But what if Louis C.K. were a cartoon lion? What then?

My biggest artistic challenge: giving a lion a goatee.

This was my bible.

Have you heard of the comic strip Animal Crackers? You can be forgiven for saying no. This particular newspaper feature, revolving around animals who act and talk like people, was originally created in 1967 by cartoonist Roger Bollen. It's carried on today by Fred Wagner. When I was growing up, our local paper, The Flint Journal, didn't carry Animal Crackers, so I never read it.

My only brush with Animal Crackers occurred when its protagonist, Lyle Lion, showed up in a book called Draw 50 Famous Cartoons by Lee J. Ames. That book was like a sacred text to me when I was eight or nine, and I dutifully followed Ames' instruction and drew my own wobbly, lopsided picture of Lyle Lion using ovals and cylinders, but I was never compelled to track down this comic strip.

I guess this would be Animal Crackers' 50th anniversary year, but it's not getting much media attention the way Sgt. Pepper is. Shown above is the installment of the strip for July 3, 2017. It's based around a tired mother-in-law joke that would have been dated in 1967. No wonder Animal Crackers hasn't captured the public's imagination in half a century of continuous content.

I decided that what Animal Crackers needed was a more modern approach to humor, so I rewrote Lyle Lion as if he were comedian Louis C.K. That's not so far-fetched. Louie played a dog in The Secret Life Of Pets, so why not a lion? And, besides, it's not like any kids read the newspaper funnies anymore. Why can't the humor be a little more grown up? Naturally, the profanity from C.K.'s act can't be included in a daily newspaper, but this just requires some tasteful pruning of certain offensive vowels (as shown above).

Here's one more example to illustrate the concept. I promise you, my version could have been an episode of the FX series Louie.

I tried a different approach to the goatee this time. What do you think?

2016: The year in uncollected comics parodies

My tribute to the sidekicks and second stringers of the comics page.

See that tab up there, the one that says "Comics Fun!" right under the main banner? Click on that, and you'll find all the various comics-related posts on this blog. Generally, these are little spoofs and mashups of long-running newspaper comics, including (but not limited to): Dennis The Menace, Garfield, The Lockhorns, Rex Morgan, M.D., Hagar The Horrible, Blondie, Marvin, Shoe, Six Chix, and Funky Winkerbean.

I post a lot of that stuff to Twitter and Facebook, but not all of it makes it to Dead 2 Rights. So occasionally, I like to do a little roundup of comics stuff I've done recently and semi-recently. That way, people who don't follow me on social media will get to read it. That's what this post is. I was going through the files on my computer, deleting a lot of mages that I don't need anymore, and I came across some of these comics parodies. I figured, this would be an easy way to get some extra mileage out of them.

I tried to fix 'The Dinette Set,' and it defeated me.

(left) Julie Larson's original Dinette Set panel; (right) My "corrected" version.

Julie Larson's The Dinette Set, a single-panel cartoon feature, is somehow celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2015. It started in the Los Angeles Reader under the title Suburban Torture back in 1990 and became nationally syndicated under the name The Dinette Set seven years later. The feature's appeal and longevity baffle me. It's a domestic comedy focused on the adventures of two middle-aged sisters, Verla Darwin and Joy Penny, and their respective spouses and friends. It's supposed to be a gentle satire of middle class life, but it comes off as condescending and snide, and the characters are interchangeable and dull.

What really bugs me about The Dinette Set, though, is that it's a humor strip that doesn't know how to tell a joke properly. Each panel is saturated with unfunny, superfluous textual gags: T-shirt slogans, posters and signs, product labels, etc. All of this extraneous text is handwritten in the exact same style. Larson tries to distinguish each panel's primary, dialogue-based joke by writing it in larger letters, but the words push right up against the edges of the balloons, rendering them only semi-legible. The strip is a difficult-to-read eyesore.

Part of the reality of doing a syndicated newspaper comic is that each installment will contain a certain amount of clutter: the artist's signature, a date, a plug for the syndicate, and probably some mention of a promotional website, too. As distracting as these can be, they're a necessary evil. I firmly believe that jokes, at least when presented in the form of comic strips or cartoon panels, need a little breathing room. A certain amount of negative space helps. Charles Schulz, one of the masters of the form, used tons of negative space in Peanuts. But Julie Larson clutters up every square inch of her panels with unnecessary verbiage. Her jokes are suffocating. And they weren't too strong to begin with!

So I took a typical Dinette Set panel and tried to "fix" it. First, I eliminated as many props and background actors as I could without sacrificing the integrity of the scene, i.e. a baby shower with numerous guests and presents. I wanted to focus the reader's attention on the two primary characters, the ones who are actually talking to each other. I especially wanted to remove any distracting details around those characters' faces. When you're drawing a cartoon like this, you're like a director working with actors. I wanted to make sure their faces were the focal point of this scene. I also reduced the dialogue in size so that it had some air around it, while removing some redundant words in Mrs. Darwin's response. I didn't see any reason for both women to say the words "a Clapper for the baby's overhead light." Once was enough.

