Creative Venture 2026

yup... I'm going to be creative, again.

I’ve been lax keeping up with each week’s comic books, maybe that’s secretly telling me something about how my interests are changing. I’m still reading, but the drive to comment on what I’m reading each week isn’t there. I’m also reconsidering how I go about collecting and if I really need 5,000 comics bagged and boarded in my basement. Just like I reconsidered LEGO sets, and table top games. It’s not that I don’t like this stuff but at my age do I still need to be hoarding it. Who will want it all when I’ve left this world?

2010 Project Pinewood: My version of a pinewood derby car created only using a pocket knife. I sent it out into the world as a travel bug and like most travel bugs in the United Staes went missing after less than a year and a little over 500 miles traveled.

I’ve tried every year to do something to stretch myself creatively. Sometimes it’s a single project like building my own Pinewood Derby car. You see when I was a Cub Scout I recall my dad “helping me.” Which translated to he did it (like many dads). He even when back and updated it when he found out they were to be displayed in the school library. So some years it’s a challenge to do something I’ve never done, or revisit something I’ve done in the past. When I retired I challenged myself to blog every week for a year. There are times when I start off the year knowing exactly what I want to do. Then there are years like this one.

Another creativity challenge in 2014 I took my past strips and published them in a dead tree format. I still have a copy of this around somewhere, I “sold” them at the few cons I tabled at (another challenge) and recently bought back the few Comic Carnival still had in stock after 10 years.

Kyle Baker in his book How to Draw Stupid (a must read in my opinion) talks about people who say they are cartoonists (or artists), but don’t actually have anything to show for it. I’ve started to feel that way. I draw, I create things, but I really have very little in my opinion to show for it.

To be a cartoonist, you must actually make cartoons. I bring this up because I’ve met a lot of people who say they want to be cartoonists, but they don’t have any cartoons. - Kyle Baker, Chapter 1: How to Draw Stupid and Other Essentials of Cartooning -2008

Something went “snap!” last night I realized what I needed to obligate myself to do for the rest of the year (starting on or around April 1) - draw a comic strip each week. I’ve done this before, but it’s time to do it again.

My Geek Odyssey - The Beginning…

In 2009 I was awarded a Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship to chronicle a trip to England during the 50th Anniversary of the Mini Cooper as a webcomic. That’s how this whole thing got started. It was… not great, but it was mine. When I returned I kept at it. Life got in the way, and I stopped after a few years. I still did comics for FTF Geocacher and now PinPoint, but I wasn’t doing comics regularly, only when asked. Sure, I doodled, but nothing ambitious.

Epiphany Strikes Back

In some kind of fever dream last night I realized that I needed to go back and try again. Maybe going to SPACE is to blame. Maybe it was looking at the National Cartoonist Society application (again) and not feeling worthy of filling it out (again). This time around I’ll experiment with formats and characters. So who knows what I’m going to end up with - I sure don’t. After a year, I may have a better idea. However, I feel that this was something I planned to do once I left the classroom, and I’ve been afraid to get started. All those questions- Where do I start? Long form, four panel, or gag strip? New characters? Line art, black & white, or color? So many ways to not get started.

We’ve got a lot of stuff on the calendar this year so I should have a bunch of material to draw from (pun intended). Unfortunately, we have a lot of stuff on the calendar this year which will also make it a challenge.

So starting this week - actual date unknown - look for a comic of some variety… no really, I’m obligated to do something now, so I will - even if it makes me grumpy, which hopefully it won’t.