humor
The Adventures of YOU and Stitch!
Hey, look what came in the mail! This is an author copy of a children’s book I wrote. It’s called The Adventures of YOU & Stitch, and it will be published by Scholastic in September 2023. As you may have guessed from the title, The Adventures of YOU & Stitch features the characters from the 2002 animated film Lilo & Stitch.
The Adventures of YOU & Stitch! is written as an in-universe book in which you – the reader – go on a series of adventures with everyone’s favorite fuzzy blue alien, Stitch. The book also functions as a celebration of all things Lilo & Stitch, and I do mean ALL things Lilo & Stitch. That means that there are references in this book to not only the first Lilo & Stitch movie (2002), but also Stitch! The Movie (2003), Lilo & Stitch: The Series (2003-2004), Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005), and Leroy & Stitch (2006). Whenever I work on a project I commit to it 110%, and this book is no exception. There are some serious deep cuts in here that Lilo & Stitch superfans will definitely appreciate.
I’m really proud of this book. It’s filled with secret codes, puzzles, ciphers, jokes, guided journal entries, and various other fun activities, all of which are Lilo & Stitch-themed.
And as you can see from the image I’ve posted here, the cover of this book even looks like Stitch! The cover has Stitch’s eyes, nose, mouth, and floppy ears, and it’s made of fuzzy blue plush fabric, so it even feels like Stitch. (That’s a guess on my part. I’ve never held Stitch in my hands, because – spoiler alert – he’s fictional.)
I should also mention that this book will only be available for distribution through the school market. In other words, it’ll be exclusively available through Scholastic Reading Events, so you won’t be able to find it on Amazon.
I had a Stitch-tastic time writing this book, and I hope you enjoy reading it! And by “you,” I mean “kids.” You ARE aware this is a children’s book, right? Hey, grown-ups: this book is NOT for you!
The Ballad of Shirtless Lou
Happy May the Fourth, everyone! In the spirit of this Star Wars-themed quasi-holiday, I wanted to share a Star Wars-themed story. A few years ago, I wrote a LEGO Star Wars book called The Official Stormtrooper Training Manual, which was published by Scholastic in 2016. I decided to write it from the POV of a stormtrooper. So the idea is that an ordinary, lunkheaded stormtrooper is narrating the book. On the section of the book which deals with the “AT-AT” vehicles, I wrote the following joke (among many others):
“The AT-AT is often the first thing sent into a combat zone. The LAST thing sent onto a combat zone is a stormtrooper named ‘Shirtless Lou,’ who has the words WE WON painted on his belly.”
And I didn’t think anything more of the joke after that. Like I said, it was just one of many jokes I jammed into a very joke-heavy book.
But then, years later, while looking through the comments section on the book’s Amazon page (why I was doing that I don’t really know, it’s not a healthy thing to do), I saw the following comment from a parent:
“The text is full of silly jokes that crack my 5 year old Star Wars superfan up. There’s a reference to ‘Shirtless Lou,’ the last stormtrooper to go into battle, that made him laugh so hard that I ordered the Batman-in-swimsuit minifigure and swapped that torso with a stormtrooper so he could have his own Shirtless Lou, and he plays with him all the time. Shirtless Lou is always doing something silly during stormtrooper training and causing Captain Phasma all kinds of headaches.”
Reading that totally made my day. I was – and still am – very happy that somebody appreciated The Official Stormtrooper Training Manual enough to write such a flattering comment about it. And now I’m just upset that I never pitched a “Shirtless Lou” spin-off book, because apparently there’s at least one kid out there who’d read that book.
But the saga of Shirtless Lou doesn’t end there.
Later on, I noticed that someone decided to give Shirtless Lou his own entry in Wookieepedia, the (crowd-sourced, fan-edited) Star Wars Wiki. Here’s the Wookieepedia description of Shirtless Lou:
“Lou, nicknamed ‘Shirtless Lou,’ was a human male stormtrooper of the Galactic Empire. He was considered to be the last thing sent into combat zones, as he had the words ‘WE WON’ painted on his belly.”
Which is…fine. I mean, Shirtless Lou’s Wookieepedia entry is totally accurate, in a way. It never mentions that The Official Stormtrooper Training Manual is a humor book, which is kind of an important detail to leave out, but whatever. Again, I’m just flattered that somebody at Wookieepedia mentioned Shirtless Lou.
I guess my point is that my little one-off joke about Shirtless Lou was apparently a good one, because people seem to have taken notice of it. And as a writer, sometimes you never know which stories (or jokes) people will respond to, and which ones they’ll ignore.
Also, if they somehow work Shirtless Lou into the Ahsoka Disney Plus series, or the fourth season of The Mandalorian, that little shirtless dude will have truly made the big time.
Fold Back So That “A” Meets “B”
As you’ve probably heard, legendary cartoonist Al Jaffee passed away on Monday April 10th, 2023, just a few weeks after his 102nd birthday.
