About

 

The McFronceks are essentially the adventures of Charlotte and Dylan, my twin grandchildren, their Lil’ Sis Aurora and Wee Tegan straight out of Brooklyn. Other characters are Mama, Dada, Auntie M, Lady Madonna and yours truly Gramps. I cannot hide behind the usual book disclaimer that this is fiction and any resemblance to real life characters is merely coincidental. Any resemblance to real characters has been totally undermined by using actual photographs. The photographs are real; the thoughts are mine. Are they fiction or is that what those kids are really thinking and trying to say? You be the judge.

There are two formats. Cartoons are single panel drawings or, in my case, photos with speech bubbles of what those two munchkins are thinking or trying to express with burps, farts and gurgles. So, for the cartoons think The New Yorker magazine. Now I have never had an actual subscription to the New Yorker, but I do show up considerably early for every doctor and dentist appointment to peruse their library of New Yorker magazines. Coupled with the fact that a doctor never sees you at the appointment time, I have been able to thoroughly enjoy every New Yorker cartoon as curated by Bob Mankoff the ultimate gatekeeper of urbane humor. Roz Chast, Tom Cheney and Mankoff himself are a few of the masters of this format that I have enjoyed.

The second format is Comics which are a series of panels that form a narrative with an exchange of dialogue. Think Peanuts, Blondie, Doonesbury, Calvin & Hobbes and The Boondocks. Yes, those are my favorites and what I have grown up on at various stages of becoming Gramps. Comics can expand into little books known as comic books. In the 60s comic books were corruptors of burgeoning minds, mostly mine. You can be either a DC Comics guy think Batman or Superman or a Marvel Comics devotee. I grew up on Spiderman, Captain America and the X-Men so Stan Lee was my guru. You will not see any comics books here. That is a tall order and Charlotte, Dylan and Aurora could go blind from the flash feature on the camera.

All photos have been taken with iphones from all the adult characters in the series. This would be called a product placement if Apple would throw me some green or at least the latest iphones. But that will depend on you my readers and the eyeballs I can amass. Somewhat shockingly I do not take the vast majority of the photos. This fact undermines any notion that the Cartoons or Comics are some heavily scripted attempt by me making my grandchildren perform like trained seals and do my bidding to get the photo I need for some preconceived story line. There are no story lines. There is no agenda except when you look at a picture and imagine: Are they pondering what I am pondering? Therefore, the Cartoons are easier. That singular photo just screams out to me what they are thinking. The Comics on the other hand really depend on a fortuitous series of photographs that can be linked together in witty banter between the kids. Happenstance and serendipity rule this process. So, in some respects what I do is so much easier than a hand drawn cartoon or comic series. In other respects, it is much harder. I can only work with what those kids give me. In the end, it all depends on you, the reader. Hopefully they speak to you like they speak to me.