We begin, literally, at the beginning. Artie just got back from India by way of France, where he’d been granted access to study the ancient Vedic Sanskrit comics collection at the University of Maharashtra Mumbai, and then flew to France where he received a private tour of the Lascaux Caves near Montignac. He had fled Seattle for several weeks in order to avoid processing Marv’s passing, but also, I think to avoid the messiness surrounding our transition of ownership to SynrSys Corp., along with the influx of new people with names he’d never remember, and the Human Resources indoctrination sessions the rest of us were forced to suffer through without him. He came back Sunday night with a monster case of jet lag and Delhi belly, but he says the first-hand access to some of the world’s oldest preserved single-panel comic concepts was more than worth it. Apparently he gathered an entire curriculum for the summer course he teaches at UW called “Archetypical Patterns in Single-Panel Comics, 1914–1946”. I’m not sure how studying ancient Vedic Sanskrit comics and the cave paintings of Stone Age France applies to the syllabus necessarily, but some grant money came through and it opened a few doors, so I guess he’ll work it in. He expensed the rest of the trip on his new corporate American Express card, because he says he uncovered a goldmine and has a lifetime of new panel ideas. His first big insight — after two weeks spent in white gloves handling precious fragments from stone tablets, and shards of petrified wooden planks, and faded sheets of linen parchment, under the watchful eye of Dr. Amit Bhat, the UMM’s ancient comics curator — was the prevalence of “When I was your age…” gags in the prehistoric Bhimbetka rock shelters, dating as far back as mid-6th Century BC. Which was surprising because people didn’t tend to live very long in those days, so “When I was your age” gags would be limited to an age difference of maybe a decade and a half — and also because technology wasn’t exactly advancing at lightning speed, so presumably there was a lot less material to work with. Yet the repeated variations on this particular gag throughout these ancient comics reveal a kind of pre-Iron Age irony that hasn’t been much explored — in the Western literature anyway. Although there have been disputed attempts to ascribe comic elements to several of the cave drawings of Lascaux, where Artie observed firsthand those famed aurochs depicted as the oafs of the Paleolithic era, treated by the other animals with a certain sly condescension. Neanderthals, too, were painted by Homo sapiens with (arguably) exaggerated features to some comedic effect — yet in Artie’s analysis, those primitive works lack the comic sophistication on display in the Mumbai collection, and their influence on single-panel comic development have not, to date, withstood meaningful peer review.

Artie’s second insight from Mumbai: Vedic Sanskrit had no written component — it pre-dated Brahmi script — so those comic ideas, variations of which have been found from recently unearthed stone shelters in Bhimbetka all the way to the Bay of Bengal, were drawn in ochre on cave walls and the captions were then passed down for generations by word of mouth, and only later preserved on the stone tablets, wooden planks and linen parchment that were eventually excavated and made their way to Dr. Bhat’s collection. One can only wonder how these captions evolved over those many centuries, even as the images remained frozen in time.

Artie spent the return flight running back and forth from the lavatory to his middle seat, where he drafted a paper on his findings for submission to The New England Journal of Single-Panel Comics, and doodling in his Moleskin, where he’d taped photocopies of several ancient comic images he’d found most relatable today. The oldest comic idea in Dr. Bhat’s collection depicts an adult, bearded male, looking down on a young boy pushing what looks like a wheelbarrow, and saying, “When I was you’re age, we had to carry our शकट (carts) on our शुप्ति (shoulders).” So Artie decided to update this ancient gag, riffing a bit, and setting the scene at the base of a volcano, and featuring an oldish caveman and a young boy on a bicycle.

What follows in this inaugural edition of TROPE, is a month’s worth of comic ideas published under the imprimatur of The Inscrutables, and gleaned from Artie’s voyages to India and France — each with a connection, directly or indirectly, to the ancient genesis of single-panel, black-and-white comics, to which all image/caption gags can trace their roots.

Ed.

A sketch from the Paris/Seattle leg of Artie’s return trip. The comical treatment of the aurochs on the cave walls of Lascaux, which Amit Bhat had written about previously in TNEJSPC, lumbered their way into Artie’s Moleskin, where he drew them stuffed into Economy Class airplane seats, attempting to squeeze into the lavatory, and complaining about the meal service. Then inspiration came from the difficulty Artie had working on his laptop, which sat atop the Moleskin on the seat-back tray table and folded downward as the person in front of him reclined his seat. (Apparently the grant money didn’t cover First Class tickets, and Artie wasn’t prepared to try to expense an upgrade on the new corporate Amex card.) So the gag transitioned from aurochs in the lavatory and complaints about the meal service to the difficulties of managing a laptop in Economy Class when you’re an oversized auroch. But Artie realized he’s not very good at drawing aurochs, or not as good as the cave people of prehistoric France anyway. And so the aurochs were replaced with giraffes, despite there being (presumably) no giraffes in France’s fossil record. And then finally the laptop was traded for a tiny tree and the airplane was discarded entirely. Such is the creative process. Captions were debated, but in the end Artie felt this image stood on its own, and titled it simply “Giraffe Tending Bonsai Tree”.

