Robot Beach by Matt Forcum

I’ve got a secret list of cartoonists who I think are just about the most talented guys working today. Every once in a while, I get to virtually “rub elbows” with one of the guys on that list. When that happens I become one of the most excited little balls of energy you are likely to see all day. Mike Witmer was one of the first cartoonists to stop by my little site and encourage me in my work. And Mike is one of the cartoonists at the very top of that list.

Mike is the amazing mind behind Pinkerton Park. He describes his comic as “A furry little drunken soap opera.” A very apt description for sure. His characters tear through the strip with wreckless abandon and leave behind a trail of shamelessness and hilarity.

Mike’s style is fantastic. His characters are composed of sharp purposeful lines that are carefully crafted yet remain very loose and expressive. They are at once huggably soft, and rough around the edges. I love that certain hand-crafted look in comics and fewer and fewer of them have that feel nowadays. It’s very refreshing to see it in Mike’s work. (PLUS, he is one of the only people I have ever seen that has been able to pull off the whole arms-missing-from-body-when-not-in-use thing.)

The writing mirrors the artwork beautifully. These characters can charge off on an alcohol-fueled zombie squirrel hunt, yet Mike never looses track of the warmth that makes the strip so wonderful to come back to each day.

Perhaps it is that line between the “good” and the “Bad-to-the-bone” that has attracted me to Pinkerton Park. It feels like the natural evolution of the classic newspaper strip as it makes its transition from print to the web. Pinkerton feels like the kind of strip that Calvin would have drawn when he finally grew up and placed Hobbes safely away on a bookshelf.

If you enjoy my strip, and are among the very few who aren’t already reading Pinkerton Park, I highly encourage you to head over there and check it out. You will not be disappointed.

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