I'm comfortable exchanging forum messages with my age juniors because I've always been young at heart, or something along those lines, I guess. But, while not quite the eldest cartoonist using DrunkDuck, I'm definitely in the Geezer zone, having entered my fifties this summer just past. Oh woe is me and other such laments, eh?

Nah! Aside from the accumulated aches and pains of a a lifetime not spent taking real good care of my body, it really doesn't seem any different to me, being fifty rather than thirty-five or even twenty. It's still me inside this body, only I'm moving a bit slower nowadays.

One thing though that I do feel is very different from the more youthful DD artists is the feeling of 'Wow, I've got a comic strip of my very own!' which is the feeling of awe I experience every time I upload a new page or take a gander at my small stash of online pages. It simply boggles my itty bitty brain that after decades of wanting to produce a cartoon strip I finally have one online.

You see, such a thing was a near impossibility until very recently for two reasons; first, web-based software technology had to become domesticated enough for geezers to understand it and, second, we had to become aware of the existence of web-based comics and cartoon strips. The absolute truth on my part is that I didn't even know that such things existed outside of newspapers running an online version of their in-house stuff, until about two years ago - or maybe even a little less than that.

I stumbled across independent web-comics totally by accident when I followed a link that a writer placed in an article that was discussing Internet based art in general. You could have knocked me over with a feather when my curiosity revealed the world that we on DrunkDuck know and enjoy.

The thing is that I WANTED to be a cartoonist for most of my life. But I soon became aware that I didn't have the self-discipline to simultaneously pursue general art studies, while figuring out the rules of cartooning and wrestling with the trials and tribulations so much a part and parcel of life itself. As for do it yourself sources, there were NO books available on the subject thirty to thirty-five years ago; or if there were, neither I nor the local librarians knew about them.

I have a 1978 edition of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Lee and Buscema but had to wait until I was out of the military service in 1981 to get it at a used book store. But even had I known about it in 1978 and had been able to get my hand on a copy I would have been around twenty at the time and doing my very best to put aside 'kid' stuff like doing artwork in favor of working my way up the job ladder at the local steel and iron works factory.

"Hey CharleyHorse," growled Steelhead Patterson as he flipped the reeking work glove in a bin and wiped his sweat streaked face with the back of his hand, "You wanna get ripped after the shift tonight? I know a great bar we can go to and shoot some pool and watch some television."

"Naw, I jus' wanna go home after horsing around steel for eight hours and draw delicate pictures of gorgeous guys and sweet-bodied females acting crazy."

Believe me, such a confession would have flown like a lead balloon. It was a different time and place, a very different world back then. If a 'normal' guy had an interest in cartooning and worked at the blue collar level then he'd better damn well hide the addiction . . . and wash his hands after indulging.

So, the freedom to draw whatever the heck you want and to post it for all the world to see - or at least the tiny portion of it connected to the DD sites - is heady stuff and I relish the freedom to, well, to flex my artistic wings and to fly at last.

The other thing is that nasty old 'learning curve' thingy that educators purport to know about where youngsters are concerned, and then they act as if they never heard about it come time to hand out the grades. Yeah, the 'learning curve'. That's why I never sent anything off to any of the cartoon syndicates years and years ago. I'm not entirely an idiot and I could readily see that neither my art styling nor storytelling abilities or gag-a-day methods were at a professional's level of result nor output. Even when I could struggle up to something approaching the requisite skill - even for humorous-based stuff - I couldn't maintain the interest for page after page after page of the stuff. I wasn't driven like a pro has to be driven, i wasn't disciplined enough.

But the beauty of sites like DrunkDuck is that everybody is allowed to exist at their own skills level and output rate. Everybody is encouraged to produce something, but how good it is or how often you update isn't fixed in the rules book anywhere. You smell that wonderful smell and feel that glorious breeze brushing fingers across your skin? It's freedom and opportunity!

Hey, I'm a member of the geezer's union and I know that at my age and my personal circumstances I'm not going to turn pro with any of my art work; but I no longer care. I just want to do the stuff and upload it for others to look at and to read as the urge strikes them. But as a geeze in residence I wanted to share with you, the reader, what I find so wonderful about the Internet and about sites such as the DrunkDuck.

Now I need to get back to work. Take care and have fun.