Ed.

One of the more striking images Artie came across in the Bhimbetka rock shelters was the faded ochre representation of multiple hominid hands on a cave wall, all but one of which is reaching toward a roaring fire, while the remaining hand reaches away, presumably having burned itself. This is surely one of the earliest known examples of comic self-portraiture, as well as what today would be called Schadenfreude, and anticipates the following ten thousand years of interplay between tragedy and comedy. In the panel above, Artie seems to be empathizing with the plight of the Stone Age cartoonists, filled with artistic ideas, but not yet able to fully explore their medium.

Ed.

In the spirit of the exaggerated animal depictions of Lascaux, here we have the last three sketches from Artie’s travel notebook. Only one would become a formal panel submission for The Inscrutables. The juggling octopus was never inked, and Artie determined it wasn’t that funny. The jellyfish on the massage table was drawn in the Air France Lounge at Charles De Gaulle while Artie received a pedicure. I guess he felt ok about expensing a spa visit after the Mumbai/Paris flight. Despite numerous suggestions from his pedicurist, as well as fellow travelers, it has yet to be captioned. The giant porcupine was something of an in-joke between Artie and Dr. Bhat, who receives credit for the caption.

Ed.

Safely back in Seattle, Artie continued his research and summer-class curriculum development from his bed, where he spent the week recovering from gastrointestinal issues that sounded to his girlfriend Sydney, as if a T-Rex had crawled under the covers with him. Syd’s mother and sister were due for a week-long pre-holiday visit, but decided to stay at the Embassy Suites in Lake Union instead.

Ed.

Artie’s recovery passed slowly. Suspiciously so, in Syd’s mind. He barely got out of bed the entire week her mom and sister were in town, which led to several long and heated conversations after they left. Artie didn’t feel quite up to arguing, so he retreated under the covers and waited for the antibiotics to kick in.

Ed.

Artie says he had several hallucinations and fever dreams that week, one of which recalled an abstract painting he did years ago called “Two Fish Pedaling a Tandem Bicycle in Opposite Directions”. Which is a pretty straightforward title now, but you should’ve seen the abstract. I recall seeing it in a catalog once from the Tate Modern. Artie was painting a little in San Francisco in the 80’s and he was connected in the LA art scene. A guy named Gagosian, who owns some galleries, got interested in his work and gave him a show. David Bowie bought two of his pieces, including the fish abstract, and Artie ended up with an invite to hang a group of charcoal sketches at the Tate in London, next to a David Hockney exhibit. Technically it was next to the men’s room, over the water fountain, around the corner from Hockney. But it was the next collection you saw when you rounded the corner, if you were headed to the loo. Anyway, the painting doesn’t look at all like two fish on a tandem bicycle. It looks like a bad photocopy of a Rorschach test. The Times wrote a review and drew connections to Gloria Steinem, and wondered whether it was a statement on feminism or anti-feminism. The Guardian said the collection “reached new heights in navel-gazing — except for the Hockneys, which are sublime.” But Artie was always fond of the piece, especially the title, and at some point in the week, he doesn’t even recall, he woke from one of the fever dreams and sketched this more literal version of two actual fish actually pedaling a tandem bike in opposite directions. He says he’s going to make it his family crest, which means it’ll go on his business cards and probably some t-shirts. He titled the sketch ‘New Heights in Navel-Gazing’ because now the old title doesn’t work because it’s too literal. When Bowie passed away, Artie inquired about buying the painting back from his estate, but no one on the Bowie side knew anything about it.

Ed.

Artie received a little wooden box as a check-out gift from his hotel in Mumbai, and on it was engraved a depiction of four elephants holding up the world. The elephants themselves appear to be standing atop a giant turtle shell. It’s not clear what the turtle is standing on top of, presumably more turtles, as the saying goes. Here we have Artie’s somewhat Kafka-esque reflection on the unknowable powers that keep the planet from plunging into the abyss, represented as a stack of misguided turtles pushing the world down, rather than holding it up, with the addition of a misplaced armadillo.

Ed.

