Hard January Threes

Yesterday, your humble scribe discussed a logo I had been working on that ended up copying the abominable snowman from "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer." So I'll kick off today's Graphical History Tour down four decades of Januaries with a logo for University of Wisconsin at Parkside's Winter Carnival:

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Jan. 20, 1983 et. seq.

"Snow Wars" was the theme I was given to work with; I don't remember whether having the Parkside mascot bean Old Man Winter with a snowball was the committee's idea or mine, but I suspect it was theirs.

Parkside's Winter Carnival was in its fourth year; I don't see on the university website that they still have it these days; whether it fell victim to COVID or withered away earlier I can't tell you. The week starting with a parade with floats, featuring winter games and activities, and wrapping up with a dance was intended to foster a sense of community in what was then solely a commuter campus. UW-P has long since added dormitories for resident students. 

The major winter activity more recently has been a winter arts and crafts fair (interrupted, like everything else, by COVID). My better half and I used to go to the fair, but it got too insanely crowded.

"Agent of Change" in UW-Milwaukee Post, Jan. 25, 1993

Today's post won't have any real unifying theme, and this will be the only intrusion of politics today.

I drew this cartoon in the first week of the Bill Clinton Administration, thinking that I would need some gimmick to fuel cartoons about a centrist Democrat in the White House. Clinton's presidential campaign had used "agent of change" as one of its principal themes, so I expected to be able to use the Agent of Change costume again and again.

As things turned out, I only came back to it once or twice.

"Beall and Kendall" in The Biz (Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee), Winter, 2003

I did like one of those later Agent of Change cartoons so much that I went back and colorized it — perhaps around the time that I was sending color cartoons to the Business Journal for their The Biz supplement. The Biz published quarterly, and was intended to appeal to younger readers, with shorter, snazzier articles printed in full color on higher-quality paper than the rest of the weekly paper.

My Biz cartoons accompanied an advice column that typically focused on workplace etiquette. I colorized them myself, very quickly giving up the cross-hatching that I had relied on for years.

"Don't Be So Hard on the Lad" for Q Syndicate, January, 2013

Vestiges of that cross-hatching surface again in the lower right-hand corner of this January, 2013 cartoon. I had determined at the outset to use minimal coloring in the background as a way of keeping focus on the three aging queens in the foreground. But I just couldn't leave that corner empty.

For those of you too young to remember, Manti Te'o was a first-year linebacker picked in the second round by the then-San Diego Chargers. While a football star at Notre Dame, Te'o fell victim to a catfishing hoax perpetrated by a man (since transgender woman) who has been described as a family acquaintance. Sports media fell for the hoax, too, as Te'o's supposed girlfriend, whom he only met on line and on the phone, came down with leukemia and was injured in a car crash, and ultimately died on September 11, 2012, just at the start of Te'o's professional career.

She never existed, of course, and there has been suspicion that Te'o wasn't a completely innocent victim. Be that as it may, nowadays, the "girlfriend" would have to keep up Facebook and Twitter accounts, but also Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Tumblr, TikTok, WeChat, CounterSocial, Mastodon, Causes, LiveJournal, and, uh, is Nextdoor still a thing?

I do get a lot of friend requests on Facebook from fictitious women and the occasional deceased person, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if Manti Te'o's girlfriend shows up among them someday.