better. I can also take a week off without worrying about comics not appearing.
Since FurBabies is still a very new comic and I am still redefining myself as a comic strip creator, I moved story lines or reworked some existing strips after I had enough comics that showed the characters’ developing personalities. Some people who have seen months of the strips in continuity tell me that they read better ‘as a whole’ but that is not the way comics work; it’s taken one day at a time. FurBabies is not a ‘gag’ strip, it’s character driven, so there were a lot of changes. Some of the cartoons that ran in June were originally drawn for September.
Things are settling down now. Some readers are adjusting to the fact that Kate is not a ‘perfect’ little girl, she sometimes tries to cheat on homework with AI (and gives up), or that she can be a distraction in class. I finally figured out who she was when she took her burned cookies and sold them as dog biscuits. Kate makes plenty of mistakes, but she has a creative way of dealing with them.
Cal Arts stories can wait a while. This is importance. Read on Substack
It’s hard to believe how much the world has changed since 2020.
I started drawing panel cartoons and comic strips in March, 2020 as the COVID 19 pandemic changed daily life. We were in lockdown starting in March. No one thought it would be for long.
There were jokes about toilet paper shortages though I never noticed any. Guess where most of the toilet paper is made?
This was my first cartoon, drawn to cheer up the neighbors on March 18, 2020.
I continued drawing the cartoons until January, 2022. (sometimes with large gaps between depending on what was going on outside, and my level of depression). The first Corona Diary cartoon appeared on April 18, when the ‘four week lockdown’ was supposed to end. It didn’t.
Thee first Corona Diary cartoon. April 18, 2020.
I never intended to draw more than one of these cartoons, just like I never intended to draw a comic strip. As the lockdowns got longer and longer, I kept on drawing them and sending them on social media and emails to a lot of very scared people.
They were intended to cheer people up and let them know what was happening here. The Canadian experience was very different from the American. Toronto became one big community. People wore masks and considered other people’s health along with their own. Prime Minister Trudeau had daily press conferences where he spoke of what was going on and what the health ministers thought could help.
People paid more attention to hygiene. I may never shake anyone’s hands again.
We would stand on the apartment roof and bang pots and ring bells to thank the nurses and first responders who still had to go to work.
and generally stayed out of crowds.
How different from today. Some people think that if it doesn’t immediately affect them, it isn’t happening. Back then: we knew that we were all connected.
There were ‘anti maskers’ before there were ‘vaccine deniers’. I caricatured the worst of them and decided that I didn’t want their ugly faces in my files, or future book. This cartoon is a replacement showing how we improvised masks in 2020, when there were no N95S available for anyone other than essential healthcare workers.
I discovered that ‘non woven material’ could be found in the cheap shopping bags in the market. The bags could be cut up and used as filters in cloth masks. Other people matched their masks to their outfits.
Replacement cartoon for one that I won’t publish and didn’t keep.
Why am I publishing this today? Because we are in danger of another pandemic, the first one is by no means over, and there are people who deny that any vaccine, anywhere, ever worked.
I’m willing to bet that most of us would not be alive today if it weren’t for childhood immunizations. You have only to walk through an old cemetery (pre 1950) to see many small gravestones commemorating children. These become less frequent after 1950 because of polio, measles, and mump immunizations.
I don’t want to live in the mid 19th century, and certainly not in the Dark Ages. (snip)
It’s weird we’re talking about our nation taking possession of Greenland. It’s even weirder we’re talking about taking it by force. It’s not a joke. Donald Trump is serious. He even sent Donald Trump Jr. there to make a point about taking the territory, unless he hoped Jr. wouldn’t come back. Unfortunately for our nation, he did.
Remember during the campaign when Trump promised “no more wars?” Now, he’s talking about starting three of them. He wants to take Greenland, which is a territory of Denmark.
Today, Sniffy Jr. shared a poll on X/Twitter showing that a high majority of Greenlanders wanted independence. What dumbass Jr. didn’t share is that the poll was conducted in 2019. I’m sure the numbers are close to that today, but if you want to cite a poll for your argument, you need one a little more recent than seven years ago. He also didn’t share that the question was “Can you envision Greenland being independent from Denmark?”. The poll, conducted by the University of Copenhagen, didn’t even ask if they wanted independence, just if they could see it in the future. It should also be noted that the poll didn’t ask if they wanted to become a territory of the United States.
