Meeting my creative ancestors
Hallå pals!
Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same.
Welcome to all you new subscribers! There are now more than 80 of us here, I’m so glad to have all of you around. I love that I get to blabber about anything I want once a week and have you all read it.
I’m edging closer to the 100th issue of this newsletter and so I’m thinking about whether I can do something special for it. Would love to know if you have any thoughts or ideas for it. I might just look back at the past 100 issues and see if I can discover something by doing that.
Some loose ideas:
Start an additional monthly paid newsletter?
Collect the best stuff in a PDF?
An Indie Notebook wallpaper?
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Meeting my creative ancestors
I went to Paris to see one of my favorite bands this weekend, they were amazing. But I didn’t expect that I’d get to see three of my creative ancestors (sort of).
Lord Huron. At a live concert.
I discovered their music through the magic of random Youtube recommendations during a late school-night when I should have been asleep. I listened to their music on repeat, half asleep during my commutes for 2 years straight. Their tunes and lyrics seeped into my DNA.
There’s no way I can describe in words how important these guys have been to me. It’s better if you listen to them yourself. Strange Trails might be the easiest album to start from.
Bill Watterson, in this original Calvin & Hobbes strip.
The Pompidou museum currently has a huge exhibition dedicated to comics. They have two original C&H strips there! I never thought I would get to see one unless I’d search them up in the US, so I feel incredibly lucky that I happened to be in town while this was going on.
Calvin & Hobbes might be the only reason I ever got into drawing comic strips. It was the only one I really liked as a kid. And the mix of humor and philosophical stuff, I think I learned to appreciate it thanks to this. The humor pulled me in and the profundity made me love it.
Charles Schulz, or Peanuts, also as an original comic strip.
This might seem strange, but as a kid I didn’t like Peanuts. I watched the cartoons with my grand parents but the comic strips didn’t click with me at all. They felt too dull compared to Calvin & Hobbes.
I can think of a couple reasons… Peanuts is not very dynamic, there’s very little excitement in the strip. At least if you compare the panel layout between this Peanuts strip and the Calvin & Hobbes. That comparison applies to almost everything between them.
And then there’s the writing itself. C&H is loud and lively. Peanuts is mostly subtle and careful. I didn’t care or have the patience for that type of subtlety as a kid.
Now I’ve come to love those differences between the strips. Bill Watterson only published Calvin & Hobbes for 10 years, he did it with intensity and made a ruckus. Peanuts went on for fifty years, quite but steadfast.
I could elaborate on that, cause they have so many things in common and yet they are both so different. I’ll save that for sometime in the future.
When I looked at the strips I felt as if I’m part of a creative family tree. Maybe I’ll just be a small offshoot that ends with me. But I am part of the tree and a tree can’t help growing if it gets sun and water.
With all that said, I hope you’ll get the chance to feel close to your creative ancestors too.
❓ Question time
Who are your creative ancestors?
Feel free to tell me in the comments or by replying to this email! And even if you don’t tell me, at least figure it out for yourself.
Panel of the week
(from Space Deer)
Thank you for reading Indie Notebook! The best way to support me right now is by sharing this newsletter with a friend.
Take care and have a creative week.
Cool!
"as a kid I didn’t like Peanuts"
I wonder whether things that we have to *learn* to like were ever really good at all. The answer is probably yes ;)
"Who are your creative ancestors?"
I need to make a whole family tree... it's big. Jon Blow, Hayao Miyazaki, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Leonardo Da Vinci, Wolfram von Funk (cube world creator). There are more o.o
Maybe for the big 100 celebration you read back all of your newsletters on live stream. I'm happy you're enjoying yourself creatively with this news letter and your comic. I've been hard at work making progress on cool stuff :)
Cool way to summarize what seems to have been a cool weekend!
Lord Huron is a band I've heard of but never really knew their music. They're playing from my computer now -- without knowing much about music, it sounds pretty folk-like to me. Lively and sincere.
About your big 100th, man, I don't know. Maybe do a top 5 of your previous posts or something. Maybe a look back at what it's been like to do this and where you see it going next?
My creative ancestors... I feel like I would have to mention the band "Incubus" which has been my favorite band for most of my life. Alan Moore for sure -- reading "Watchmen" was life-changing. In terms of poetry, it would be a Danish expressionistic poet from 100 years ago. Oh, and the Wachowskis for sure; "The Matrix" film series was my everything for a couple of years and has shaped me more than I can probably imagine.
Calvin and Hobbes was also a big thing for me for a couple of years. In the spirit of Calvin, it inspired me to draw a lot of crazy and over the top alien invasions and things like that in the corners of my homework -- lol.