I’ve been teaching a comics camp at Richmond Art Center this summer, for kids from around 7 to 12 years old. People of this age will try out anything and ask weird questions and make the most wild projects, and it is very good for my heart and mind to mix around with them.

On the first day of camp we talk about Characters. We also create a camp mascot. The first mascot turned out to be a duck by day and wolf by night, named Thomas Joe Duckington. Tommy Joe had a nemesis Bob, who was maybe a cube and maybe a toaster.

In the second camp the mascot was Bear Bear, a tiny bear with a pumpkin on their head and a mechanical leg they had stolen from their nemesis, Trash Can Robot.

I tell the kids often: Anything can be a character. And they really go for it. The world is very alive to a young person.

Since I was little I have always tended to give personalities to things around me (I mean, that is kind of the basis of the whole Brainwaves strip). This of course is not a new idea, Japanese Shintoism and a host of indigenous cultures in the Americas and elsewhere have this characteristic. I suspect it’s a means of acknowledging the alive-ness of the world, and how everything is constantly forming, re-forming, and interacting. It’s a way of being grateful for and also respectful of the systems and forces around us.

In the second camp we also created “Heuse” (pronounced HEWSE and I think there’s supposed to be two dots over the u and the S wasn’t an S but a big swirly thing) who was part moose and part frog and who jumped so high they landed on a planet inhabited by an alien human named Joby.

One thing I noticed was that they were totally unconcerned about gender. I would ask, is this a boy or girl or what? And they would say “It doesn’t matter” or “Neither” or something like that. Which I thought was interesting and also hopeful, in a way.

Things Of The Week

An artist who creates a whole suite of characters, and plays all of them themselves.

A quiz to find out which Muppet you are (has some drug references and stuff in there)

This all put me in mind of the vintage Wilkins Coffee ads that Jim Henson made - they are kind of dark!

Books, Art, Cartoons

All Three Sloth and Manatee books are at Radiator Comics!!

Brainwaves cartoons collection 1: The Fountain of Stuff at BookShop

Brainwaves cartoons collection 2: Best of Brainwaves Volume Two: Mom, Dad, I'm a Cat at BookShop

License my cartoons: CartoonStock are terrific and I’ve been with them forever

Art Prints: Capybaras, Moose, Baphomet, more in the Print Shop at INPRNT who also are great and have cards too

Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.

May you not blow up, may you be the character you want to be in life, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy

“Wherever we go, we are friends” - Sloth and Manatee