Happy ten years! Can it really be that long since the Fifth Anniversary Clip Show Spectacular? As a devoted fan since 2001, I’ve waited way too long to say thank you.
Just the existence of Henry Darger makes my head spin. The facts of him. The art? It’s stunning but so’s a left to the jaw. Like a nasty drug that gives you nothing but flashbacks. Unfortunately, there has to be a healthy mind behind a piece of art for it to connect with healthy minds.
I spent my last year of higher edumacation studying Darger’s life and work. Concluded at the end of it that he was just another guy permanently traumatized in childhood by turn-of-the-century institutions. Also concluded that his landlord and landlord’s wife were exploitive as hell.
This is not as popular or exciting a theory as “homg he was a kiddie diddler”, I know. COLLEGE, WHY HAVE YOU CHEATED ME
Equating Darger with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Diane Arbus, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, Mark Rothko and Vincent Van Gogh as a basis for argument pretty much starts at Fail.
I’d never heard of Henry Darger, but with all these weird comments about him I want to look into his work and see if it is at all worth reading. But, I can’t seem to find any of the textual components, just scattered illustrations and tons of “reviews” and “notes” about his work.
How did everyone else find any of his work to evaluate one way or the other? It seems lots of people in this thread have read some of it or something, but I can’t find anything online or at my local libraries.
I love you Dorothy Gamble. We all do. For God’s sake, keep on living the dream and making references I don’t understand. You are a ray of ho[e in a bleak and unfealing world. :)
g, Dorothy; neither Henry Darger nor Lewis Carroll were actually pedophiles. Both had a rather unusual fascination with little girls, but neither ever exhibited any pedophilic behavior, let alone any sexual interest of any kind in any humans, from what I’ve read.
At the same time, it’s a perfectly unreasonable leap of illogic to turn that into “pedophilia” in Cat’s mind, so I’ve no quibble with the line.
Before the month is out, let me add my congratulations on ten years of consistent and excellent work.
I described Bad Decision Dinosaur to a colleague I met at Origins Game Fair who had never heard of the strip. From the mere description of the Napoleon episode alone, she tweeted “BAD DECISION DINOSAUR IS FULL OF WIN!”
Which looked at the right way is an excellent sign. Keep up the amazing work, Dorothy, you are a benefit to humankind.
There are only the people who stick around long enough – the people who are good from the minute they start doing something get stuck somewhere in the middle and neither you nor I know who they are.
I highly disagree. There a people who are just plain good. Charles Dickens, Miguel Cervantes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, Lord Byron, Soren Kierkegaard, et cetera. Those are just authors, but they’re the only artists I know about really, other than bands, but–well, I almost don’t consider them artists. There are people who just start out damned good and just keep being good. Charles Dickens wrote his best stuff on the fly. He also wrote his worst stuff that way, but whatever. I think the rest of us are just jealous of people like that.
g is right. It was little girls with penises. I recently watched a documentary on him titled “In the Realms of the Unreal”. I haven’t really researched him much before that so it’s hard to really say what his “thing” was.
I’ll admit the first time i saw his work, “Woah, Pedo!” pretty much summed up my reaction. The more you learn about him, the more it starts to seem that that’s not the case at all. He was certainly fascinated by children, though he reportedly almost never spoke to or interacted with them. I know absolutely f-all about psychology but i felt that he wasn’t really concerned with “children” the beings as much as “Children” the idea.
His writing centered around children (particularly girls) who were as strong, smart and capable as any adult and who were invariably struggling against oppression, enslavement or outright slaughter at the hands of adults.
Random Art Student hinted at actual abuse suffered by Darger as a child. To say he came from hella circumstances would be an understatement. By all accounts, he lived very much in his own head. His life, daily routine, work, seemed all to be for the point of his fantasy: mundane resource gathering to allow him to continue trying to save his childhood self, to continue to build the childhood he never lived.
The symbolism seems to support this. The ‘bad’ adults wear mortar boards or “professor hats” as he calls them. Obvious garb given Darger’s past with turn of the century Catholic schools, institutes for “feeble minded children” and educational authority figures in general. His equating of nudity to more celebratory, uninhibited moments might speak to his own shame shich was a tool often used keep people in check (again, think turn on the century religious institution).
As for his idea of the female form? Maybe he was genuinely ignorant and simply filling in the blanks with what he knew. There was never any mention of him taking a partner or showing interest in other people even non-sexually.
