Ed Piskor and Figure Drawing

Jim Rugg and Ed Piskor discuss the importance of figure drawing in my work (transcribed from Cartoonists Kayfabe videos):

The Banal Ballad of Mick Mischief: A Recent Retrofitted Retread!

Mick Mischief came about as a commission from a third party that fell through. The story, which I wrote and drew entirely on my own, was a humorous take on the source material, which was little more than a pastiche of adventure and supernatural pulp hero elements, thrown against a wall rather artlessly, I might add (apart from the contributions of several talented illustrators, who I hope got paid in full, unlike me).

DandyDonTV: Dr. Don Simpson Comics and Stories on YouTube

Here is a partial but growing list of YouTube videos featuring interviews with me or responses to my comics, me and other artists inking my drawings, and more, in apparent order. Hopefully I will add to this list and put it into some coherent order. (Please add videos I've overlooked in the comments below! Thanks.) Listen at your own discretion:

X-AMOUNT of COMICS [the 1963: WhenElse?! Annual] FAQ (SPOILER ALERT)

As followers on my social media know, I’ve been working on my satirical “ending” to 1963 all year (the working title has been the 1963: WhenElse?! Annual; now, it has been rechristened X-Amount of Comics). As of this writing (mid-December, 2022), I’ve penciled and lettered all of some 71 pages of the story and inked more than 30 of them. I am planning a wraparound cover (the original “cover” features profanity I’d rather not censor), and I may yet add certain pinups and shorter one-page strips, along with notes and text, at the end, rounding it out to an 80-page project. Follow me on Facebook for updates.

Why the 1963: WhenElse?! Annual—and Why Not

As followers of my Facebook page may know, I’ve recently opened a can-of-worms project with the working title 1963: WhenElse? Annual. What they may be asking is: What triggered this? Why now?

1989: A Transition Year for Drawing Clarissa

This is a sketch of Clarissa James in 1989, and one of the very first sketches putting her in the Ms. Megaton Man uniform that would become her trademark. Originally a minor character from the ten-issue Megaton Man comic book series (issue #4, to be exact), Clarissa became a core cast member with #11 (otherwise known as The Return of Megaton Man #1). After that three-issue series ended, she gained Megapowers of her own in Megaton Man Meets the Uncategorizable X+Thems #1. This sketch was a tryout of sorts to see if her transition to megahero, and specifically a female version of Megaton Man, would work.

Thirty Years of Ms. Megaton Man: 1989 to 2019!

Here is the first page of sketches I did of Clarissa James in 1989 - up to that point a minor Civilian (Megapowerless) character in the cast of my Megaton Man comics - as Ms. Megaton Man. It was in an old hardbound sketchbook I took around to shows to collect sketches of interpretations of my characters from fellow pros (I've posted some of the more memorable ones here and there).

Fun With Texture: Demo from a Cartooning Workshop

This sheet was drawn on Strathmore medium drawing 400 series 9" x 12" creme paper as a demonstration for a cartooning sketchbook workshop at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 2008. I enjoyed those workshops immensely. They were usually held in summer, although in recent years I became too busy with graduate school to be able to offer them. For years the museum refused to offer cartooning instruction, insisting by policy that educational offerings coincide with works on view in the museum galleries. Finally, in 2004, with the R. Crumb retrospective as part of the Carnegie International that year, I was invited to give instruction.

 
Since then the museum has canceled adult education workshops in drawing, painting, ceramics and other traditional media in favor of lectures relating to contemporary works of art. It is nothing short of tragic to see the museum art world forsake interactive drawing, the basis of all the visual arts (including architecture, cinematic storytelling/storyboarding, theatrical set and costume design, etc.) for passive dispensation of theory. The proper response to art is artmaking, not idle attendance at a lecture.

Two CMAs and the Second Commandment: A Digression

The current artworld, centered in public museums housed in large, monumental neoclassical buildings, have run the risk of succumbing to an ideology centered on their own self-importance as elite palaces of culture rather than democratic institutions of municipal and civic engagement. Cleveland's museum early in its history built a palace but emphasized education for all classes of Clevelanders, and despite the impulse to move to the right, has managed to successfully balance the two; but Pittsburgh, unfortunately, has not. Under its current leadership, Pittsburgh's CMA (as opposed to Cleveland's CMA) has embraced the ideology of contemporaneity in which various pseudo-Dada practices form the basis of high-flown intellectual discourse. But such mere pseudo-political conversations as can result from the contemplation of found objects, installations, performance and the like, while often interesting and verbally challenging, are rarely as rich as the contemplation of visual art that are works of the mind, as manually-generated images almost by the very means of their origins almost inherently are.

