Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for February 07, 2025
So, we’ve always had nicknames for our doggies. We’ve had: Sparkinator, Chrissinator, Corkinator; Sparky-Larky, Missy Chrissy, Corky-Lorky; also Sparkasaur, and Corkisaur (Missy Chrissy was too good to be a dinosaur.) (Also, they each knew all their names.) Now there is Ollie, and while I tend to let Ollinator slip out now and then, I don’t think I care for it, somehow. DH always used the “saur” suffix, while I did the “-nator” one. I think I like Ollisaur, and am working on using it, but how about some feedback from the crew here at Playtime? Any other Ollie-name suggestion will be considered, as well. Thanks for whatever you can do! 🐕🦺 🌞
February 7, 1926 “Negro History Week” was observed for the first time, conceived by Dr. Carter G. Woodson as an opportunity to study the history and accomplishments of African Americans. Dr. Woodson was the founder, in 1915 Chicago, of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. There he first published the Journal of Negro History, currently known as The Journal of African American History (www.jaah.org). Woodson was a graduate of the University of Chicago, the Sorbonne, and was the second black man ever to receive his doctorate from Harvard. He chose February because it is the birth month of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass; now it is designated Black History Month.
Top L-R: Frederick Douglass, former slave and abolitionist leader; Muhammad Ali, poet, World Champion, the greatest; Maya Angelou, poet, novelist, voice of wisdom; Malcolm X, strong and clear-eyed brother seeking freedom and honor and dignity ; Harriet Tubman, liberator and conductor on the Underground Railroad. Below: Jimi Hendrix, prolific guitar genius, rock ‘n’ roll writer; Nat “King” Cole, jazz composer, pianist and singer; Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor, scholar and author, leader of a people, inspiration to peacemakers. Dr. Carter G. Woodson More on Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s life and work
February 7, 1971 Women in Switzerland were granted the right to vote in national elections and to stand for parliament for the first time in their nation’s history. This happened through a national referendum in which only men could vote, passing 621,403 to 323,596. A previous referendum in 1959 failed 2-1.
February 7, 1986 Haitian self-appointed President-for-Life Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier fled his country after being ousted by the military, ending 28 years of authoritarian family rule.Policies begun by his father, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, had forced many to flee Haiti (the western portion of the island of Hispaniola), leaving it the poorest and most illiterate nation in the hemisphere. Deforestation (for cooking fuel and heat) eliminated forest cover on 98% of the country, in turn leading to significant annual loss of topsoil, often making agriculture unsustainable. Jean-Claude `Baby Doc’ Duvalier with his father Francois `Papa Doc’ Duvailer. Some Haitian history
February 7, 1991 The Reverend Jean-Bertrand Aristide was sworn in as Haiti’s president after winning the country’s first-ever democratic election. Haiti had achieved its independence from France in 1804 but had a long succession on unstable governments, as well as significant U.S. control in the first half of the 20th century, including military occupation from 1915 to 1934. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in exile during the 1991-94 military junta. Archive of Haitian history
My branch of thoughts is frail tonight As one lone-wind-whipped weed. Little I care if a rain drop laughs Or cries; I cannot heed
Such trifles now as a twinkling star, Or catch a night-bird’s tune. My whole life is you, to-night, And you, a cool distant moon.
With a few soft words to nurture my heart And brighter beams following love’s cool shower Who knows but this frail wind-whipped weed Might bear you a gorgeous flower!
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 2, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
February 6, 1899 Spain agreed to abandon all claims of sovereignty over Cuba, the cession of Puerto Rico and Guam, the cession of the Philippine Islands; and in exchange the U.S. agreed to pay $20,000,000 in a treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate on this day. The previous July the U.S. took control of Gantanamo Bay, blockaded Cuba’s other ports and destroyed the Spanish fleet at Santiago Bay. The U.S. Army, landed at Guanica, near Ponce, Puerto Rico, and shortly took possession of the island with the exception of San Juan. The Spanish Pacific fleet was destroyed and the U.S. took control of Manila, the capital, and Luzon, the main island of the Philippines a few weeks later.
February 6, 1943 The U.S. government required the 110,000 disposessed Japanese Americans forcibly held in concentration (internment) camps to answer loyalty surveys. Some of the interned were U.S. citizens, and some volunteered to serve in the armed forces during the war with Japan. The Nisei, as they were known, were kept in the camps until the end of World War II. The Manzanar Relocation Center, a one of the concentration camps where Japanese-Americans were forced to live throughout World War II.
February 6, 1956 Autherine Lucy was excluded from classes just three days after becoming the first black person allowed to attend the University of Alabama. Her suspension “for her own safety” followed three days of riots over her Supreme Court-ordered enrollment. Autherine J. Lucy and her attorney Thurgood Marshall Crowds of students, townspeople and members of the Ku Klux Klan shouted, “Kill her!” among other things. It is unclear why the University did not suspend the students who were among the rioters. Lucy had originally applied for graduate study in library science in 1952, and had been accepted until the University realized her race, and claimed state law prevented her admission. A graduate of traditionally black Miles College, she was only admitted with the help of the National Association for Colored People Legal Defense and Education Fund (NAACP-LDEF) and lawyers Thurgood Marshall (later a Supreme Court justice), Constance Baker Motley (future federal judge) and Arthur Shores (elected to Birmingham City Council). Read more
February 6, 1959 The United States successfully test-fired its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), known as Titan, from Cape Canaveral. It was a two-stage rocket designed to carry nuclear warheads.Titans were also capable of boosting satellites and spacecraft into orbit. Before the last was produced in 2002, they launched several two-man Gemini missions in the 1960s and launched the first spacecraft to land on Mars. First test launch of Titan booster rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
February 6, 1961 The civil rights jail-in movement began when ten negro students in Rock Hill, South Carolina, were arrested for requesting service at a segregated lunch counter. They refused to post bail and demanded jail time rather than paying fines, refusing to acknowledge any legitimacy of the laws under which they were arrested. More about Charles Sherrod Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote to Charles Sherrod, Diane Nash and the others in jail: ‘‘You have inspired all of us by such demonstrative courage and faith. It is good to know that there still remains a creative minority who would rather lose in a cause that will ultimately win than to win in a cause that will ultimately lose.’’
February 6, 1985 The Molesworth Common Peace Camp, just outside the Royal Air Force Base there, was evicted by the British Army. The 300 inhabitants and their many supporters had been nonviolently protesting the siting of nuclear-tipped U.S. cruise missiles at the base. Peace camps were established at several locations in Europe in the early 1980s to protest the destabilizing nuclear weapons buildup. Molesworth Common peace camp
February 4, 1882 American Colonization Society ship leaving New York City bound for Liberia. The American Colonization Society established the first settlement in what would become the west African state of Liberia. The new arrivals to the island called Perseverance were freeborn blacks from the U.S. who had emigrated with the encouragement of influential white Americans and funding from Congress. The colony was governed by whites for twenty years. Read more
February 4, 1987 The U.S. House of Representatives overrode President Ronald Reagan’s (second) veto (401-26) of the Clean Water Act. The law provided funds for communities to build waste treatment facilities and to clean up waterways. Reagan described it as ”loaded with waste and larded with pork.”
February 4, 1990 The Colombian government recognized native rights to half of its 69,000 square miles of forest in the Amazon River basin, home to 55,000 indigenous people. In addition to the official Spanish, as many as 200 languages or dialects are spoken among Colombia’s peoples. U’wa people Boys on the Amazon More on indigenous peoples
February 4, 1996 Start of a week of marches for peace by thousands in Grozny, the embattled capital of Chechnya.
February 4, 2004 The Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that gays were entitled to nothing less than marriage under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. They ruled that Vermont-style civil unions would not suffice, declaring they created an “unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples.” The actual text of the decision in Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health
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.
February 3, 1816 Paul Cuffee, a shipowner and a free negro (born to slave parents in Massachusetts), arrived in Sierra Leone with 38 African Americans intent on setting up a colony for free blacks from the United States. He had earlier set up the Friendly Society of Sierra Leone, a trading organization, to encourage commerce between England, the U.S. and the British colony on the Atlantic coast of Africa.
February 3, 1893 Abigail Ashbrook of Willingboro, New Jersey, refused to pay taxes because she was denied the right to vote because she was a woman.
February 3, 1964 In New York City, more than 450,000 students, mostly black and Puerto Rican, comprising nearly half the citywide enrollment, boycotted the New York City schools to protest the system’s de facto segregation. The Parents’ Workshop for Equality, led by Reverend Milton Galamison, had proposed a plan to integrate the city’s schools but it was rejected by the school board. Freedom Schools were set up for the kids during the one-day direct action.
February 3, 1973 Three decades of armed conflict in Vietnam officially ended when a cease-fire agreement signed in Paris the previous month went into effect. Vietnam had endured almost uninterrupted hostility since 1945, when a war for independence from France was launched. A civil war between the northern and southern regions of the country began after the country was divided by the Geneva Convention in 1954 following France’s military defeat and troop withdrawal. American military “advisors” began arriving in 1955. Between 1954 and 1975, 107,504 South Vietnamese government troops, approximately 1,000,000 North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front soldiers, and 58,209 American troops died in combat. The number of Vietnamese civilian deaths is unknown, estimated between one and four million killed, and millions more wounded or affected by defoliants such as Agent Orange.
February 3, 1973 President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act, intended to avoid species extinction, especially through loss of habitat.
February 3, 1988 The U.S. House of Representatives rejected President Ronald Reagan’s request for at least $36.25 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, an insurgent group trying violently to overthrow the Sandinista government.
February 3, 1994 President Bill Clinton lifted the trade embargo against Vietnam, which had been in place since the end of the Vietnam war.
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