my trip to Pittsburgh's Toonseum!

This weekend, I took a trip to Pittsburgh's Cultural District to visit the Toonseum, a cartoon and comic art museum that is one of only three like it in the country!  The Toonseum opened a few years ago, but this was my first time there, and I didn't know what to expect.  It ended up being a lot of fun, and I took a ton of pictures, which I'll show below.

Just so you don't have to scroll aaaaaallll the way down to the bottom of the page, I'll start with some basic info for the museum:

website: www.toonseum.org
address: 945 Liberty Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15222
price: adults 16+: $5.00; children 6-15: $1.00; children 5 and under: free
hours: LOOK THEM UP YOURSELF!!

These huge statues greet you just outside of the museum.  I have no idea if they are part of the Toonseum or not, but they set the stage for sure.  Plus at night, they come alive.  It's true.

Here's the outside of the Toonseum!  I'm not sure how I feel about the "Bam!  Pow!  Smash!" effects at the top.  I mean, they're recognizable, but there aren't better ways to represent cartoon art then through stereotypes?

One of the first things you see upon entering is a Sunday comic strip exhibit, featuring a number of comic strips, all from the same Sunday.  Here's one of my favorite, Monty.  Actually, I liked it a lot more when it was called Robotman, but...change is a part of life.  I guess.

Here's a wider view of all the original comic strip art.

There's even a mustache joke!  Great.

There was a lot of great original art on display, including a frame from Gertie the Dinosaur, one of the first cartoons ever, but this might have been my favorite of all of them: a Mel Blanc Bugs Bunny!

This was a desk in what apparently was the "office" area of the museum.  I have no idea if I was allowed back here or not.  Oh well.

This was one of the few "artist boards" I saw, featuring signatures and sketches from many great artists, including Jerry Robinson, Caroll Spinney and Mark Schultz!

I know an original Jack Kirby piece when I see it!

This was the hallway that led to the second exhibit room.

Hong Kong Fuey!

It was really cool to see this original animation cell from the generally awful Star Trek cartoon.

I will always think of the Black Vulcan from the character's role in Adult Swim's Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.

Aquaman, even your villains are terrible.

Classic covers on the wall!

"Cobblepot for mayor".  Fantastic.  This was right next to bookshelves filled with comic and cartoon reference books.

I wish I could caption this...but I can't.  It's still pretty cool.

At the front of the museum sits an art desk used for many Disney productions including Fantasia.  Guests are encouraged to draw on it, and the best I could come up with was Tin Tin with a mustache.  I think it worked.

Giant anvil jokes always work.  Always!

I had a great time at the Toonseum and will be making my way back there before too long.  Anyone from Pittsburgh and anyone with a love of the medium should stop by and see it for themselves.  Here's hoping for continued success and growth for what is a very cool pop culture museum.

"Eye of the Beholder" webcomic with Ruben Cordero, page 4

This story's second "act" begins with page four - we're all caught up to date and now we're working in the present.  The dog cages look more like jail cells, but hey, that's artistic license for you.

Now that I think about it, it's because of this story's publication in Strip Search that I came up with a way to sign my name on comics...that is, a different way than I sign, I don't know, a check or something like that.  The first time I saw a copy of Strip Search was at my local comic shop, Impossible Dreams Comics in Bridgeville, Pa.  The owner of the store ordered a copy for himself (probably because it's all I had talked about for a month) and asked me to sign it.  I wrote my whole 14-letter name, stopped to look at it, and said "I've gotta come up with something better".  What I came up with over the next few days is basically my initials and the date, so whether or not it's "better" is debatable, but at least I have a comic book signature to go with now.

Oh, and by the way, the best comic book signature I've ever seen has to belong to Mark Schultz (of Xenozoic Tales fame).  I'm told he worked on it for quite a while.