Make Mine Mike

Of all the cartoons I've drawn, this is one of my favorites. I was sketching a lot at the time and making slight improvements in my style. I’m no Van Gogh or Trudeau, I know. But this came out fairly well for me, both visually and story-wise, even if its appeal doesn’t go beyond my familial unit. See, to appreciate the jokes, it would probably require seeing The Pope of Greenwich Village a million times like me and my mom and dad did. Knowing all the great lines:

“What do you need a fancy suit for? You got no job to wear it to.”

“You ever hear of artificial inspiration?”

“It’s the genes that do all the runnin’. The horse’s got nuttin’ to do with it.”

“You woke her.”

“I took $500 off the shylocks to see Frank Sinatra at the Garden... sat two seats from Tony Bennett. That's success, Pop.”

“They took my t’umb!”

And then understanding how the plight of the movie’s two small-time hustlers paralleled my parents and their entrepreneurial exploits a while back. Their business didn’t exactly take off, but hey, we still had each other, not to mention the memories, the movie, and for what it’s worth, this cartoon.