#30: Eruption, ejection, and escalation

Hello fine people,

It is, somehow, another Thursday. May it be fine wherever you are.

This week’s cartoons look at an unfortunate allergy, a spy among laundry, and a trend that is taking over and taking up.

Keeping an eye on the prize (hold on),
Chris

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Caption: “I have allergies.”

It seems like everywhere in the world has one thing in common right now: allergies.

I’m a big allergy sufferer. You name it, I’ve got an allergy to it. But I’m not alone. Everyone suffers. And maybe, just maybe, volcanoes suffer from them too!?

Or, not. You never know with a volcano.

A little artist’s note: Sometimes, just sometimes, cartoons just come together. I drew this while waiting in a car, and I knew almost immediately what I wanted it to look like. Here is the initial sketch:

Which you’ll see looks very similar to the finished product. The biggest challenge was working out the extent of the lava. Would it go all the way to the ground, or was it mid-eruption? In the end, I decided on the latter as it felt like being ‘in the moment’ would be the most effective.

Caption: “Socks, it appears we have a mitten among us.”

What if our socks were organised? And, what if they had a spy?

In the secretive world of socks, who knows why some vanish and some remain. Why some turn up years later in places they might never have been. And, what if, a lone mitten went undercover among the socks to find their long-lost sock friend? Now that’s a plot.

And if you don’t buy that, just look at the wig on that mitten.

A little artist’s note: There is soooooo much to say about this cartoon.

The first and foremost is that the first draft, and the idea for the first draft, happened on a weary Friday night when I felt like I had nothing left in the tank and my partner said to me: Chris what about something with socks?

From there, I realised how similar socks and mittens could look from the right angle, and then I realised, well perhaps a mitten could be infiltrating the world of socks.

However, I kind of sat on this idea for a week or two. Revisiting every now and then until I finally caved and finished it. The challenge, in the end, was drawing the finger on, or as it turns out off, the mitten, with earlier drafts looking remarkably like a women’s sanitary product.

Caption: “Being tall is very ‘in’ right now.”

The older I get, it seems the taller everyone else gets.

Some 20-something years ago, I remember being quite smug when I grew taller than my dad. It was a big achievement for a teenager, but then my dad pointed out that it was only a sort-of victory as he was certain he had shrunk over the years. I laughed it off until now, years later, I look around and see people younger than me also being much taller than me. And then I think: is this me, or them?

Maybe a little of both?

A little artist’s note: My first idea for this came to me while on holiday and at the time I was like ‘This is the best thing ever!’. But, as with many ideas, the longer I sat with it, the less sure I was about it. However, after deliberation, I drew it anyway.

But, then I was hit with what was the first of many challenges: how do I make the tall people tall, and the regular people regular, and how much detail does the background need to make this work? I knew I needed context to make it effective. Nothing complicated, but enough to show the contrast between the tall people and those standing around.

Have I pulled it off? I’ll give it a solid maybe.

Thanks for reading MiddleSquiggle!

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