Daddy Lightning!

What is Daddy Lightning?

I don't know! That's why I'm posting this. This is about How to Say Everything (HTSE), even when you don't know what you want to say.

At the birth of my daughter in Dec 09, I was surprised by my mad drive to buy a new sketchbook and to doodle up a new comic strip around my new life.

I began sketching the imagery in my head: father and baby walking a lonely landscape; but also sketching the things most recently in my life memory and body: screaming babies, sleeplessness, feeding, swaddling, wanting waffles. All the changes that happen when you have a newborn. Mixing cartoon language with real feelings and impressions, looking for that "Ecstatic Truth" of Werner Herzog's, not some boring verisimilitude.

For a week I was sure it was a new comic strip- a Sunday style weekly where I could play off the page compositions that a large Sunday-style field allows. But I've been so burned commercially by comic strips, I thought SCREW THAT! But that leaves me wondering: what is it.

I am posting sketches here to show the HTSE process: finding images: looking for the before and after, writing after images, mixing random ideas and images. As I let this project develop into what it wants to be, I'll post more. Feel free to browse more sketches here: http://www.tomhart.net/daddyLightning/