Eyes or Ears?

You tell me. Whatever they are, they're pretty ostentatious.

Happy Ice Cream Cone Man

Wearing an Indian headdress, perhaps? Or maybe he's a grossly-deformed porpoise, and that's his blowhole spouting.

Rain Dance

This may be a shaman doing a rain dance (the thing over his right hand looks like a storm cloud sending down a bolt of lightning), or it might be an African witch doctor (if the things on the left are in fact skulls on poles). Whatever he is, he sure is shaking those tambourines!

The Beast with Nine Fingers

Either that or he's brandishing a large spider.

Manic (Possible) Robot with Hat

I bring up the possibility of this fellow being a robot because he seems to have rows of rivets across his torso, and, though it doesn't reproduce here, he is drawn entirely in silver and gold crayon. I can't say how what appears to be a frog (or possibly bird) leg fits with my theory. This is the next page in the typing paper pad after The Happy Fisherman.

Man with Floppy Head

I don't think his head is supposed to be a banana, or that those are Frankenstein neck-bolts sticking out, but I'm not going to rule either possibility out. I'm curious whether the appendage at left was intended as leg or tail, but I can't provide a definitive answer to that question, either.

The Happy Fisherman

Actually, the fisherman's mood seems pretty neutral. That fish is pretty happy, though.

Man with Large Ears

It almost seems as if he was intended as a cyclops, but I thought better of it at the last moment and shoehorned one in on the side.

Huh?

There seems to have been a lot of thought put into this...chart(?), but what it all means is opaque to me. Some might scoff at the mathematical equation at the bottom... but did you stop to think that perhaps I was working with roman numerals? Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Man with Moustache

I'm impressed that he can keep on grinning with that broken arm. Not to mention the fact that his right hand looks more like a foot.

Talcum-Powder Cowboy

My grandmother has a small desk that is off limits to all, crammed to the gills with papers and photos and mementos. I'm actually going to have to pack all of its content into boxes and put it in storage, as her house has fallen into disrepair with her not in residence any longer, and it's too moist and moldy for it to safely remain. Among those items are several toys of my father's that she would let me handle on occasion. One of them is a red plastic talcum powder bottle shaped like a stylized cowboy, with a white cowboy hat as a cap. While I've neglected to draw that hat, I'm pretty certain that this drawing is based on that bottle.

Walking Letters

These are (I believe) inspired by my Sesame Street Walking Letters set, of which this is the only image I could find that wasn't an eBay listing (though this will probably find something to show you). The actual toys didn't have faces, but I claim artistic license. Don't know what I was attempting to spell with that "GABO" business.

DOGGY!

Maybe it's Snoopy, maybe not. The first two dogs I had were both named Snoopy.

Christmas List (?)

Maybe a Christmas list, or possibly just writing down stuff that I liked (I think that I already would have gotten the farm by this point). From the window after I'd developed the ability to write (sort of), but still was shaky on the whole spelling thing. I was reading very early, but my motor skills were a little slow catching up.

Grand Theft Auto

Quick, Martha...call the Mitchells! Dennis has finally gone too far! While there is a face drawn on his belly in such a fashion as to suggest that it was originally the driver's head, that cowlick leaves no doubt in my mind that this is intended to be a Dennis the Menace cartoon. Unless it's a girl with a ponytail. Or a clown wearing a hat with a big musical note attached. Nonetheless, I say it's Dennis. So there!

Snowman and Three-Legged Thing

A couple of earlier pieces today. Firstly, a snowman. I can state this with certainty, as my mother thoughtfully noted my intent. This is on the back of a legal pad that has several pieces dated "Jan. 1972". I believe that this may be inspired by the snowman we built on St. Patrick's day that year, who wore a cardboard Leprechaun's hat, with facial features made from gummed paper shamrock labels, though this drawing lacks the detail necessary to confirm it.
From a few months earlier, we find a ...a thing with three legs and one eye. Because bilateral symmetry is for sissies.
I think maybe it was going to be a bird originally, but that's pretty much just baseless conjecture on my part.

The Happy Man and the Blasé Mouse

Sounds like a plausible enough title for a children's book, wouldn't you say? It's not that likely, but it's within the realm of possibility that this is an attempt to draw Rat Fink. My grandmother had a stack of 1963-65 Boy's Life magazines in a drawer that I liked to look at, and I have a couple drawings from later on that are definitely based on a cover of one of those. They were chock-full of Roth and Weird-Ohs ads. The only hitch being that at that age, I was scared of them, so I don't know how likely it is that I'd have been drawing from them. The man next to him looks sort of like late-'80s era Michael Jackson, but that's obviously coincidental...Michael was still recognizably human at this point.

Dragon with Hat

I'm not sure whether that's fire or garlic breath emanating from his gaping maw, but either way, this is a formidable fellow indeed. Plus, he's wearing the classical cartoon animal outfit of hat and bowtie (though that's a pretty sloppily-tied knot. I don't know what's going on with his right hand...maybe a game of one-handed cat's cradle?

Shapes of Things

Here we find me putting a friendly face on the cold, scientific discipline of geometry. Special attention should be paid to the conjoined twins, who are set apart from the group, and seemingly not all that happy about it. This is four or five years before I would first read Very Special People, but the concerns of "freaks" were even then important to me. Also, note another instance in my work of the "two hats" motif. An alternate interpretation: these are single-celled organisms, and the unhappy one is simply reacting to the stress of mitosis. Unlikely, though, because I drew enough amoebas to know that they'd have cilia, not legs

"Dady"

A portrait of Mr.John Terry Thompson, Jr., who was born sixty years ago today in Anderson, South Carolina, and without whose love, parental skills, and genetic material, this blog would not be possible.