stonesoup: June 2013

Lots has happened since my last blog post, and I think I've finally digested it enough to write about it.

FIRST...

...at the beginning of the year, new sales for Stone Soup started rolling in, pushing my newspaper list to over 300. I am ecstatic, grateful, and awed. My syndicate ROCKS. My readers ROCK. My life ROCKS, well, most of the time.

So thanks to the 30+ newspaper editors from Florida to Montana to Califormia to Idaho to northern Illinois (right next to my home town of St. Charles, yay!) and beyond who added Stone Soup to their comics lineup. You've made 2013 pretty stellar so far.

And starting June 10, the Stockton California Record will begin a 3-month test of Stone Soup. I'm really hoping that readers there get attached to the Stone Clan and keep running my strip forever. So if you know anyone in Stockton... ask them to watch for it!

SECOND...

... my explanation for the long absence from this blog. I spent the first 3 months of this year, mid-January to mid-April, in Cape Town South Africa. (I know, I know, I could have blogged from there. But it was meant to be a sabbatical. A rest, a time to recharge. While working. But with lots of time to just fart around in a gorgeous, interesting place. One way to do that? Unplug.)

I rented a house overlooking False Bay and the Cape of Good Hope, packed up a portable light table, scanner, my ink, paper and pens, and drew the strip from there. It was summer in the Southern Hemisphere, sunny nearly every day, the sea was gorgeous and wild and beckoning... which inspired me to work twice as fast. It helped that the phone didn't ring, friends didn't drop by, and my husband, who wasn't working, took care of ALL the everyday household stuff. He's a great cook. He does laundry. He got us tickets to see Rodriguez (Sugarman). Again, my life rocks.

South Africa is a gorgeous place, and False Bay is fed by both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. It's green like the Meditterranean but big and wild like the Pacific. Big pods of dolphins, whales, great white sharks... wild beaches where you might also see baboons, ostriches, antelope...

Above, the shark flag. Comes is various colors, denoting the level of alert. The most common is black, which means "we haven't seen any sharks, but the water has poor visibility". Hmmmmm

...and there are seaside pools with colorful changing rooms, where you can swim without fear of big waves or sharks. But at high tide, the sea spills over in glorious fashion.

Did I mention the African Penguin colony nearby? Oh how I wanted to steal the following sign...

We also took a couple of road trips and saw...

...plus zebra, hyena, Cape Buffalo... we missed the lions, maybe next time. The abundance of elephants made up for it.

AND AS IF that weren't enough...

We met a boatload of cartoonists.

Backing up to Christmas before we left for Cape Town, my husband Ted gave me a book on South African Cartoonists in anticipation of our trip.

Written by cartoonist Andy Mason (N.D. Mazin) this book is an incredible collection and historical perspective on South African cartooning, and, by way of that, South African society. If you want to learn about South African history—colonialism, apartheid, the creation of a complex country with a complex lineage—via the cartoons that documented it along the way, read this book. If you want to meet some great cartoonists, read this book. If you want to broaden your cartoon horizons, read this book. READ THIS BOOK. (It's available on Amazon. You have the link. Go for it. It's very well written and you won't be sorry.)

I noticed when looking through this book that a lot of South African cartoonists live in the Cape Town area, so I decided to write the author and ask if he could introduce me to any of them. In an amazing bit of kismet, Andy and his wife Cath lived just 6 blocks from the house we had rented.

Once settled in Cape Town, portable studio up and running, internet connected, car rented and driving on the left side of the road mostly mastered, I called Andy. In another bit of kismet, he said...

"You're timing is perfect... there's a party tomorrow".

And that is how I met nearly all of South Africa's cartoonists in one afternoon, 3 miles from a house I had spontaneously rented after randomly finding it online (that's another story).

They are all incredibly accessible, humble, welcoming and nice...

the group that day included the amazing Jonathon Shapiro (Zapiro), who is SA's most visible editorial cartoonist and most dogged in attacking government corruption, and a devoted friend of Nelson Mandela. He studied in NY on a Fullbright with Kurtzman and Spiegleman.

Left of Zapiro, with long hair and sunglasses and chin in hand, you'll see American Denise Dorrance, originally from Iowa but who has lived abroad for years (splitting her time between London and Cape Town). She's about to release a book of single panel cartoons called "Mimi".

The black cartoonist in the middle (yes, even in SA there are surprisingly few black cartoonists) is Brandan Reynolds, who recently won a prestigious award for editorial cartooning as well.

Strip cartoonists include Gavin Thompson (look in the upper middle for the rasta dreds and sunglasses). Just right of Gavin you'll see me. Gavin draws two strips, one called Mama Taxi, which is written by Deni Brown (to my right in sunglasses and a big smile) and also Trek Net, written by Dave Gommersal.

At the top center, over my shoulder in a white shirt, is Jeremy Nell, an excellent political cartoonist who was fired from his newspaper for being too... political.

In the center bottom with his kids and wife Michelle is John Curtis, who maintains a site called Africartoons.com, where you can see work by all these cartoonists and more.

Missing were the great Stephan Francis and Rico, who write the acclaimed Madam & Eve cartoon. If you haven't seen it, find it. It's over 20 years old, you should know about it. A wonderful post-apartheid commentary on SA society and politics. I found their books at a bookstore in Haight-Ashbury. I was immediately hooked.

Finally, here are some samples of cartoons done by some of the incredible cartoonists mentioned above. (My apologies to my friends for not getting prior permission, but I'm trusting when I said "I'd like to blog about you all" you knew I'd do this...)

While some of these are unique to South African society, the US social scene, politics and political figures don't go unnoticed in SA, so you might be surprised at what you find and understand here.

The Madam and Eve cartoon below appeared immediately after South African athlete Oscar Pistorius (the Blade) shot and killed his girlfriend... the verdict is still out on that one. Sorry for the quality... clipped right from the paper to scan and send to inquiring minds back home!