My shameful alter ego Angryman Cartoon, and the many other characters on my website.
I don't blame you for your confusion.
I’ve had a website for over a quarter of a century, and that’s a lot of time to be inconsistent for someone like me.
There are several characters and intellectual properties that have surfaced on my blog and website over the years that I forget new readers might not be familiar with unless they are longsuffering and have been with my writing that long.1
What it means is that I have a lot of themed stickers and stationery I’ve made over the years that have shown up on my website versions, a lot of content that is now archived, and a lot of confused people when I pull one of these properties out of the dustbin for five minutes as if they ought to know what it is.
My earliest website versions had a couple of strange birds I was drawing at the time, then a kind of salamander puppet character. There was Lone Prairie Cupcakes, and a couple of different cat characters.
Then there’s Bob. I own the domain OfficialBob.com which several people have tried to convince me to sell over the years. There’s MysteryPartyGo.com for that short period when I had friends I could lure over if I threw elaborate city-wide scavenger mystery parties.
It’s Angryman Cartoon®, though, that pops back up the most.
I don’t know if “Jesus Gets Us,” but I get Angryman Cartoon®.
He’s shown up in the books and magazines and blogs I’ve written. He’s appeared in the margins of notebooks at boring meetings. He shows up in my travel journals. He’s in little sketchbooks dedicated just to me venting annoyances. He shows up at the bottom of letters I write, or even in some books I’ve signed. He’s served as my website header, and even on other websites. He illustrated blog posts at my old employer and you might still see him there unless they scrubbed him. He’s made several appearances on whiteboards in offices I’ve worked at. He’s made it as framed work that I’ve sold. He illustrated my experience in flying lessons and learning to be a pilot.
He’s showed up all over the place, except probably the most useful: an organized cartoon of some regularity. Which is probably why most people haven’t seen him unless you were sitting next to me at a boring meeting in which I was drawing a likely inappropriate cartoon to stave off inevitable death from boredom.
Believe it or not, the first time I drew him was sitting in the Dairy Queen in Langdon, North Dakota after attending a county commissioners meeting when I was a newspaper reporter. I can’t remember much else except those original drawings had to do with six ways to quit your job.
Perhaps it was a terrifically boring meeting, I don’t know.
I sent those original first drawings to a friend who lives on the East Coast.
I don’t know why I started drawing him. I don’t know why his jaw isn’t really connected to his head. I don’t know why his eyebrows are so out of control. I don’t know why I decided to use a grumpy balding male cartoon character who often wears a tie as an illustration for the inner grumpy Julie.
But them’s the realities, I guess.
He says and does the things I would never do.
I haven’t done much publicly with Angryman Cartoon® over the years. But after a recent planning meeting for an event, a meeting in which there were more rabbit trails than all the rabbits in Australia could navigate, I resurrected him.
I drew a quick cartoon illustrating the hilarity of the meeting, and then attached it to an email. “I took some meeting notes,” I said.
It got a few chuckles and a few questions about the cartoon itself, and I realized I probably ought to explain him again, pull some of those cartoons out, dust them off, and share them once more because I have a different audience than I did years ago, and perhaps, if there was ever a time for Angryman Cartoon®, maybe now was it.
If you’re a paid reader, you’ve already had access to the Angryman Cartoon® section of this blog, though I haven’t done a lot with it, nor have I publicized the link to that section much.2
For those of you not familiar with Angryman Cartoon®, the images will be new. They might also be missing the right context and be a bit less funny. For those who have been around, you’ll recognize the images. Most will be behind a paywall because:
Angryman Cartoon® would be highly inappropriate in today’s squish culture.
Reducing the non-permitted use of him on other websites means reducing easy access.
Some cartoons are from notebooks and journals and aren’t exactly a “professional” presentation.
It’s kind of a reward for those who are supporting my writing.
I’m not quite the angry person I was when I started drawing him.
Ha ha.
Right.
Rey, you win.
The different sections of the blog get very little love from me, sadly. When I publish to them, I don’t send out the email because I don’t want to bombard people with email. And I don’t talk much about them elsewhere. If you want to check them out, look at the main navigation menu at the top of this blog, or read the “About” page.
Ah, somehow I missed this one when you sent it out. I happened on it as I was cleaning out this email address. I still have your cartoon panels from your pilot training days proudly hanging in my office. They still make me laugh. It's hard to believe that I've been following you for such a long time...it really doesn't seem like that much time has passed. I must say that I have enjoyed every minute and continue to look forward to your posts. I always find them insightful and beautifully written, a joy to read.