polar bears – Bear Witness

“Lemmings in the Third Year” and Women in Science

March 5, 2014March 7, 2014jstueart1 Comment

photo by Leo Seta, Flickr, Creative Commons

For the first time, available now by itself: “Lemmings in the Third Year” for your Kindle, iPad, e-reader device.

Arctic researchers stuck in a land of talking animals, comedy, runner up to the Fountain Award. The idea started with Iron John: a Book About Men and ended up being about Women in Science instead. How did that happen?

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It was the summer of 1992 when I moved to Missouri to sit outside the gates of the University of Missouri-Columbia and hope that I got in to their Masters program. It was foolish. I can’t believe the belief I had, the sheer power of conviction that they would pick me if I waited right there. To wait the year–in order to get in-state tuition too—I worked at Taco Bell, next-door, and I was just barely getting by. I lived in a house with four roommates, but the rent was about 400 a month for a bedroom. In the fall, I saw an ad in the Maneater (the student newspaper) for a cartoonist. It paid 12 dollars a cartoon. You had to produce 2 cartoons a week, but you had an open subject, any style, whatever you wanted to do.

I was not a student at the time, but maybe they made an exception for me. I could draw. I had imagination. I could do this. But what would I write about? I remember that I was reading Iron John: A book about Men, and was very confused by it. There was a lot I loved, and I lot I argued with. Robert Bly brings that out in people–and that’s okay. I had also picked up a book about polar bears from a discount shelf inside an old Hastings store. By mashing Robert Bly and polar bears I created Captain Bly and submitted six cartoons for consideration. I got in! It meant that I had nearly 100 extra dollars a month! I was thrilled.

I kept that cartoon strip going for four years. After the year waiting outside, I did finally get into Mizzou, but I kept the Taco Bell job too. The strip started out being about men, and about bears (I didn’t have a clue that I was a gay man who loved “bears” but drawing them made me happy). But soon it got into science, and I created three biologists who journey north and are stuck in a north where all the animals talk to them.

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Seeing Things: a Captain Bly cartoon story of polar bears uploaded

September 19, 2009September 19, 2009jstueart4 Comments

I used to be a cartoonist. I had a comic strip for 4 years in the local student paper, The Maneater, at the University of Missouri. I found that a visitor to Whitehorse had kindly uploaded some of my strips from a book called Captain Bly, 1994, as a way to show off my nifty book. Thanks, Aniko! So I decided to upload a short 6 page story not included in the book. (The pic on the left is actually a pastel of the same bears–these bears are reciting Shakespeare’s The Tempest)

I’m still working on those bears. They appeared a little in my short story “Lemmings in the Third Year” and I’m trying to work on a novel about them.

Below is a short story I did for a Comic Strip 101 class I had with Frank Stack, an artist and cartoonist teaching there. He is credited with the first underground comic book, The Adventures of Jesus. He was a great teacher. Had us draw comic strips and pin them to the wall for critique and then he would go about busting us! He thought we were a great class though. Full of potential. I’ve been playing with my cartooning roots, and working around in some other mediums. But here is that short story.