When Text Bubbles Attack!

Or, at least, when text bubbles burst.

I know, I know, I am not even going to talk about how long it has been since my last post.  But having a toddler son(and pre-teen daughter) really takes up a lot of time and energy.

Just ask poor Gralen here(nice segue, huh?), who in this comic strip is taking his son Jessy to task for his poor report card.  In fact, Gralen gets so worked up, that his text bubble overloads with words and he ends up with a deflated mass of criticisms on top of himself.

Btw, this is the first strip I've dug out of my papers that I noticed has the date of when it was made, Oct. 9, 1980.  Which I believe means I was in 8th grade when I did this one.   Hmmm, I wonder if that had anything to do with the topic of bad grades?!  Nah. ;)

Those Darn Cats!

I know it has been a while since I uploaded a Gralen and Jeddy cartoon, and I do have more of them, but as I was rummaging through them I came upon some of my "other" drawings and cartoons, and two of them caught my eye because they were both about cats.

Not that I am a big cat lover, neither am I a cat hater.  Though if we ever get another pet I think I would prefer a dog.  Dogs just seem to "care" more about whether you are there or not.  A cat tends to act like a teenager, with a look and attitude that just lazily emotes, "Whatever."

That said, here are two 'post-Gralen & Jeddy' cartoons where "cats rule".

The first one is something I know could never happen - A cat allowing an artist to hold it down long enough to draw it.

The second one is something that I am sure, always happens.  Especially with a bit of catnip to rev them up.
Enjoy.  And thank you for reading.

CAT

Vikings(not the Minnesota kind)

I've never seen a radio controlled Viking ship, but they must exist somewhere, because Jeddy has one.  And with Vikings all the rage nowadays, with "How to drain your dragon", "Vikings", and the like, I thought I would dust off this old episode with Jeddy thinking he is just going down to the pier(or lake, or pond) to enjoy his newly bought radio controlled Viking ship, but garnering a little more attention than he probably wanted to.

Master of invective

I've noticed that Jeddy really didn't get to voice many of the punch lines in this comic strip.  But in this one, he shows that he can be more than a nice, mild-mannered boy with a quick-witted comeback that seems to cut Gralen to the quick.
And not only does he manage to insult Gralen AND his grandpa(and his whole family) in one fell swoop, but he does it while listening in on Gralen's conversation.  How's that for nerve?!

Products they would never sell on Home Shopping Network

Well, actually I don't know, maybe they would sell them.  But I don't usually watch HSN so I wouldn't know if they did.
...But if they did, I wouldn't think that these would be a very big seller.

Which came first, the dinosaur or the egg?

We've probably all felt like this baby dinosaur has felt at one time or another.  Sometimes when waking up we just want to crawl back under the covers and not have to deal with the mundane tasks and pressures of a new day, or when faced with meeting new people we just want to crawl back under our "shell" where it is comfy and familiar.

Whoa!  That's getting a little too deep there, and a little too serious for this episode that is simply dealing with Gralen and Jenny's new baby who, seeing the people he is going to be living with for at least the next 18 years, decides he likes the looks of things better in his egg.

I think he must have put a lock on that egg, because their baby is never seen or mentioned again after this episode.  Apparently he was a one-joke baby because I never used him/her again.

Note: If you haven't noticed, my pen name has been skillfully added to this comic strip episode due to my real name being on the paper(I used the photo fixing software called Pixlr, btw).
What?!  You are probably saying, "Sterling Holobyte is not your real name?!  I never would have guessed!" 
Oh well, it's the best I could do.  It is not that easy to match the color of old, yellowing notebook paper for some reason.

Gralen and the all-over tan.

 With summer on the way - sometime next year probably the way things are going here in Wisconsin - here is one of my "summery" strips.  Notice Gralen's changing facial structure in the second panel, and also the disappearing towel that he was holding in the first panel.  Don't know where it went.  Maybe he stuffed it in his mouth and that is why his head looks like that.

A boy(dinosaur) and his piranha

Commercial Burnout

Poor Gralen.  He's just walking down the street, whistling a happy tune, when he is witness to the bizarre spectacle of commercials coming to life right before his eyes.  And it affects him so much, seeing these people just up and break into advertising jingles, that he needs to see a psychiatrist.

I guess that is what you get when you watch too much tv as a kid.

I know this one is really hard to read, since I just seemed to cram the words into their text bubbles wherever they would fit, so I'd better do a play-by-play on what is going on:  First, Gralen is whistling, that's pretty evident.  Then he sees an old man, who after buying a bottle of Coke, breaks into the old 70's commercial and sings, "Coke adds life, to everything...."
This startles Gralen, who says, "Whew, people are crazy!"
He then witnesses a man buying a bottle of Pepsi from a little kiosk(and clerk) that looks a lot like the one that sold Coke. Hmmmm.
Anyway, the man breaks into song, and is joined by a bunch of other people(who knows where they came from) in singing the 70's Pepsi jingle, "Join the Pepsi people, feeling free, feeling free...."
This apparently is too much for even a talking dinosaur to handle, so in the last two panels, Gralen is discussing these incidents with his psychiatrist, saying "I don't know if it's real or if I'm seeing things, but they looked real...."  The psychiatrist is giving his best concerned face and saying "Hmmmm", while Gralen continues relaying the story in the last panel, where we see a shot of the sign on the door which confirms that Bill Shims is indeed a psychiatrist.   Gralen trails off saying, "And then a guy started...." and continues right off the page.

