The problem with a common name

I’ve been thinking, somewhat seriously, about changing my professional name for some time. It’s too damn common. ASIDE FROM ANOTHER CARTOONIST IN MY CITY with the same name, my Google Alerts is constantly throwing my way links for sportscasters, small-town politicians, and lately, a cowboy. Here’s a curious thing to wake up to:

I got an eyeful of Tom Hart, the cowboy on AMC’s Broken Trail, and I knew I wanted to do another western. The guy isn’t at all good looking. He’s not hero material in the sense of charm, but he had more grit than any hero I’d seen in …

Click here for more at petticoatsandpistols.com

And send ideas for what to change my name to my email address, which notably has no Tom or Hart in it, because they were all taken by the time I got there: hutchowen ( at ) gmail . com .

Grover Norquist, 2008, with cartoons

Well, my nemesis, Grover Norquist has published a book, “Leave Us Alone”.

To quote Bugs Bunny, “what a maroon”.

In fact, he is interviewed this week in The New York Times Magazine.

Read through this interview. Grover Norquist is the classic example of the walking baby-man, of which there is a surfeit in power in this society. A man, aged 40+ in body, 10+ in mind and emotion. My feelings about him are justified: he came up with his “no tax pledge” when he was 14. Grover’s problem, as I see it, is he never grew up.

Grover Norquist claims in his interview that private entities take care of their properties better than public ones. He claims parks as his example, but consider, let’s say, Okeefenokee Park. By all parameters, Okeefenokee should be a national park. It’s gigantic, a glorious national treasure, a unique ecosystem and living, wild environment. The park itself, for reasons you can read about elsewhere, is privately owned, pathetic- full of cardboard cut outs of Pogo and other swamp creatures. The goat stall, the train, the gift shop are all slight and embarrassing, and not one person knew anything about the “Walt Kelly Museum” on their grounds. Though everyone had a vague idea in which direction to point me. (Though let me say that everyone working their was very pleasant and charming.)

Your average National Park is run by dedicated rangers, and is full of scientists and other professionals dedicated to either the conservation of the park or the accurate education of the park goers. The parks are reasonably well taken care of, and are in equal service of the park and its patrons. Grover can keep his crappy little private parks.

Another example. The French trains (the SNCF), publicly owned, are clean, well-maintained, affordable, on time, efficient and fabulous. Compare to the London trains, mostly private and mostly shitty. Or any other number of competitive, penny pinching, profit-driven enterprises.

What GROVER NORQUIST, the jackass, doesn’t realize is that the same thing is true, private or public. Things are run best when they are run by responsible, intelligent, caring, well-trained people. Period. Whether they are private or public matters not.

Norquist, take a powder!

What a maroon! What an ignoranimous!

In honor of GROVER NORQUIST’S RIDICULOUS new book, I am running classic Norquist strips on Hutch Owen. Click here for the dailies. Click the image below for more Sunday Grover.

My bookstack, Feb 29

The new trend seems to be posting ones “BookStack.”

That’s Nabakov short stories, hidden by the glare. Leela is fond of being surprised that I’m not finished with it yet, as I’ve been reading it off and on for 8 or 9 years. Of course, that’s the way to read some short stories. On the bottom is a stack of short stories pulled from the New Yorker; that stack is the unread pile. I finished 100 Years of Solitude recently but it’s still reverberating around in my head so I include it here. And that’s Tsuge, above Marquez. Luckily, some of those are in the scanlations I’m reading, see below.

I realized posting this “BookStack” that A) it should also involve a shot of the folder of scanlations I’m trying to make it through (image below) and that B) what I really would need is a “CultureStack.” Said CultureStack would incorporate the Messiaen concert I went to with Jon Lewis, “Shortbus” by John Cameron Mitchell, the Lucien Freud exhibit at MOMA, my printmaking class with Bruce Waldman, the amazing Monica Hunken and Judith Malina at the Living Theater, and maybe even the obsessive games of Just A Minute I’ve been playing with Brendan Burford and other friends. Would it involve the conversation I had with Josh Bayer about Jack Kirby, dovetailing into our investigations into the neurosis of some processes of cartooning, dovetailing again into the Bayer’s description of “dangerous and farcical masculinity” in some films he’s been seeing?

All these wonderful things are keeping me from and feeding my work of cartooning and teaching. But who has time to blog about it?

Matt Madden’s Pantoum

Matt Madden has been studying poetry forms for some time; he digests them and creates new sequential art forms with them, or creates their equivalent. Matt’s latest exercise in the arena is the “pantoum.” Matt describes:

The pantoum structure is one of interlocking quatrains where the first and third line of one stanza become the second and fourth lines of the following one. The last stanza ends with the very first line of the poem and has the third line in the third-to-last position.