The mistake that over-educated, verbally-adept critics, curators, theorists, and art historians continually make is to disregard visual composition such as only the hand produces as thoughtless, or at least not as thinking on a level comparable with words. Old-fashioned craft, according to this ideology, is reserved only for the wordsmith and never the image maker, who is invariably regarded as a capitalist sell-out for rendering illusions corresponding to apparent reality, or at the very least mechanical and uncritical like a camera. Likewise, such honorifics as thinker and genius are reserved for the writer of texts, and even the title artist, when bestowed upon maker of conversation pieces, is not done without the most arch and patronizing irony. The bias for text over image runs very deep in our culture, going back at least to the Judao-Christian second commandment, which Max Horkheimer claimed as the basis and justification for contemporary critical theory.*

In any case, one hopes that the ascendance of logos and the iconoclastic impulse that has subtended much enthusiasm for modern and contemporary art over the past century or more will prove to be only a temporary aberration in our culture, and for a return of drawing to the educational environment of the city of Pittsburgh, and to the artworld nationally and internationally, in the very near future.

*See Max Horheimer, letter to Otto O. Herz, September 1, 1969, in Gesammelte Schriften, volume 18 Briefwechsel 1949-1973 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1996) p. 743; cited in Sven Lüttken, "Monotheism à la Mode," in Alexander Dumbadze and Suzanne Hudson, Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 304, 310, note 11. Lüttken attempts to make the rather unconvincing argument that a total ban on representative art is a valid form of criticism of the image and the proper role critical inquiry, suggesting the temperament of critical theorists.

For more on drawing, see The Withering Away of Drawing. For more on the Dumbadze anthology, see After Critical Thinking.

An Abrasive Myth: Women Are Fired for Traits Men Are Admired For?

A great deal of speculation has swirled in the media in the wake of the firing of The New York Times' first female executive editor, Jill Abramson, and whether and to what extent gender played in this move. One theory has it that Abramson became increasingly contentious with her bosses after realizing that male predecessors in her position received greater financial compensation, even hiring a lawyer; another has it that she took umbrage at the increasing intrusions made by the business side of the operation into the journalistic sanctity of the newsroom. It was frequently remarked that Abramson had a personally gruff and insensitive management style that inspired little loyalty among her staff and strained relations with partners on the business side of the operation. Of course, this is a situation where those with the most knowledge aren't talking, and those who are talking the most know next to nothing. Commentators may never have enough facts about this matter to support the level of significance they want to read into it, but that isn't stopping them.

Jill Abramson © Don Simpson, all rights reserved. Layout and ink.

I don't read The New York Times  on a regular basis, and know of Jill Abramson only from her one or two appearances on Charlie Rose in recent years. From this fleeting exposure, I found her to be intelligent and likeable as a media personality. Personally, I find the narrative of an inevitable conflict between business and journalism sufficient to explain her misfortune. My curiosity, which is not high, is satisfied with this.

What I find outrageous about this situation has nothing to do with the particulars of the matter, but with some of the speculation, which, as noted, can only be made in ignorance of the particulars.

Inevitably, the trope has been floated, on NPR and in other media outlets that, once again, a woman has been fired for demonstrating traits that are found to be wholly admirable in men. These traits include an autocratic management style, insensitivity, callousness, a tendency to run over opposition, generally obnoxious behavior, pushiness, etc.

Again, I have no particular knowledge of Jill Abramson's personal management style, or to what extent it may have played in her termination; in any case this is beside the point.

But what I would like to know is, who are all these men who are supposedly admired for being rude, obnoxious, autocratic, etc., and who are these people who are doing all the admiring? In my experience, no one finds such abrasive traits admirable in anyone, male or female. Indeed, people in positions of authority (and even people not in positions of authority) who demonstrate such traits may be suffered or endured. But admired? I hardly think so.

On the other hand, it is easy to see why certain people may want to believe this old trope. The prospect of evening up real or perceived past injustices, endured when men presumably behaved like untrammeled pigs in some mythical Madmen era, top the list.


In my last workplace, the overwhelming majority of my coworkers were polite, considerate, and cooperative to a fault. The rare few who exhibited the kinds of negative traits described above were certainly not admired. And it so happens that they were not male. In fact, in my experience in the modern grown up workplace, there has been zero tolerance for male misbehavior of any sort, whereas rudeness, obnoxiousness, bullying, etc. seems to be tolerated if not enabled in women, presumably out of fear of facing the kinds of accusations of backlash that have surfaced in the Abramson case. Such enabling made my last workplace, otherwise congenial and collegial, terribly uncomfortable and at times utterly demoralizing, not only for myself but for many of my coworkers.

This is more than a shame. It is a tragedy. Most of all for the women who are encouraged and enabled to be rude, obnoxious, abrasive, etc., because, according to the myth, we admire these traits in men. Such traits are repulsive, in male and female alike. No one admires these traits in anyone, and we need to retire this old trope.