RISING FROM THE ASHES... sort of.

Hey gang!

Well, I recently discovered a site called Reocities which is dedicated to resurrecting all the web sites that were once a part of the old Geocities free web hosting service.  My first web site was with Geocities, so I was pretty excited to see if it had risen from the ashes, but, alas, while the address is active, the site is empty of all content.

The site was actually started by my buddy, John McFetridge. Back in the early 90s he was active in the Canadian film industry and had written a movie about a cartoonist whose cartoon creation was a ill-tempered beaver named Jackson. In the movie Jackson appears as an animated character only the cartoonist can see. He asked me if I'd be interested in providing a bunch of cartoons featuring Jackson that could be used to promote the script and would be featured as the cartoons drawn by the film's main character should the movie be made. This sounded like a fun project and, I have to admit, I had a great time doing it. The film unfortunately didn't find funding and was never produced. Somewhere in all the time he spent running to lawyers and meeting with the money people John set up the Jackson Beaver Web Site. When the film fell through he passed the site on to me.

My hope here was to link to the original web site, but that ain't gonna happen, so instead I thought I'd post a few of my favourite Jackson Beaver adventures. So, here we go!

Jackson exposes the bullshit of the PC movement in this, the first JB cartoon I ever did.

A lot of people didn't get this cartoon. I always had to explain its connection to the old I Love Lucy show. Even then people rarely found it very funny, but I like it, so here it is.



These next three cartoons have what I like to think of as "celebrity guests" from the world of cartooning.



This one really cracks me up.

This last one is a straight-up gag, but I think it works really well and says a lot about the Jackson Beaver character.



There are other JB cartoons, but this will do for now. Maybe I'll post more at some future date.

As for John McFetridge, Jackson's creator, he's now a critically acclaimed crime novelist. You can find his books for sale online here (Canada) and here (U.S.). You can find his blog here. January Magazine did a great interview with John, and you can find that here.

That's it, people - go back to whatever it was you were doing (except for you, Kevin, you sick bastard).

Later!


MYSTERIOUS UPDATE: Last night after reading this post my wife asked me why I hadn't include the Jackson Beaver Cow Poem, and that's when I realized the cow peom cartoon was missing! And it's not the only one! (Cue eerie theremin music.)