CharleyHorse

Hey Charley,

You get it! You're in the right place with the right people. You seem to fit in just fine, as far as I can see. :)

I'm probably older than quite a few on DD (I'm 38, married 12 years, 2 kids) but I have learned so much from interacting with so many different people. Really and truly, the age differences really don't matter much. It's about the community. And this community offers support and encouragement and fresh ideas and perspectives.

I've only been a part of it since May and it has been extremely rewarding and I have made many friends here. B)

CharleyHorse
But the beauty of sites like DrunkDuck is that everybody is allowed to exist at their own skills level and output rate. Everybody is encouraged to produce something, but how good it is or how often you update isn't fixed in the rules book anywhere. You smell that wonderful smell and feel that glorious breeze brushing fingers across your skin? It's freedom and opportunity!

Hey, I'm a member of the geezer's union and I know that at my age and my personal circumstances I'm not going to turn pro with any of my art work; but I no longer care. I just want to do the stuff and upload it for others to look at and to read as the urge strikes them. But as a geeze in residence I wanted to share with you, the reader, what I find so wonderful about the Internet and about sites such as the DrunkDuck.

Now I need to get back to work. Take care and have fun.

Yes, Allen , I totally agree about the community. DrunkDuck feels like home to me. I am constantly humbled by our younger artists, but in a good way. Many of them possess far more technical knowledge than I and already have a far better attitude and work ethic regarding their art form than I had at their ages. It's wonderful and heady stuff.

DrunkDuck itself is beautiful though -- as are the other free host sites scattered across the internet -- for their sheer existence. I long ago knew that I would never see my art in print unless I just gave it away to charity organizations hungry for topical art on the subject matter of THEIR choice, and had pretty much put away my pen nibs and watercolors for good. I was still an artist, because short of using dynamite on oneself there seems no way to get rid of the art bug, but I was doing other art forms and was content enough. Every once in a while I would dabble in cartooning or comic book style work again just because I couldn't entirely make the urges disappear, but I no longer took the indulgence seriously.

I'm not taking it seriously today; not in that, if I get good at this I'll eventually turn pro seriousness that people of my generation felt had to be attached to any hobby, at least in potentiality; but I am very sincere about making my stuff look and read as professionally as possible simply because doing so makes me feel good about myself. DrunkDuck allows me the opportunity to play at being a professional, and for that, I am very grateful. It's like having grown up in a desert environment, practicing one's swimming skills on dry land for a lifetime, and then finally discovering one day that somebody is building an olympic-sized swimming pool next door and is going to allow all residents to swim to their heart's content.

I am gratefully enjoying the ever living heck out of this opportunity.

CharleyHorse
But the beauty of sites like DrunkDuck is that everybody is allowed to exist at their own skills level and output rate. Everybody is encouraged to produce something, but how good it is or how often you update isn't fixed in the rules book anywhere. You smell that wonderful smell and feel that glorious breeze brushing fingers across your skin? It's freedom and opportunity!

Amen, man :)

Geezer 'toonists

I feel like one.

lol!

Yes, Lastcall, the freedom to express and the glorious reward of seeing your expression beheld by others. Hey, I think about these things! I realize that I failed to emphasize something important in my top post, and that is the burning desire to get your material out where other people can see it.

I mean, sure I worked at cartooning on and off for decades, but aside from the personal satisfaction of discovering that I could strike about the sixty-five to seventy percent mark of the professional's quality range what good was it since nobody else could see the work and comment on it . . . or just see it period, for that matter?

As I think about it, although some art forms are carefully labeled performance art, all is performance art to a degree in that art sitting in a closet somewhere is just potential bonfire material currently taking up storage space.

There's that old saw, 'If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it strike the ground, did it make a noise?'

Well, sure it did but we are talking art here, yes? So if the tree fell and nobody was there to hear it or see it then the entire performance was wasted. Ditto with art that never sees the light of day or other's eyes outside family members who are sort of obligated to clap their hands in exaggerated glee and say to your face, "Oh what a clever artist your are!"

So I am astonished, amazed, flabberghasted that at last there is a forum outside of the professional's market place or the charity venue for sequential art. Perfect -- or sometimes imperfect -- strangers can now look at your art form and decide for themselves if it stirs them in some way. It's all performance art to some extent!

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Yeah Kyupol, well gezerdome is sort of an open club format, the only stipulation is time in life, and if a person is prematurely cranky enough they can probably squeeze in the door before their official time, so to speak.

