Jason Viola, Cartoonist Ordinaire - Acronym

 

If you'll permit some more self-indulgence, I'm going to post more old drawings. When I was nine years old I began a daily comic strip about a bird called "Acronym," which continued for three years. It was very much an imitation of Garfield and there are a number of strips that copy Garfield and Peanuts directly. In fact there was a running joke (which I don't believe was self-knowing) where Acronym looks in the mirror and sees Garfield. Other running jokes included his love of hamburgers, his hatred of Wednesdays, National Plump Week (in which everyone fell down...?), his fear of ants, and also something where he gets in fights and his body parts get rearranged. Acronym was the pet bird of a kid named Joe, who also owned a dog and a cat. This was a lot of fun for me because I hadn't read these comics in almost twenty years.

The strips were bound in monthly collections, "Acronym Stuffs His Face, "Acronym Goes Out of His Mind," "Acronym Loses His Brains," "Acronym Meets Mr. T.," "Acronym Throws Up," and so on.


It included, um, observational humor:


Also strange jokes, like in the classic storyline where Acronym puts pepper on his tongue and it won't stop growing:

I don't know why they get the New York news in Idaho; this was definitely before satellite TV. They take him to a vet who cuts off most of his tongue and then the hilarity continues when they try to figure out what to do with the rest of it.

There are some sad moments like when Joe's grandfather dies and also when Pickles the cat runs away:



This seems to be my only "journal comic" at the time and, if it's not clear, I am drawing comics in it. The offstage voices belong to my mom and two sisters:


Although I didn't draw myself again, there are other true moments that found their way into the strip, like one of my mom's car accidents:

This was a little kind to her - in real life she ignored a stop sign and was hit head on. That is why the car spun around like that.

I created my own syndicate and pretended not only that I was being published in multiple newspapers but that imaginary readers sent me angry letters:


I further demonstrated that progress after Acronym's first birthday:


This still happens to me:


Here are a few more Sunday strips:




I don't think I've ever been as prolific as I was from ages nine to eleven. While I did this strip every day, I also did many, many, many longer Acronym stories. Early on I did a series of "listen and read" books that I probably narrated on a cassette. It had helpful narration like:

for the otherwise indecipherable:


Acronym had a furry alien friend named ZAK, who was unceremoniously dropped after the first three months. During that time though he was featured in "Acronym in The Three Little Pigs," where I said goodbye to my superhero characters:



So now you know where they ended up. It's kind of sad really.

This is my favorite page from that story:


This is from a holliday (sic) activity book:

You didn't know about the Slavery Juke Box? You can get five spirituals for a dollar.

A page from the 1989 Acronym Wall Calendar:


I made two Acronym books that used 3-D Glasses. The books weren't in 3-D; to get the sequence right you look at the picture first through the blue lens and then through the red.


There were a few I called "fast flips" where if you moved the glasses back and forth rapidly, the drawings would animate:


Most of the additional stories were parodies of traditional stories or holiday related (or both, like in "An Acronym Christmas Carol"). After two years I got more ambitious and drew Acronym adventure and mystery stories. This is the cover to the second one:


Around that time I also included publication information on the inside covers:

"Blubber and Gus" must have been some other strip. I was frequently starting new projects and plugging them in Acronym books.

When I was eleven I started to use a pencil first before pen. And all of the strips were in color. 

Good for you if you made it this far! You like me more than I thought. I have some more drawings to go through and will probably make one last post.