Taking a break from Cancer...

While in the hospital my brother lent me a couple of comic art books written (illustrated) by Scott McCloud:

Understanding Comics
Making Comics
Reinventing Comics

McCloud's website: www.scottmccloud.com

I breezed thru them once I was home and gleaned some new insight into a few things but I don't know if or how I will ever use the info because I don't seem to have the drive to "cartoon" right now. But...reading BONE by Jeff Smith www.boneville.com has reminded me what I still love about comics.

BONE (so far, it is 1300 pages remember) has been a rip roaring adventure (with some humor mixed in) involving three cousins recently sent packing out of Boneville. They're separated from each other in the woods and have yet to find each other together at the same time, in the same place...anyway the story is full of suspense, adventure, humor, these horrible Rat-Creatures, a dragon, a cute girl and her strange grandmother who races cows and of course the Bone cousins: Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone.

I can almost imagine Hollywood trying to takle this and casting, Bruce Willis as Phoney Bone, Elijah Wood as Fone Bone and Steve Carell as Smiley Bone. Maybe Jim Carey or Mike Myers as Smiley but as popular as I have learned this comic still is it would be something the fan boys might come out and see, even if just out of curiosity. Because hollywood would probably screw it up.

I've been surfing cartoonist blogs and websites on purpose the last couple days because I have been otherwise too focused on having Hodgkins. I used to check these sites out all the time but kind of lost interest in my pursuit of information on what, how, why, etc on RCC and HL.

Except for this blog, I only just updated an actual journal a few days ago and even that wasn't exactly "writing". With all the free time I've had since coming home from the hospital I have not used my time creatively. So it seems I haven't been actually "Living with Cancer" I've been consumed about having it.

I should still be the same part time wanna-be writer/cartoonist, dad and husband who currently has Hodgkins and who had Kidney Cancer waiting for Chemo to start...but I became obsessed with having the disease and knowing everything there is to know about it rather than just having it.

Too much infomation on the world wide web to dig thru. So I redirected my surfing habits away from cancer sites and blogs and back to cartoonists and such.

Dawn brought my attention to all of this obsessive research I was doing and thank God she did, because I was losing sight of who I was in the midst of having this disease. It was becoming bigger than than I was.

And that had to stop.

Just a few sites I check almost daily.
www.dailycartoonist.com
www.on-my-desk.blogspot.com (it's interesting to see how creative people use their work space)
http://andertoons.typepad.com/cartoon_blog
http://artistxero.deviantart.com (my brother is Artist Xero. This is his page.)

Be well.