But are all 'seasoned' people cranky? Hmmmm . . . the honest truth? Most of us are to an extent simply because after enough time on earth, one's patience begins to seep away. Things that would have just flowed off your back like water at one time begin to make your lip edges droop downwards and your eyebrows come to a low V between your brow ridges. Snarl! Or, rather, grump, grump, grump!

Actually I make a conscious effort not to become a cranky old man as I continue to age. This is because it becomes a narcotic, crankiness does, and the more you allow yourself to indulge in it the more you feel like indulging in it and soon, even your friends want nothing to do with you . . . unless, of course, it's your turn to stand for the next round of drinks at the local pub.

Still, there are a great things that can conspire to make a fellow feel prematurely elderly; bad health, being dirt poor amidst a comparatively wealthy and seemingly oblivious population, being alone when you don't want to be alone, and simply having all your goals in life go belly-up on you in a relentlessly methodical fashion. Oh yeah, a great many things can make a human feel old before his or her time. It's a depressing subject, isn't it?

As I age, I try to accept the bitter taste of iffy health and a lifetime of trashed goals, the rubble trail of which snakes behind me into the chronological distance like a crippled serpent, and recall what one anonymous fool once said while standing on an executioner's platform, having his neck circled by a noose, and alternatively humming and whistling a jaunty tune. When asked how he could possibly be in a cheerful frame of mind just seconds before the trapdoors were to spring apart beneath his feet, he replied with a constricted shoulder shrug, "Meh! Where there is life there is hope!" funny, but he never answered any follow-up questions.

And so it goes.

while i have the chance id like to say that i completely agree on the note that dd is an awsome enviroment for artists of all types. i mean hell we are all members here because we are naturally connected through comics. and although not everyone will like every style or comic that comes to drunkduck, its stilla great community to associate with others. like for me, im a self taught artist for the most part and im actually fairly new to the idea of creating comic books, and what i mean by that is i havent really ever had a project thats made it to the stages that i will be on drunkduck soon enough. but being selftaught and virtually still unexposed to this comicbooking world i still have a lot to learn, and drunkduck is an awsome place for me to pick up tips and tricks people offer aswell as communicate with people who are actually making lives off this kind of work. but thats the expression "live and learn".


now in concerns to charleyhorse's comment on age, you are as old as you feel. we all have the ability to create a work of art, i mean hell i was drawing before i could walk and in my lifetime probably killed off an entire forest in the paper ive gone through, but ive seen people half my age whip out stuff i could only dream of doing, but there is something i always try to keep in mind when im going up against these "upcoming youngsters" and that it the fact that ive seen more in life then them, expierienced more, and learned more. and so they may be more talentedin someway but there is still something they havent thought of yet, its the job of the elder to think of it first. but back to my main point, anyone can create something amazing, even something of "pro" standards but its the mental and physical effort we put forth. age has nothing to do with anything.

darn well stated jimmy_genocide! Age definitely is a state of mind. I know an eighty-three year old who not only can, but does, beat me at wood carving in both quality and quantity but can work me into the ground when it comes to just plain being productively busy all the time and enjoying life. He exercises, he dances with his wife, he does woodworking and woodcarving and he keeps his home in immaculate physical condition. The man is a rock, and is a leading example of 'you are only as old as you feel."

Conversely, I knew guys in their early twenties who acted like sour, bitter old men. What kind of way is that to go through life?

Sure, life has a way of pooping all over a person's parade. During my life time I fully intended - and trained my heart out - to become a professional martial arts instructor with my own school; and in fact the goal was within reach when my traitorous body quite on me. I discovered that I could continue hard core martial arts training only if I were also prepared to get fitted for a wheelchair-bound existence for the remainder of my lifespan.

Well, I could turn bitter and sour like those other young fellows I mentioned above or shrug it off, hitch up my trousers, and tackle some other major project. So what did I do? I compromised. I spent two years feeling sorry for myself and then I marched forth and learned Taijiquan got serious about studying Taoism and dabbled in a bit of M.A. teaching on the side while I started learning woodworking.

Sadly, the cratering of my martial arts dreams and the revelation that I have serious and non-operable spinal problems are not remotely the greatest tragedies in my life nor represent the most devastating death of dreams. But so what? When you can do nothing to alter the shape of your life you can at least control your attitude towards the neat little tricks that life plays on you. That's what I've concentrated on doing. Mostly I am successful at this attitude perspective; mostly, but not always.

The point remains sound, however; you can either face life with a healthy attitude or help the vagaries of life grind you down. I, personally, would rather develop a good attitude in general and then work on making it an even better attitude set as I age.