Monday 1 December 2014

The Beavers #3

The Beavers (1976)
by Dave Sim
(Click image to enlarge)
DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebus Archive #2, June 2009)
...On the third strip (now called The Beavers... some glimmering of basic common sense had squirmed out from under my uber-liberal sensibility indicating that How's Your Beaver? wasn't the best foot forward getting into family newspapers) I eliminated most of the cross-hatching to try and brighten the interiors but as you can see I'm unconsciously doing a neo-Victorian motif -- wing-back arm chair, ornate picture frame, heavy bureau. I was also trying to copy the light pattern of cross hatching used by Aislen, Petersen and Mort Drucker. "Trying" was all I could do with a C-6 Speedball nib. "Maybe you have to do it faster... or there's some wrist action or secret technique."

No. The nib is just too thick... what I needed was a nice crow-quill like the Hunt 102.

Robert Stanfield (April 11, 1914 - December 16, 2003) leader of the progressive conservative party from 1967 to 1976. He played Canada's Richard Nixon to Pierre Trudeau's John F. Kennedy ("Nonsense, lad, of course Canada has its own identity")  for most of his political career...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's refreshing to see anti-patriotism in any self-proclaimed conservative individual. I'm not entirely clear why uber-liberalism requires dirty jokes, however.

This joke is both less political and more obvious than the "abortion" one, indicating that Dave is indeed getting a handle on what's required to get into a 1970s-era family-oriented community paper.

The mention of cross-hatching and tools is interesting. It must have been after this that Dave adopted the Rapidograph as his default inking tool, and continued using that through the early issues of Cerebus.

-- Damian T. Lloyd, crh