Al was a virtuoso artist who left behind an astounding body of work. But as anyone who knew him could tell you, he was also one of the kindest, most gracious people in the comic book industry. And he was a good friend.
In a previous blog post, I talked about Al – his career in general, his work for MAD Magazine in particular, and what he meant to me personally.
But I think it’s also important to mention that, even though he was 102 years old when he passed away, it still felt like he was gone too soon. I think I’d convinced myself that if he made it to 102 years old, there was no reason he couldn’t make it to 103 years old. Or 104. Or 120. I’m not kidding. If anyone could beat the odds, it was Al.
Unfortunately, though, he turned out to be a mere mortal.
Last year, when I called Al on his 101st birthday, he said, “When you live a long time, you outlive a lot of your friends. It’s so nice to hear from one of them that’s still alive.”
I’m sorry, what was that? “It’s so nice to hear from one of them that’s still alive”? That’s a solid joke. There he was at age 101, still making quips. He still had it.
As a cartoonist for MAD, Al showed the world just how hilarious and inventive a cartoon could be. He could draw funny – I mean really funny – which is not an easy thing to do. He had a genuinely unique comedic voice. He inspired generations of cartoonists, comedians, and comedy writers. He gave us the MAD Fold-In, Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, Hawks and Doves (a Vietnam-era comic strip that ran in MAD during the early 1970s), and countless MAD inventions.
And as if that wasn’t enough, he also co-created Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal. (Google it.)
It’s a cliché to say that someone made the world a richer place with their presence. But just because it’s a cliché, that doesn’t make it any less true. And in Al’s case, it certainly was true.
I feel lucky and privileged to have known him.
Let me tell you a story about how Al Jaffee changed my life. One day, when I was a kid – maybe 9 or 10 years old – my parents were visiting some friends who had a son about my age. I don’t remember the son’s name. Let’s just call him “Son X.” My parents’ friends told me to wait for Son X in his room, because he’d be home soon and I should say hello to him. I went up to Son X’s room and I saw these massive long boxes full of comic books. I took the lid off of one long box, and inside there were all of these back issues of MAD Magazine. Looking through one of them, I found a humor piece, written and illustrated by Al Jaffee, called “If Kids Designed Their Own Xmas Toys.” Looking at that humor piece melted my brain.
That’s not hyperbole. (Well, okay, it is. But you know what I mean.) See, I was a kid who was constantly drawing cartoons. And in those days, I was
always thinking about the fact that when you’re a young child, you have no real grasp of concepts like composition, anatomy, perspective, or foreshortening, and so all of your drawings look…uh, well, they look like a kid drew them. I spent a massive amount of time trying to break out of that “draw like a kid” phase and finally draw like an adult. In “If Kids Designed Their Own Xmas Toys,” Al plays with that very premise, that very thing I’d been thinking about. “If Kids Designed…” shows what a doll would look like if it was designed by a 5 year old (stick figure arms and legs, googly eyes, springs for hair, a shapeless, awkward-looking dress). And he shows what a rocket would look like if it were designed by a 9 year old (the rocket looks flat and asymmetrical, the fins jut out at odd angles, the nosecone is crooked). It was like Al had reached into my brain, found out what I was obsessed with, and made a MAD humor piece about it.
But here’s the thing: Al actually built models of these “Xmas toys” that were supposedly designed by kids. Then he took photos of the toys, and those photos appear in “If Kids Designed Their Own Xmas Toys.” He really wanted to sell the idea that actual kids designed these toys!
When I first saw “If Kids Designed…,” it awakened something in me. It was the first time I thought, “Hey, I think I might want to write or draw something for MAD Magazine someday.” After all, I was an aspiring cartoonist and comedy writer. MAD seemed like a humor magazine that was tailor made for me specifically. And it was all because I happened upon an Al Jaffee humor piece that spoke to me on a gut level.
Years later, when I started writing humor pieces for MAD, I tried to write as many of them as possible that required actual models to be built, just like the models I saw in that “If Kids Designed…” article.
And on one particular day, a few years into my career at MAD, I was talking to Al in his studio and getting ready to interview him for my award-winning nonfiction book, From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books. I told him about “If Kids Designed Their Own Xmas Toys,” and what it meant to me. And he said, “Well, I’ve got the models of those ‘toys’ up on the top of that shelf, if you want to see them.” And he pointed to the very top of a bookshelf. There they were: the doll with the googly eyes, the lopsided rocket, all of them. He took the doll down and handed it to me so that I could hold it.
So there I was, holding the doll which made me want to be a MAD writer in the first place. It was quite a moment. (For me, anyway. Probably not for Al.)
My point is, that’s the kind of person Al was: He inspired people. He changed their lives. And most importantly, he let you hold the doll with the googly eyes.