But my efforts were in vain. This stubborn Dinette Set panel was still pretty bad, even after my so-called "corrections." I think my version is a slight visual improvement, but the cartoon is still stifling and uninspired, and the joke still doesn't land the way it should. In desperation, I tried to convert this into a New Yorker-style cartoon with no word balloons and the dialogue rendered as a caption below the picture.

Nah. Still sucks.

What is the deal with Father's Day cards? Am I right, people?

Today, there would be sarcastic quotes around the "dear" part.

NOTE: This is a, um, "golden classic" from the vast Dead 2 Rights archives. In other words, it's a rerun from 2011. But since it's Father's Day, I figured I'd try to get some extra mileage out of it. The sentiments it expresses are as true today as they were four years ago.

If you wish to meditate upon our society's ambiguous and sometimes troubling attitudes towards fatherhood, you have an EXCITING opportunity to do so this weekend! Yep, just truck on down to your local grocery store, card shop, or pharmacy and spend some time browsing through their selection of Father's Day cards. Prepare to be astonished and possibly horrified by what you find. Now, of course, you can always go the sappy, sentimental route or the religious route. That's true of virtually every holiday or major observance. But if you want to go the "lightly humorous" route, Father's Day offers its own unique challenges. I'm sure I was not the only person who spent many minutes trying to find a card that I would not be completely mortified to send to my father and have him actually read. The card I wound up choosing this year had the following legend on its cover:

You Made Me the Person I Am Today! 

And on the inside, it read:

How Can You Sleep at Night? 

Followed, of course, by the cheerful tagline:

Happy Father's Day!

In retrospect, this seemingly-innocent little witticism is actually quite barbed and nasty. The implication is, "I am a neurotic and messed-up adult, Dad, and I blame you entirely. I am baffled by the fact that you can sleep while in possession of this horrible knowledge. Any creature capable of emotion would be tortured to the point of sleeplessness over this, but you apparently are a bloodless and unfeeling monster. Still in all, I hope you enjoy this holiday dedicated to you and your tyrranical kind." Kind of harsh, right? But believe me, it was the best one I could find. To peruse the Father's Day cards at the local store is to navigate an emotional minefield, I tell you.

The basic themes of "humorous" Father's Day cards are these:

1. Dad, you are an alcoholic who cherishes beer more than your own children.
2. You are a repellent and disgusting troll whose primary modes of self-expression are belching and flatulence.
3. You are also a perverted old lecher who lusts after younger women.
4. You use golf, television, and home improvement projects as excuses for avoiding contact with your own family.
5. At home, you are merely a useless figurehead who serves no real purpose. Knowing this, you choose to spend your time parked in a recliner in front of the television.
6. Your true importance to the family unit is as a provider of income. Money and work define you. In fact, I would like to use this very card as an opportunity to borrow money from you.

It's a pretty bleak picture, I know. But that's the basic message I get from Father's Day cards. I'm not the only one who's picked up on this. Here's a 2008 article from the Grand Rapids Press on the very same topic. I think the underlying issue with these cards is that we really do have an ambiguous attitude towards fatherhood in this country. The post-Industrial-Revolution male has no well-defined role within his own home. Women are still expected to be the ones who do the actual day-to-day raising of children. Maybe as traditional gender roles break down and new paradigms for family life are established, the public's nebulous opinion of this thing called "fatherhood" will evolve. For a check-up on how we're doing as a society on this matter, I'd suggest keeping an eye on the greeting card department!

QUIZ: Are you terrible?

Don't be confused any longer! Take this quiz and find out if you're terrible!

It's a question each of us must ponder at some time in our lives: am I truly a decent human being making a worthwhile contribution to this world... or am I a worthless piece of sentient garbage whose very existence is affront to the Lord our God? In other word: am I terrible? Let's face it: unless you clear up this issue soon, you're never going to be able to get your life back on track. And that just hurts the people around you... Steve. So what do you do? It's not like you can just go up to people and ask them, "How much do I disgust and offend you on a scale of 1 to 10?" Well, worry no longer, because the solution has been in front of your stupid, doughy face for months now: Internet personality quizzes. There is nothing these quizzes can't teach you about yourself, including whether or not you're terrible. So what are you waiting for? Answer the following questions (honestly!), tally up the results, and then use those results to see whether you should  remain a full-fledged member of society or whether you should secret yourself away somewhere in the Himalayas in order to spare the world from your sheer awfulness. This should be fun!

