XXXOOO
Last week in Toronto, the Koffler Centre of the Arts hosted the great Art Spiegelman for a talk about what the %@&*! happened with comics…
Your humble lagomorph blogger was asked to contribute a thought or two in comic form about the influence Art had on my Art.
It’s all about the gnawing teeth. That’s what makes for a great toon avatar.
Ty the Guy OUT!
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In the world of mice and rats there is only MOUSE RAT
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For last week’s snide, fan-baiting Bun Toon, click here.
For Bun Toons from the past…click the Rabbit.
Ty Templeton's ART LAND!! 
Please don’t take this the wrong way – seriously, I mean no disrespect whatsoever – but I don’t understand this strip. Was it meant as a compliment or an insult?
I’m being serious here. This is NOT trolling. I’ve read and respected your Bun Toons for years, and you certainly aren’t shy about expressing your opinions, positive, negative, or otherwise. You have a beautifully sarcastic British-Canadian sense of humor, which has kept me coming back since the first time I luckily stumbled across ‘Stig’. But I admit sometimes the subtleties and subtext of Brit humor escapes me. In this case, I don’t quite get the jist.
Here’s my confusion. In panel two you say, “It’s a pretty neat trick,” but it _could_ be construed as, “It’s a cheap stunt.” Panel three’s “Thank god I stole it outright,” could be read it as “Speigelman stole the idea from others.” The last panel is particularly confusing: Are you depicting yourself as a rat as a form of self-deprecation, or are you making a commentary about Speigelman’s choice to wear a “Maus” mask in the graphic novel?
I have NO vested interest in Art Speigelman – many people have pointed out the positives and negatives in his work, and I see both sides of the argument. Nor am I judging you for your opinion, because (as I said) I respect your work. All I’m asking for is clarification.
I truly hope you respond, because this will continue drive me nuts.
An always loyal fan,
A.T.
First off, thanks for the kind words…as to your confusion about the strip… “Brilliant trick” and “Cheap stunt” don’t mean the same thing to me. “brilliant trick”, I imagine, is me referring to a successful magical illusion performed, which is at the centre of art. and I’m not sure how “Thank god I stole it outright” can be read as a comment about Spiegelman stealing something. I was referencing the idea that I stole the “trick” of dressing up as a cartoon animal from Mr. Maus, and thus, was a bit of a rat for doing so. It was all self deprecating comedy, in which I reveal the bunny is secretly a rodent, not a lagomorph.