Malls of my youth

Christmas is in full swing with the Mall Elf strips that are rerunning on Gocomics.com. In today’s strip I show a giant, ugly mall clock. A reader commented that malls don’t have clocks any more, which is true when I think about it. I guess this was an unconscious “tribute” to the malls of my youth.

There was a “so-ugly-it’s-beautiful” clock in an ancient mall in my hometown. Midtown Plaza was the first downtown, indoor mall in the US. It just got torn down and I hope the clock was preserved.

(sound of me googling)

Yep, it did. He’s a pic of the clock.

In 2001 I did the above piece for the non-defunct Rochester Magazine. It’s about a child’s memories of visiting Santa’s Mountain (I think that’s what it was called) and riding the super-cool monorail. It was a very common childhood experience where I grew up, yet I never did it. Although, I did work in downtown Rochester for a number of years and my co-workers and I would talk about trying to get on it as adults. (We were denied.)

(The last “real” job I had was right downtown and I’d often go over to the dollar store in Midtown when I was bored. And there I got some spectacular finds – some actually “famous” amongst my circle of friends – including the can of Tuxedo Crabmeat and the “Original Oil Painting.” These will be featured prominently in the “Virtual Studio Tour” I’ve got planned to post.)

The Mummy Returns…and Returns…and Returns…

One of my steady gigs is doing illustrations for a children’s archaeological magazine called Dig. I draw for a section called “Ask Dr Dig” where kids write in and ask questions of a real archaeologist. The one thing I’ve learned from this is that kids sure do like mummies and want to know all about them. And so I end up drawing a lot of them. (Just taking a glance through my archive files, I’ve done eight in the last 2 1/2 years.) Here’s a sampling: