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"My son listed you as his favorite author in his 'school years' journal. Thank you for inspiring him with your talent." Laura, a mother from New York |
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Archive for the ‘Author’s Purpose’ Category
30 on Earth Day
Written on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025 [permanent link]Today, Earth Day 2025, is the 30th anniversary of the first appearance of Chester the Crab.
I never planned this!
In 1995, I had just gotten my dream job of drawing five political cartoons a week for an American newspaper. THAT was my career goal. I had absorbed political cartoons in collected editions at the public library as a kid, I cut out my favorites and put them in a scrapbook, I drew them for the high school newspaper. And now, just five years out of college, I had joined the political smart aleck fraternity!!!
The Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia, had already encouraged my creativity for three years. My reporting assignments were fascinating (the archaeological search for Bacon’s Vault in Williamsburg!), my editors had just the right guiding touch, and the newsroom was full of smart, collaborative people. We were on the small end of the national chain of Chicago Tribune newspapers, but we punched well above our weight, as the old boxing saying goes. I was happy to add to that energy by contributing political cartoons on state and local issues.
And then something else happened. A door that I wasn’t looking for swung open.
The editors who were so supportive of my cartooning asked me to pitch in something fun for kids to the week-long coverage they planned for the 25th anniversary of Earth Day. I myself was a kid when the first years of Earth Day promoted environmental awareness in the 1970s; the annual event had a big impact on my own thinking about conservation and science. So now, as a new father, I gladly agreed to pitch in to the newspaper’s anniversary coverage in 1995.
An educational comic strip for kids needs a narrator, right? I drafted some ideas. I thought the turtle with the recycling triangle of arrows on his shell was pretty clever! I love turtles! But the editors urged me to think of a mascot that was more local, more unique. LOCAL was our bread and butter at the Daily Press. I am thankful they pushed me to think harder and reach higher.
Chesapeake Bay blue crabs had been an environmental symbol in eastern Virginia for several decades. Over-fishing and pesticide runoff from farms in Virginia and Maryland had caused the blue crab population to decline badly. But there was a sense of hope in 1995: serious environmental efforts were underway to revive this fascinating species. The timing for me was right. A Chesapeake Bay blue crab would make a great MC for a 25th anniversary celebration of Earth Day.
Chester got four episodes in that week’s paper to talk about environmental history and science. I had to work and make creative choices quickly (I was still drawing the daily political cartoons!), and I was working in sharp pain on the living room floor, drawing while on my belly (I had thrown my back out playing baseball with Daily Press friends!). Would Chester be crabby? No, making him grumpy would be too cliché; instead, I gave him my own cheerful and curious voice – that would make it easier to write him. Would Chester have the subtle and gorgeous coloring of a real blue crab? No, that would take too long to color, and I wouldn’t be able to imitate how beautiful blue crabs are anyway, so FLAT TEAL IT WAS! I love teal.
The Earth Day content came out. It all made a big splash. And we caught grownups reading and talking about Chester the Crab’s part of the coverage. It felt good to contribute something fun and unique.
But there were no plans to continue Chester as an educational comic. It was just an Earth Day 1995 assignment.
I ran through the open door. Why??? I already had my dream job! Sure, I devoured comic books. And I loved “Peanuts” like most of the kids in my generation did. But I had accepted in high school that I’d never draw Batman (skyscrapers are very, very boring to draw), and my attempt at selling a funny comic strip in the early 1990s – pizza delivery guy “Johnny Uh-Oh!” – didn’t go anywhere. Why would I keep drawing a comic strip starring Chester?
Because he’s pretty fun to hang out with. The character gave me a place to be my full self. He could be quirky and corny and curious. At first the follow-up episodes were haphazard. One was a full page of Chester giving parents advice on how to help their children behave and learn at a live theater performance! Another episode explained how a particular stock market thingy works! In 1997, I convinced the editors to give Chester a regular, weekly space, and for three years that was my life: drawing five political cartoons a week for the grownups and one Chester goof lesson for anyone who wanted to learn which came first, crunchy or creamy peanut butter.
The full switchover came in 1999, when the editors asked Chester to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Williamsburg, with him narrating a big tabloid section of history. That was too much fun for me, a history major. I gave up the political cartoons about new historical events so I could focus on drawing Chester episodes about historical politics. These Chester episodes ran five days a week during the school year and covered a quarter of a newspaper page! In 2003, the gracious Daily Press leaders agreed that I could reprint these episodes in book form, and Chester Comix LLC was born.