If we’re going to use old polls, one from 2017 showed that 78 percent of Greenlanders oppose independence if it means a lower standard of living. Hey, Greenlanders, look at the standard of living in Puerto Rico.
Denmark is a member of NATO. The treaty is a commitment that every NATO nation will come to the defense of any other member who is attacked. It’s why Putin invaded Ukraine after Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in 2020. Putin believed Trump would destroy NATO. When Trump was ousted, Putin felt NATO was here for good and invaded Ukraine before Ukraine could apply for membership in NATO. That’s why it pisses me off when MAGAts say Putin never invaded while Trump was president. They ignore that Putin couldn’t as it would have been counterproductive to Trump’s attempt to destroy NATO. After Putin did invade Ukraine, two more nations joined the alliance, Finland and Sweden, the latter taking a neutral stance on all wars since 1814.
If Trump invades Greenland, every nation in NATO will be bound to defend Denmark’s territory, even Sweden….hell, even Canada. Trump would start a war with 31 nations, our own allies, by attacking Greenland. Has anyone told Trump this? Trump’s desire to steal Greenland is a new level of stupid that should be named after him. We could call it “Trump Stupid.”
Examples of Trump Stupid would be peeing on a car battery, having unprotected sex with one of Trump’s ex-girlfriends, giving Mike Tyson a wedgie, allowing your daughter to date Matt Gaetz, appointing RFK Jr. as director of Health and Human Services, staring into an eclipse, stating publicly that what you and your daughter have in common is sex, or voting for Donald Trump. Note that nearly half our nation is Trump Stupid enough to vote for Trump twice.
Trump is willing to start a war with 31 nations for a piece of property that has fewer people than Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Trump is also looking at Canada becoming our 51st state. Canada is a nation of 33 million people which would make it our second-largest state (replacing Texas and eliminating them from bragging about how big they are, ignoring Alaska since it became a state in 1959) and would add around 50 new seats to the House of Representatives. This would give the Democratic Party control of Congress. Please don’t tell Trump that.
Good luck in making Canadians proud U.S. citizens. There are Quebecers who don’t even like being Canadians. Calling a Quebecer an American is akin to calling a Scot British. I learned about that one for myself.
Trump wants to take back the Panama Canal which is owned by Panama. We returned it to them and there’s a treaty for that. As we learned during the first Trump regime, he doesn’t care about treaties. Panama is not going to return the canal to us, so Trump is talking about taking it by force, making him the second Republican president (sic) to invade that country
Trump is also talking about invading Mexico to destroy drug cartels. That would violate Mexico’s sovereignty. An invasion of Mexico would be like an invasion of Afghanistan in that we’d be there for two decades at minimum. It would be a huge mess for us to clean up, even decades after Trump is gone. Get that smile off your face.
Trump wanting to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America is just him being belligerent. If he wanted it to be representative of the two continents (in case you’re a Republican, North America and South America), he’d propose calling it the Gulf of The Americas.
The Gulf has carried the name Gulf of Mexico since 1607, which is older than the United States. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said North America should be renamed “América Mexicana,” or “Mexican America,” because a founding document dating from 1814 that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way. Someone tell Trump. I think “Mexican America” has a nice ring to it.
What happens if the United States changes the name of the Gulf through legislation? Only the United States would recognize it and turn into a situation like the Sea of Japan. It’s referred to as the “Sea of Japan” in Japan and the West while it’s referred to as the “Whale Sea” in China. Russia calls it the “Japanese Sea,” South Korea calls it the “East Sea,” and North Korea named it the “East Sea of Korea.” There’s a lot of contention over this as the Koreas claim the name “Sea of Japan” didn’t become accepted internationally until they were under occupation by Japan.
We can change the name of the Gulf of Mexico or any other geographic location we want, but other nations are not required to follow our lead.
If Mexico changes the name of the Gulf to the Gulf of Tiny-Finger Fuhrer, we don’t have to play along but I might anyway.
Fun fact: The Greenland shark can live up to 250-500 years. They don’t become sexually mature until they’re around 150 and their gestation lasts from eight to 18 years. My question is, What do they do with themselves for those first 150 years?
Creative note: I wrote this cartoon yesterday, and then I wrote the polar bear cartoon. I decided to go with the Polar Bear first because I had to finish up the cartoon for the FXBG Advance, and the bear cartoon would be quicker to draw. Drawing all the lettering and spending five hours on this cartoon was the better choice for today’s work assignment.
Scottie's Playtime 