Sorry to put all this on a message board for a (brilliant) comic.
Phil had it right. We love You, our very own ray of ho[e. Thanks for showing the sort of dedication i can barely fathom. It’s earned you the dedication of the rest of us.
At least Darger knew how to add tails to humans so they exited the bottom of the sacrum, showing some familiarity with hybrid anatomy, instead of having them come out of the spinal lumbar region like some weird sort of strap on. He was just a man before his time, given a lot of the Manga and Deviant Art accounts out there.
June 23, 2009
Congratulations on ten years!
I just bumped a three year old desktop background for today’s strip.
June 23, 2009
HA! The ultimate truth about Henry Darger.
June 23, 2009
Happy ten years! Can it really be that long since the Fifth Anniversary Clip Show Spectacular? As a devoted fan since 2001, I’ve waited way too long to say thank you.
June 23, 2009
OUCH! too close to life!
June 23, 2009
Just the existence of Henry Darger makes my head spin. The facts of him. The art? It’s stunning but so’s a left to the jaw. Like a nasty drug that gives you nothing but flashbacks. Unfortunately, there has to be a healthy mind behind a piece of art for it to connect with healthy minds.
June 23, 2009
Oh, and Happy Anniversary. I’ve enjoyed every picture and every word. That I understood.
June 23, 2009
wait wait wait is this about a webcomic or tenure?
June 23, 2009
I love your comic! Thanks for still being around!
If you had quit years ago, I probably would never have discovered it just recently.
June 23, 2009
congrats!
June 23, 2009
Nice.
June 23, 2009
The Road Less Traveled
I quit 10 years ago and a day hasn’t gone by when I didn’t regret it.
Best wishes for your next 10!
— MrJM
June 23, 2009
I spent my last year of higher edumacation studying Darger’s life and work. Concluded at the end of it that he was just another guy permanently traumatized in childhood by turn-of-the-century institutions. Also concluded that his landlord and landlord’s wife were exploitive as hell.
This is not as popular or exciting a theory as “homg he was a kiddie diddler”, I know. COLLEGE, WHY HAVE YOU CHEATED ME
June 23, 2009
the flaming lips joke is priceless… now people are looking at me for laughing at work….
June 23, 2009
@Ross Hershberger: “Unfortunately, there has to be a healthy mind behind a piece of art for it to connect with healthy minds.”
I couldn’t agree less! F. Scott Fitzgerald? Diane Arbus? Elvis Presley? Kurt Cobain? Mark Rothko? Vincent Van Gogh?
If you don’t like Darger’s work, dislike it on its own merits, not because you’re making a judgment about his character.
More to the point, thanks Dorothy for Cat and Girl. Je love!
June 23, 2009
Congrats. Can’t believe i’ve been reading since – oh god, must be 2001 or 2002.
June 23, 2009
If Henry Darger had quit, Dave Sim would not have come in second.
June 23, 2009
TEN MORE YEARS!
June 23, 2009
What what? Wow. That’s good comics!
June 23, 2009
Surely this comic’s point isn’t self-referential. I’ve been reading for six years and I don’t think I could do without it.
June 23, 2009
Thank you for 10 years worth of comics.
June 24, 2009
You realise that if you stopped making Cat and Girl, the average quality of webcomics would dip below the point where they’re of any value whatsoever?
June 24, 2009
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday, dear Cat and Girl.
Happy birthday to you.
June 24, 2009
Congratulations.
Eleven more years to go before this comic can legally purchase alcohol. Keep on trucking!
June 24, 2009
Equating Darger with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Diane Arbus, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, Mark Rothko and Vincent Van Gogh as a basis for argument pretty much starts at Fail.
June 24, 2009
Great work on 10 years! Hope to be congratulating you in another 10. C&G is one of the guaranteed bright spots in my day.
June 24, 2009
I’d never heard of Henry Darger, but with all these weird comments about him I want to look into his work and see if it is at all worth reading. But, I can’t seem to find any of the textual components, just scattered illustrations and tons of “reviews” and “notes” about his work.
How did everyone else find any of his work to evaluate one way or the other? It seems lots of people in this thread have read some of it or something, but I can’t find anything online or at my local libraries.
June 24, 2009
Thank you so much Dorothy. You’re teh awesome, but you sure are no hero. Cat&Girl forever.
