Mini Comics From Muses
Cartoonist Caesar Meadows makes 30,840 mini comic books for Muses
Caesar Meadows is a big dude, but he produces the tiniest comic books you ever saw. They are about as big as a book of matches, so small that they fit in one of those plastic capsules that come from the toy vending machines you see at grocery store exits. Meadows has been busy. For Carnival 2014, the Krewe of Muses commissioned Meadows to make 30,840 mini comic books to be tossed from their floats on Thursday (Feb. 27) night. Thirty thousand, eight hundred and forty!
Meadows figures that it took 63 hours to cut, staple, fold and encapsulate the mini comic edition. He invented a special device he calls the “Stealth Bagger 24” to funnel the throws into bags. On Thursday night, roughly one out of eight Crescent Cityites could catch a Caesar Meadows comic book, the content of which will remain a secret until then. It would have been impossible, Meadows said, without a little help from his friends.
Meadows, 45, is married to artist Jeannie Detweiler, who specializes in space alien dolls and paintings. The pair share a double shotgun in the Bayou St. John neighborhood that’s painted plutonium green on the inside – the perfect tone for comic book makers and alien painters. Meadows always wanted to be a cartoonist. As a little kid, he spotted a photo of Charles Schultz on the back cover of a book of Peanuts cartoons. He knew he wanted to do what Schultz did.
And so he has. Meadows’ cartoons feature charmingly befuddled human, animal and robot characters, rendered in a soft-edged style. His strips appear in local magazines. He’s installed comic book vending machines in a popular coffee shop and snowball stand. In bohemian art circles, he’s a star. He also has a day job to make ends meet.
Meadows’ trek toward tiny comics began in the 1990s when, he said, he and friends “crashed” the Krewe du Vieux parade. For his part in the procession, he handed out playing card-sized comic books of his own making. The little books had a meta quality, since their subject was the eternally naughty parade itself. The mini-comics were a hit.
“Folks loved it,” he said. “They actually chased me down. They loved the little comics, so it was a big success.”
His next goal was to distribute comics in Marigny and French Quarter during Mardi Gras. In order to carry enough comics, they had to be small. Really small. So Meadows began making Lilliputian books no bigger than postage stamps. He stored them in a weird gourd purse that he found at a thrift store. For years, he and his books have been part of the pageant.
So how do you entice the leadership of a mega-krewe like Muses to use your little books as throws? Well, if you’re Meadows you do what comes naturally, you make your pitch via a tiny comic book.
Page one: “Hello … My name is Caesar Meadows and I’m a New Orleans cartoonist …”
Page two: “and I have a proposal for you.
Page three: “I’d like you to consider this little comic book …”
Page four: “as a potential new throw for the Krewe of Muses.”
When the head Muses accepted his pitch, Meadows was thrilled. He said it made him immediately recall the magic of catching doubloons and other throws as a kid. During the parade, he plans to stand near the same spot where he stood watching parades as a kid.
“I get the sense of just gratefulness. Seeing these capsules coming from the floats and seeing it imprinting on someone else…. I feel so incredibly grateful to them (Muses). They made a hometown boy’s Carnival dream come true. … For me, tomorrow night, for however long I live, it was there.”
That’s the dream. Back to the recent reality. Meadows had hand-produced mini-comics by the hundreds before, but never by the tens of thousands. He had to figure out how to do everything more efficiently. Everything would still be done by hand, but the little books needed to be stacked and stapled in mass-production mode. Meadows needed to knock out 300 books per hour to make his deadline. Eventually he was able to produce 500 per hour.
There is some talk these days that the era of the imported bead is ending and the possibility of creating Carnival throws locally as an economic boon is at hand.
In his 2008 Mardi Gras micro-comic, Meadows drew two cartoon parade-goers arguing about the overabundance of plastic beads.
"Yeesh, they throw way too many beads these days," says one.
"What are you crazy?!!" shouts the other, "the more beads the better!"
"I dunno," says the first. "When I was a kid, they were stingy with the good beads. It made it a lot more fun to try to catch one. I mean, after all, it's just a bunch of tacky plastic c..p anyway."
"Aw, stop being such a Mardi Gras grump," says the second character. "A person can never have enough beads!!!!"
In the final frame, the more-beads-the-better character is rewarded by being buried in an avalanche of throws.
