A Guide To Good PaRANTing

FUNDRAISER UPDATE: 55/100 prints are sold! If you were thinking about supporting this IRS “Get out of tax jail” fundraiser, NOW is the time.  The “Daddy/Daughter Digital Drawing Time” print is signed by both of us, numbered and limited to 100 pieces. [More details HERE.]

All proceeds are going to pay an unexpected IRS tax bill. Your support and help are greatly appreciated, plus you get a pretty sweet piece of art for your wall. Hate art? Hate walls? Donations are also incredibly appreciated, if that’s more your style.

Here’s a new print I made and put in the HE store: “Adventure Time Lord.” I bet it will also be a shirt over at Sharksplode pretty soon.

Speaking of making new things, my wife just made a couple of Game Of Thrones inspired necklaces for you Starks and Lannisters.

Thus ends my railing against Garfield… for now. If you want to see some truly dark, bizarre and experimental comics, please take a look at the Garfield archives starting HERE (going HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE) and ending HERE. [SPOILERS: I think maybe Garfield was dead the entire time.]

My stance on “Why are you being so hard on a kids movie/show/comic/whatever?” is pretty straight forward. OF COURSE there’s art that’s JUST for kids. Kid’s like dumb stuff and there’s a ton of dumb to fill that need. But kids ALSO like high quality stuff, and there’s plenty of high quality kids’ stuff out there that also has crossover appeal to adults. Sure, not everything can be Pixar, but a lot of it can exist on a spectrum of kid+adult entertainment that ranges from “non-annoying” to “I really want to see how Curious George gets out of this mess he’s gotten himself into.” And the simple fact that quality kids entertainment DOES exist and is READILY AVAILABLE just makes everything else unnecessary.

I don’t mind if my kid reads Garfield or other boring, not funny comics as long as she enjoys them. I even get excited that shes’s exploring the medium of comics on her own, regardless of what she’s reading. Hell, I get excited that she loves reading so much, regardless of what she’s actually reading. But I get extra special super excited when she reads something fantastic, something I loved and still love, something that sparked my imagination at her age and helped shape who I am and what I do today – something like Calvin And Hobbes. So I will continue to guide her along her geek journey and gently nudge her in the direction of quality, but I will also sit with her and watch incredibly vapid and annoying cartoons like Littlest Pet Shop (guhhhh) just to be around her and just to make sure she knows I am more interested in her than I am in making sure she likes the right things.