Abstracted

One thing about some of the places I've hung out, like Interior Alaska, Montana, Georgia, Maine etc. is the preponderance of regional art. Which drives some people crazy, or can be embraced as part of the folksy charm. Only in heavily overpopulated urban areas that are severed from any connection with the environment does creative expression become somewhat ingrown and begins to cannibalize itself.

That said I do have a Jackson Pollock doodled out somewhere that features some creative gulls. And then there's the Jackson Pollack fish gag that nobody got either.

The original doodle for this panel phrased the caption differently, but as luck would have it, this particular panel wound up directly opposite another ("Owl Signal") with the exact same line, so it was edited into something slightly different.  

Update: a funny thing happened on the way to the comics pages - maybe a month after drawing this particular panel I was perusing the pages of Down East Magazine (trolling for my debut) and lo & behold, here was a cartoon done by legendary cartoonist Bill Woodman.

 
Besides pointing up the inherent risks when playing with well-worn cliches, this is a case-in-point that great minds think alike there's nothing original in the world left to make fun of art about (just variations on a theme). Is it the same? Not really, but close enough. Will I submit it now? No, but it's offered up here instead as a perfect way to illustrate the occasional and inevitable overlaps that will happen, and a legitimate counter to the oft-repeated claims of "plagiarism" that occur in cartooning. Another of these freak coincidences recently happened with an editorial piece drawn by Jeff Stahler that echoed a headline written by another reporter - read the details at The Daily Cartoonist.