Caesar Meadows is a big dude, but he produces the tiniest comic books you ever saw. They are about as big as a book of matches, so small that they fit in one of those plastic capsules that come from the toy vending machines you see at grocery store exits. Meadows has been busy. For Carnival 2014, the Krewe of Muses commissioned Meadows to make 30,840 mini comic books to be tossed from their floats on Thursday (Feb. 27) night. Thirty thousand, eight hundred and forty!
Meadows figures that it took 63 hours to cut, staple, fold and encapsulate the mini comic edition. He invented a special device he calls the “Stealth Bagger 24” to funnel the throws into bags. On Thursday night, roughly one out of eight Crescent Cityites could catch a Caesar Meadows comic book, the content of which will remain a secret until then. It would have been impossible, Meadows said, without a little help from his friends.
Meadows, 45, is married to artist Jeannie Detweiler, who specializes in space alien dolls and paintings. The pair share a double shotgun in the Bayou St. John neighborhood that’s painted plutonium green on the inside – the perfect tone for comic book makers and alien painters. Meadows always wanted to be a cartoonist. As a little kid, he spotted a photo of Charles Schultz on the back cover of a book of Peanuts cartoons. He knew he wanted to do what Schultz did.
And so he has. Meadows’ cartoons feature charmingly befuddled human, animal and robot characters, rendered in a soft-edged style. His strips appear in local magazines. He’s installed comic book vending machines in a popular coffee shop and snowball stand. In bohemian art circles, he’s a star. He also has a day job to make ends meet.
Meadows’ trek toward tiny comics began in the 1990s when, he said, he and friends “crashed” the Krewe du Vieux parade. For his part in the procession, he handed out playing card-sized comic books of his own making. The little books had a meta quality, since their subject was the eternally naughty parade itself. The mini-comics were a hit.
“Folks loved it,” he said. “They actually chased me down. They loved the little comics, so it was a big success.”
His next goal was to distribute comics in Marigny and French Quarter during Mardi Gras. In order to carry enough comics, they had to be small. Really small. So Meadows began making Lilliputian books no bigger than postage stamps. He stored them in a weird gourd purse that he found at a thrift store. For years, he and his books have been part of the pageant.
So how do you entice the leadership of a mega-krewe like Muses to use your little books as throws? Well, if you’re Meadows you do what comes naturally, you make your pitch via a tiny comic book.
Page one: “Hello … My name is Caesar Meadows and I’m a New Orleans cartoonist …”
Page two: “and I have a proposal for you.
Page three: “I’d like you to consider this little comic book …”
Page four: “as a potential new throw for the Krewe of Muses.”
When the head Muses accepted his pitch, Meadows was thrilled. He said it made him immediately recall the magic of catching doubloons and other throws as a kid. During the parade, he plans to stand near the same spot where he stood watching parades as a kid.
“I get the sense of just gratefulness. Seeing these capsules coming from the floats and seeing it imprinting on someone else…. I feel so incredibly grateful to them (Muses). They made a hometown boy’s Carnival dream come true. … For me, tomorrow night, for however long I live, it was there.”
That’s the dream. Back to the recent reality. Meadows had hand-produced mini-comics by the hundreds before, but never by the tens of thousands. He had to figure out how to do everything more efficiently. Everything would still be done by hand, but the little books needed to be stacked and stapled in mass-production mode. Meadows needed to knock out 300 books per hour to make his deadline. Eventually he was able to produce 500 per hour.
There is some talk these days that the era of the imported bead is ending and the possibility of creating Carnival throws locally as an economic boon is at hand.
In his 2008 Mardi Gras micro-comic, Meadows drew two cartoon parade-goers arguing about the overabundance of plastic beads.
"Yeesh, they throw way too many beads these days," says one.
"What are you crazy?!!" shouts the other, "the more beads the better!"
"I dunno," says the first. "When I was a kid, they were stingy with the good beads. It made it a lot more fun to try to catch one. I mean, after all, it's just a bunch of tacky plastic c..p anyway."
"Aw, stop being such a Mardi Gras grump," says the second character. "A person can never have enough beads!!!!"
In the final frame, the more-beads-the-better character is rewarded by being buried in an avalanche of throws.
Labels: Comics, Mardi Gras, Muses, NOLA
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