Naturally, Artie’s reflection on an infinite stack of turtles led him to the Infinite Monkey Theorem. Unfortunately, after distributing the original version, we had some complaints that it plagiarized a scene from The Simpsons, in which Mr. Burns tears up a page from a monkey’s typewriter after reading ‘It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times…’. After the complaints crossed from the dozens into the hundreds, the SynrSys Legal Department decided everything was fine. These things happen. Artie’s never even seen The Simpsons. But then we received a cease-and-desist letter, and then came the class action lawsuit. So we pulled it down on orders from SynrSys HQ, and since then the caption has been in legal limbo. But our intern, Hanelore, proposed a new caption that seems to have satisfied all parties. She may be the only one here who knows what an Oxford comma is, other than the lawyers, who thought the updated caption was hilarious. And English isn’t even her first language. Anyway, the cease & desist letter was rescinded, and the judge tossed the class action lawsuit. I’d share the original caption, but I am advised by counsel that is now illegal. Points to Hanelore for saving the day. Her internship is up in the Spring — she may get the job after all. Now, I don’t want to belabor the point, because it’s settled and everyone just wants to move on, but I did a little digging and discovered that The Simpsons bit itself was awfully similar to a 1940 New Yorker story called ‘Inflexible Logic’ by Russell Maloney. I’m just saying. There are two lessons here. One, don’t try to create anything new, because The Simpsons has already done it. And two, The Simpsons probably lifted it from someone else anyway. Regardless, we have re-filled this little hole in the canon, so I re-present to you “Infinite Monkeys & Oxford Commas”, with legally compliant caption.

Ed.

Opposite page: Untitled sketches of crickets playing cricket and an octopus selling hats to a pod of narwhals.

NB: Two sketches from Artie’s Moleskin. (1) He attended several cricket matches while in India, and still doesn’t understand what he was watching, but thought it was good fun anyway. (2) His research into animal exaggerations led him, tangentially, to dwell upon an unwritten law of cartooning that says if you have a character that’s an octopus, it must have a top hat. You might remember Nickelodeon’s Oswald, or Orful from the old Laff-a-Lympics. It’s not a hard rule, because Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants only occasionally wore a top hat, but he might be the exception that proves the rule. Quick Google research bears out two things: (1) there is a surprising amount of literature online about the use of the octopus in editorial cartoons for propaganda purposes, dating back to the Russo-Turkish War in 1877; and (2) there is a long list of octopus sidekicks and secondary characters in Western popular culture, but there aren’t any truly great octopus cartoon heroes/protagonists, which feels like an opportunity for Artie to come up with a new franchise character. Anyway, the reason for the prevalence of the top hat on these characters is no mystery. They need something to decorate their giant round heads. (This is why Spider-Man nemesis Doctor Octopus doesn’t count — he has a normal-sized head.) So Artie has a little more material for his UW summer course curriculum, which will now include a full week on the ‘Law of Top Hats for Comic Octopi’, delving into octopus motifs on late 19th Century political propaganda maps from Northern Europe to South-East Asia, in which octopods in enemy regimentals approach friendly shores from the sea with menacing looks and tentacles reaching inland, only somewhat undermined by the cute little top hats perched on their heads. This sketch isn’t very political, or menacing, & comes without a caption so I’m not really sure what it means. Other than Artie says it’s an illustration of the old adage that ‘If you’re going to sell a hat to a narwhal, you better make it a top hat’. That adage is about five minutes old because Artie just made it up. I think he just got tired of trying to come up with a caption…

Ed.

After spending a week in bed, Artie spent another week in his doctor’s office waiting room, resulting in the month’s penultimate and ultimate panels. There were a few different takes on this one:

(Caption 1): “First we’re going to give you something for the pain. Then I recommend a very hot, ten-minute bath.”

(Caption 2): “I think this chicken’s ready to come out.”

In the end, for official canon purposes, we went with Caption 1, despite Caption 2’s licensing potential for maternity cards. But there was a third option, which almost worked: an elaborate digression on a research team from Trinity College, Dublin that discovered the long-lost second stanza to Humpty Dumpty on a vellum parchment tucked into the back of the Book of Kells, which led to a new interpretation of the ancient rhyme not as a commentary on the limits of the King’s power, but a reflection on the vagaries of medieval life and the importance of preventative care (i.e., Humpty’s fall wasn’t actually that serious, it’s just that all the King’s horses & men were not exactly qualified medical professionals, so Humpty carried himself off to the royal infirmary where he was patched up by the King’s personal physician. And it’s a good thing he did, because otherwise his underlying condition, which was the real problem, would have gone unnoticed and almost certainly become life-threatening.) There was also a footnote that led to a more detailed explanation of the actual diagnosis, which was called ovigenesis imperfecta, better known as “brittle shell”. A second, further-clarifying footnote explained that the version found tucked in the Book of Kells was written in Latin, titled ‘Humptus Dumptus’, and didn’t actually rhyme.

Ed.

This, along with the third caption for the egg panel, must be an old idea that came back to Artie as a result of his month of post-traveling medical issues, because honestly, he’s got nothing to complain about in the health insurance department anymore. If there’s one thing we can say about being acquired by SynrSys Corp. after Marv passed away, it’s that nobody seems to be skimping on expenses. Which almost makes up for all the tedious bureaucracy, but we’ll save that for another time.

Ed.

That’s a wrap for this inaugural, year-end edition of TROPE 1, featuring a month of panels from The Inscrutables by Arthur Trope. Stay tuned for TROPE 2, in which we explore trivial thoughts of the great philosophers, the right to arm bears, and whether or not to bet on the chicken in an egg-and-spoon race. In the meantime, we hope you have a happy and healthy New Year!

Ed.