The State Of Television

Isn't this just the state of television today... and yesterday?!
It seems you can't watch anything anymore without there being a lot of "bleep bleeps".

In case this comic is hard to read:  The dialogue from the tv says:  "We now return to Scared Straight.  Note:  The crude language will be cut out."  Then "bleeps" and more "bleeps".  "We thank you for joining in with us for "Scared Straight."

Comic Strip Spinoffs

I used to love watching bugs.  I could sit for hours and hours just watching them do what they do.  Just ask my mom.  She always said she never had to worry about me running off and getting lost because she could always find me, usually staring at an ant hill.

Ants were my favorite bugs.  I guess because they were always doing something, and usually in one spot, like at their anthill.  These next three comic strips represent my attempt to spinoff Gralen and Jeddy into another comic strip about an ant named Collamer.

The first one is what I guess you could call the "pilot" episode.  It is still called "Gralen and Jeddy" even though Gralen only makes a cameo appearance at the end.  And the main character of Collamer the ant isn't even in it, just some of his friends that I planned on using in future episodes, a fly and what I think was a dung beetle:

The first actual episode of Collamer which carried his name in the title dealt with what seemed to be a staple of a lot of my cartoons: Wordplay and the misunderstandings that can occur through language:

In testament to the non-stop activity of ants comes this final episode of Collamer.
There were only two "real" episodes of Collamer, if you don't count the pilot which didn't even have Collamer in it.  I don't remember why I didn't continue with Collamer.  It could be that Gralen and Jeddy were enough "work" for me, or it could be that... ants just aren't that funny and are better just stared at for long hours.
You'll notice some bleedthrough from the "other" episode of Collamer on the opposite side of the paper:

Gralen and Jeddy - Politically Incorrect

Remember back in your youth when you could say things and everyone chalked it up to just being a kid and no one freaked out about how you might be offending someone and recommended intense therapy, tolerance training, and medication for you?  Though you may have gotten a swat on your behind or some soap in your mouth if you went too far.  If you grew up in the pre-1990's society(and some of the '80's) you probably remember times like that.

Well, I was a kid before all this PC nonsense started happening, and therein lies the rationale, and rationalization, for this episode of Gralen And Jeddy.
It is not very nice, the comment that Jessy makes.  In fact, it could be described as downright mean... if you said this in real life.  But then, that is why it is written for an amateur comic strip and said by a talking dinosaur.  It is not "really" real life.

It is just the flippant musings of a kid who must have been feeling extra rascally that day, and for one reason or another found it funny.  I still do find it kind of funny.

...Though it is kind of mean. ;)

Brain the size of a pea....

Gralen and his wife Jenny's son Jessy wasn't too bright at times, as evidenced by these three episodes of "Gralen and Jeddy". 
Jessy seems to be having a hard time figuring out that words - and the people saying them - don't always mean what they say.

Suspense is "killing" me

Heart "attack"

"Bad" back

Here on Gralen And Jeddy's Isle

I was a big fan of Gilligan's Island when I was little.  Still am(a big fan, not little).
So naturally I had to drag some of the crew of The Minnow into one of my Gralen And Jeddy episodes.
It's not very funny.  In fact, now that I look at it, it is kind of hard to understand as well.  Why are there so many Gilligans, and in one spot?  If you have a theory on that, please let me know.
I guess maybe it could be like one of those "Gilligan's Island" kind of questions that defy explanation.  Like, "Why did the Howell's bring so much money and clothes along on a 3 hour tour?"  And "If the Professor was so smart and could make just about anything out of bamboo and coconut shells, how come he couldn't fix the boat?"

Oh well, pondering is good for the brain.  I'd better go ponder some more.

Another episode, with only Gralen.  And some spiders.
Now, if you want to get technical, I've learned(just today) that some Daddy Long Legs, while they are Arachnids, aren't even spiders.  At least this one isn't, because it doesn't have two parts to its body, and the spider ones do.  Also, the Black Widow, while the classification "Theridiidae" is correct, that is just the family it belongs to.  The scientific name for it though is "Latrodectus".
At least, I think so.  I read it on the internet, and we all know that they can't put anything on the internet that isn't true.  Of course, if any Arachnologists read this post and have better information on my research, feel free to correct me in the comments below.

Since this episode is pretty readable, I won't transcribe the action. ;)