I’ve learned a lot of things from Chester in the past 30 years. I hope you have, too.
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CIVIL or WAR?
Written on Sunday, August 25th, 2024 [permanent link]American democracy is not made out of the marble pillars in Washington, D.C.
American democracy is not measured by the strength of our No. 1 economy or our No. 1 military.
And it’s not guaranteed by what the Founders wrote 250 years ago on pieces of paper.
Our self-government is nothing more solid than an idea.
It’s like Tinker Bell: if we believe in our representative government, then it lives on. If we stop believing in it, it fades away among our personal daily distractions of shopping for groceries, answering e-mails and getting the kids to practice.
Many Americans have felt this fragility in the most recent 10 years of American history. I hope it’s some comfort to say: we’ve been here before. History records that our self-government has failed twice since the Declaration of Independence. The first form of our democracy outlined by the Continental Congress failed within 10 years, which caused the redo in Philadelphia in 1787 that gave us the U.S. Constitution. Then our government and society fell apart in the 1850s, and it took a civil war to rededicate what our self-government meant.
Since 1999, I’ve tried to tell historical stories as if the reader is living through them in the present tense. Because no tomorrow is guaranteed. No success is guaranteed. We all have choices to make today that will lead to other choices tomorrow. And then someone else later will look back and call our choices “history.” In 2023 and 2024, it felt time to take a closer look at the choices Americans made in the 1850s that chipped away at our representative democracy until finally someone chose to fire artillery at a U.S. Army fort in South Carolina.
My new “CIVIL or WAR?” is my third Choice Comic and is meant for readers a bit older than my “Civil War, vol. 1” and “Civil War, vol. 2” books speak to. Here is where a middle school or high school student can consider the hard questions that we all still grapple with today: What does it mean to be a citizen of the United States? How big or small should a group of voters be to feel like self-government really answers to what we want? How do we balance the wants of the majority of citizens with the civil rights of the minority of citizens?
I hope you enjoy the storytelling. Because “history” never ends . . .
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Buckeye Blitz!
Written on Wednesday, December 13th, 2023 [permanent link]I am closing the 20th anniversary year of Chester Comix LLC with a gift to myself.
In 20 years and 38 books, I’ve covered the big stuff that kids need to know in school. The Civil War! George Washington! World War II! The Civil Rights Movement! Harriet Tubman! I am now free to draw quirkier things and fill in the odd and the less well-known stories between the big stuff. It’s a delicious freedom to draw whatever history interests me the most.
Chester began as a Virginia history storyteller. As I grew the business, the blue crab expanded his range and told a local history in Massachusetts and published a North Carolina history comic. The smartest busines right now would be to work on a state history of California or New York—nice, big markets with lots of well-funded public schools full of teachers who could use a comic about their state history!
But at this anniversary moment, I found that my patriotism for my home state was too strong. It was time to tell the story of Ohio and weave my own story into it. Since I moved back in 2015, it’s been a joy to search out the local details of hundreds of years of Ohio history. I’ve enjoyed wandering through Ohio towns that I never set foot in before. History is always informed by what we see and feel today, and I have also been inspired to do this new book by observing new history unfold over these eight years back in the Buckeye land.
I felt this so strongly that I made myself serve as Chester’s companion this time! I’ve never done that before, but this project was too perfectly personal. One example of that: After I moved back, my hometown newspaper was kind enough to do a profile of me and my historical cartooning; the story ran on the same day that the paper’s front page announced that the second-to-last big factory in my hometown was closing.
Now OHIO: Crossroad of the Nation is published. Will this book sell? Over 20 years, I’ve gotten only one Ohio museum to carry Chester Comix. Will this be the book that cracks open this market?
Here’s the secret: I don’t care! Bad business, I know. But I am already happy that the book exists. I’m sending copies to friends and family. It’s a gift back to all the people who contributed to this wonderful life I’ve had. And it’s a gift to myself. Any sales of the book now will be as delicious as putting a chocolate covering over a ball of peanut butter.
— Hey! I just got an order from a museum in New Concord, Ohio! WOOOOOT!!!
Posted in Author's Purpose, Comix Creation | Comments Off on Buckeye Blitz!