1. If you have children, do you ever refer to any of them as "my child?" 

2. How often do you say the word "carbs" out loud per day? Five? Ten? More than ten? 

3. Same thing, only with the word "gluten." 

4. Have you ever corrected someone on the pronunciation of the word "skiing?" 

5. Have you ever gone out of your way to point out that you read the novel on which a movie is based? 

6. Same as #2 and #3, only with "sustainable." 

7. Do you actually need those pre-movie reminders to remember to turn off your cell phone? 

8. How sensitive are you to hearing "spoilers" about the plots of TV shows? 

9. This is a crucial question: Do you use emojis? 

10. Have you ever non-ironically referred to others as "haters?" 

11. Have you ever ironically referred to others as "haters?" 

12. Do you feel that you have "haters?" 

13. Have you ever criticized someone else for being "basic?" 

14. If you answered yes to the previous question, did you do so to compensate for the fact that you yourself are basic? 

15. Have you ever -- even once -- used the word "mainstream" in a pejorative way?

Results time: If you actually take online quizzes seriously and feel that their results have any kind of validity, then I'm sorry to inform you that you are terrible. Please go far away now.

Comedy etiquette: How to be a good joke recipient

Harvey Kneeslapper and his frequent victim, Mr. Johnson, on Sesame Street.

Most of us know what to do in case of a knock knock joke. If you're not the one telling the joke, your responsibility is clear. You have two lines, both questions: "Who's there?" and "________ who?" Those are easy enough to remember. But what happens if the joke itself is in the form of a question? Are you supposed to actually answer it in an intelligent fashion, like you've really put some thought into, let's say, how many Christian Scientists it takes to change a light bulb? The answer is no.

Most likely, the joke teller just wants you to say, "I don't know." Practice saying that with me. I don't know. Good. If you really want to participate in the joke-telling process, you can say, "I don't know" and then repeat the original question, often with an emphasis on the second word. An example: "I don't know. What do you get when you cross a goat and an owl?" And then the joke-teller will tell you the punchline. That's how jokes work.

Don't try to guess at the answer. You're just wasting further time and making an already unpleasant experience worse. In fact, don't even bother with the "repeating the question" thing. Just say, "I don't know." Follow these simple guidelines, and you, too, can be an effective joke recipient.

By the way, it takes one Christian Scientist to change a light bulb. He just prays for the old bulb to start working again. And the unlikely crossbreeding of an owl and a goat would yield a hootenanny.

Good day.

Must... not... kill... family!

The product of utter boredom.

I love my family. Really I do. But they can be a major pain in the ass, if you dig what I'm burying. I'm writing this post on a Kindle from a sad, grungy motel somewhere in Indiana. Why? Because it's a holiday, that's why. 

What? Your family doesn't get together for Memorial Day because it's not something anybody does? Well, please tell that to my family. Instead of going home on Friday and enjoying some much-needed R&R, I got on an Amtrak train to Nowheresville, Indiana. It's not where I grew up, mind you. It's just where my sister and her family happen to live. 

For reasons I'll never quite grasp, my physical presence is expected on pretty much all major and minor holidays, not just Christmas and Thanksgiving. This is mainly due to my elderly father, who makes me feel incredibly guilty if I skip a holiday. As much as I enjoy seeing my family (for a few hours, anyway), I've come to sort of dread holidays in general. These trips are expensive, uncomfortable, inconvenient, and boring. The train trip is about four hours, starting from Chicago, but it feels like a small eternity. And then, once I get here, there's never anything to do. This goddamned room doesn't  even have a working TV set! 

And I don't typically go to bed at 8:00 on a Saturday night. That misshapen sketch up there, which I think started as a portrait of Neil Young before mutating into a monstrous old cowboy, should give you some indication of my degree of boredom. I'd write more, but typing on a Kindle is a stone drag. Bottom line: pray for my deliverance... and maybe ask your congressman if we can't get rid of a few holidays.

UPDATE: I  wrote the paragraph above when I was in a pretty crummy mood. In truth, it can be fun seeing the family. But I still think we get together too often. And there really is nothing to do in Indiana. The TV's still busted, in case you were wondering. Going home tomorrow... just in time for the holiday weekend to be over.

My latest time-wasting nonsense: Pretentious Satan

What if the Father of All Lies turned out to be a snotty barista?

I'm in bed with a nasty cold on this fine spring day, so I thought I'd waste my time wisely.  One of the great side effects of taking vast amounts of over-the-counter cold remedies is that you start thinking of truly asinine, ridiculous things that you might otherwise never consider. Today, for instance, I started wondering what would happen if the Devil, the very personification of evil, were a snooty, judgmental urbanite. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I am ready to present to you my findings. I submit for your approval, PRETENTIOUS SATAN!