Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, March 2, 2009

Far, far too often, when revisiting a comic I am confronted with painfully obvious adjustments I could have made — by way of example, this week’s comic. A rare glimmer of positive economic news for Michigan comes from our burgeoning film industry. Recent tax breaks and tweaks designed to lure movie makers seems to be working. (Gran Turino was shot in Michigan.) In terms of actual jobs, the film industry is still quite small, which fit nicely with actors tending to be very short in real life. (My brother once told me that one could easily trip over Sylvester Stallone.) But any job growth contrasts strongly with the ongoing shedding of jobs from our hoary automotive and (vital to West Michigan) office furniture industries. So what I should have done was drawn the two guys as very, very old men with the second one saying, “yeah, well — at least he’s not shrinking.” See? Obvious.

But then on rare occasion, I come across a comic where I would change nothing. Last week I went to a meeting for the Society for Technical Communications (which is actually a lot more fun than the stern name implies), and one of the members, Sandy, handed me a notebook of old newsletters. We’re considering making them available at some point on the chapter website. Back in newsletter days (when people professed not to enjoy reading on the computer), I did an occasional cartoon. When flipping through I found this one from 1994. Made me laugh…