June 24, 2009
I love you Dorothy Gamble. We all do. For God’s sake, keep on living the dream and making references I don’t understand. You are a ray of ho[e in a bleak and unfealing world. :)
June 24, 2009
Hope, I should say. Damn gin
June 25, 2009
wait, Henry Darger a pedophile? has anyone posited this besides you? I’d never heard this before, it doesn’t seem to be part of his bio…
June 25, 2009
Well, he constructed an entire mythology out of little girls in underpants. I guess he could plead the Lewis Carroll amendment.
I do envy his body of work. And there is no pun there.
June 25, 2009
g, Dorothy; neither Henry Darger nor Lewis Carroll were actually pedophiles. Both had a rather unusual fascination with little girls, but neither ever exhibited any pedophilic behavior, let alone any sexual interest of any kind in any humans, from what I’ve read.
At the same time, it’s a perfectly unreasonable leap of illogic to turn that into “pedophilia” in Cat’s mind, so I’ve no quibble with the line.
June 25, 2009
It’s easier to fit in a word balloon too.
June 26, 2009
Congrats on the 10 years! Cat and Girl will surely survive another decade. =]
June 29, 2009
Before the month is out, let me add my congratulations on ten years of consistent and excellent work.
I described Bad Decision Dinosaur to a colleague I met at Origins Game Fair who had never heard of the strip. From the mere description of the Napoleon episode alone, she tweeted “BAD DECISION DINOSAUR IS FULL OF WIN!”
Which looked at the right way is an excellent sign. Keep up the amazing work, Dorothy, you are a benefit to humankind.
June 30, 2009
i’m glad you went with crazy <3
September 21, 2009
Actually, Dorothy, it wasn’t little girls in underpants — it was little girls with penises.
September 29, 2009
There are only the people who stick around long enough – the people who are good from the minute they start doing something get stuck somewhere in the middle and neither you nor I know who they are.
February 8, 2010
I highly disagree. There a people who are just plain good. Charles Dickens, Miguel Cervantes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, Lord Byron, Soren Kierkegaard, et cetera. Those are just authors, but they’re the only artists I know about really, other than bands, but–well, I almost don’t consider them artists. There are people who just start out damned good and just keep being good. Charles Dickens wrote his best stuff on the fly. He also wrote his worst stuff that way, but whatever. I think the rest of us are just jealous of people like that.
February 11, 2010
g is right. It was little girls with penises. I recently watched a documentary on him titled “In the Realms of the Unreal”. I haven’t really researched him much before that so it’s hard to really say what his “thing” was.
I’ll admit the first time i saw his work, “Woah, Pedo!” pretty much summed up my reaction. The more you learn about him, the more it starts to seem that that’s not the case at all. He was certainly fascinated by children, though he reportedly almost never spoke to or interacted with them. I know absolutely f-all about psychology but i felt that he wasn’t really concerned with “children” the beings as much as “Children” the idea.
His writing centered around children (particularly girls) who were as strong, smart and capable as any adult and who were invariably struggling against oppression, enslavement or outright slaughter at the hands of adults.
Random Art Student hinted at actual abuse suffered by Darger as a child. To say he came from hella circumstances would be an understatement. By all accounts, he lived very much in his own head. His life, daily routine, work, seemed all to be for the point of his fantasy: mundane resource gathering to allow him to continue trying to save his childhood self, to continue to build the childhood he never lived.
The symbolism seems to support this. The ‘bad’ adults wear mortar boards or “professor hats” as he calls them. Obvious garb given Darger’s past with turn of the century Catholic schools, institutes for “feeble minded children” and educational authority figures in general. His equating of nudity to more celebratory, uninhibited moments might speak to his own shame shich was a tool often used keep people in check (again, think turn on the century religious institution).
As for his idea of the female form? Maybe he was genuinely ignorant and simply filling in the blanks with what he knew. There was never any mention of him taking a partner or showing interest in other people even non-sexually.
Sorry to put all this on a message board for a (brilliant) comic.
Phil had it right. We love You, our very own ray of ho[e. Thanks for showing the sort of dedication i can barely fathom. It’s earned you the dedication of the rest of us.
October 4, 2013
At least Darger knew how to add tails to humans so they exited the bottom of the sacrum, showing some familiarity with hybrid anatomy, instead of having them come out of the spinal lumbar region like some weird sort of strap on. He was just a man before his time, given a lot of the Manga and Deviant Art accounts out there.