Here, he takes a three page story I made in 2001 (written in Lynda Barry’s workshops, for what it’s worth) and turns it into a 6 page festival of mud lust and paranoia.

Take a look at his posting and read the full comic here.

On a related note, Gary Sullivan chimes in about “Poetry in Comics” on my comments page here, and on his own blog, here. This seems to be spurred by Austin English’s letter in The Comics Journal a few weeks back, and Bill Randall’s published response.

Comics as Poetry, Part 1

I’ve been obsessing about “comics as poetry” for about 15 years. The topic came up on the Studygroup 12 message boards, so I chimed in with this:

It seems to me (despite there being academic definitions) that “poetry” or “poetic” is about a simple communion between author and reader, where the image and meaning making is a task largely given to the reader, through a deft handling of compositional elements by the artist/author. In perhaps one other simple way to word it: a lot left intentionally out.

So poetic is Ben Katchor (left out: specifics of reaction, sometimes, or specifics of internal thought, or exact explanations of dialogue) or Peter Blegvad or “Screw Style” (though to my Western eye that may border on surrealism) or Ben Jones or Kevin H.

There’s a line where a narrative crosses into the “poetic” under this description. Is “Poor Sailor” poetic? Probably, sure.

Poetic also sometimes (though I may disagree) can refer to a virtuosity of language (here: words, pics, etc.) but sometimes that virtuosity is about the dexterity in leaving things in and out. The difference between Blankets and Lynda Barry, maybe. Or Fun Home and Graffiti Kitchen.

Anyway, that’s what I think. Poetry is how much do you give the trusting reader to create a dialogue between her/him and the art? And how penetrating or powerful is that thing that then happens?

Austin English is right to crave it. Go Austin, but be articulate, man, and don’t get sucked in by that Devlinian rhetoric (”EC comics are the worst, man!”)

I was surprised to see people giving poems to cartoonists to draw (but glad some colleagues got good gigs) for this exact reason: you’re asking another artist to add more stuff. It’s probably going to clutter and cloud it and I think Randall hits on the points well. When I think of my favorite real poetry (ie all words), the idea of an illustrations at all is absolutely antithetical to enjoying and experiencing them.

Oh yeah, drawings alone can of course be “poetic”, but it gets hard and weird to define. Renee French and Gabrielle Bell have a poetry in their drawings. In Gabrielle’s case, I think I can almost find the words for it. What is left out is how she feels about what she is drawing. There’s attention and grace, but the absolute understatedness of emotion allows a lot to happen between the viewer and the drawing.

This isn’t true of say, Dave Cooper, a creator whose interest lies in the weird conflicts and tensions he creates between thought and emotion.

In Renee’s case, there’s such a vivid investment in the drawing that it’s hard to know what she’s feeling. Seems like everything: rage, joy love, fear. Her poetry lies in there somewhere, I think.

Kreider Draws Me Again

Genius Tim Kreider draws me in The Pain- When Will it End again. Tim says in his artist’s statement that I’ve taken the place of some previous friends who act as a calm voice of reason (or something.) What we discuss in person is how my loving graceful, glowing personality is hard to get across by drawing the hard features of my otherwise charming face.

Some December press and accolades

Erotica genius Polly Frost interviews me here:
http://pollyfrost.wordpress.com/2007/12/03/tom-hart-interview/

Cartooning Genius Dave Lasky draws me
HERE

While I’m at it, here’s an old interview by Tom Spurgeon with me

Nosferatu strips

I got so into putting Blumer into this costume. So another week exploring his determination to be in some other skin.

The thing about Blumer is that life sucks for him. Clinging to the belief that if he can just start over from scratch , things will be ok for him.

Nora leaves the planet

This was one of those fun stories that you start to understand as you’re creating it. Leela left for Turkey a few weeks back, and I dug out a strip I had started a few weeks prior. Nora blames the planet’s ills on mankind (not womankind) and takes off. Leaves the planet.

When I created a subsequent strip (see image), I realized I was making a strip about Leela being gone. From there, I had fun with it. Keep coming back. This lasts for two weeks.

The Money Warrior Launches!

Hello internet!

I’ve teamed up with the terrific folks at The Panelist.com, a website about investing ethically, to start a new weekly strip, The Money Warrior!

The Money Warrior’s on the hunt! He’s current, direct, ruthless and primal! The Money Warrior wants to kill you some money!

Check the first strip directly here: or check thepanelist.com or themoneywarrior.com once a week.

The Money Warrior started as a bit of a parody of Jim Cramer of Mad Money, and in fact I created the first iteration for my Metro strips. But those strips reminded me that in the end, I dislike parody. I’d rather invent my own creations, something new from a starting point of parody.

I’m super excited to be doing a focused strip that enables me to poke at the more ridiculous, and even childish edges of capitalism.

Please take a look, and especially, leave a comment and let The Panelist know you love your dividends best served cold!