Something just reminded me of R. Crumb, the weird cartoonist of Zapp Magazine and the Keep on Truckin poster fame. Some years back, there was a film made all about him and his two brothers. All of them had artistic talent, in different styles and degrees.

If you watch the film, you'll understand the difficulty with inner demons and mental illness all three of them seem to have had, and the odd things each tried in order to cope. Before the film was released, one brother had taken his own life. I thought I had read a while back that the 2nd brother had done so, too, but I am glad to find I'm mistaken.

It was clear from the film that art -- drawing, painting, and producing lots and lots of work -- served Robert Crumb to live his life and cope with things far more successfully. Both his brothers had been on-again, off-again artists and I kept thinking that if they had kept up producing artwork that they wouldn't have gone crazy.

When you can draw or write some nightmarish thing, it leaves you a little bit. It's out there in the world, and you've done your bit to express it. This is very important. So when I read news stories about children being suspended from school because they drew pictures with violent images, I start hoping those kids are allowed to draw pictures like that at home, at least.

I still don't get it that this country actually has laws against certain kinds of writing and art. You know what I'm talking about -- it is actually against the law to own or distribute publications containing artwork portraying uh... younger individuals in private situations. I don't know how manga publishers get away with it, there's so much of it and really, it's all vaguely pornographic.

I don't know. I think people ought to be allowed to do that, partly because I don't think any written or painted art should be illegal to produce; of course society is entitled to agree to keep it away from certain places so that we aren't subjected to it everywhere we turn. But stifling someone's urge to express the unthinkable can be so harmful.

That brings me to one of my favorite cartoonists, who publishes under the name Tony Millionaire. His work is both gruesome and lovely. He draws a kind-of-explicit (or at least, "mature") adult cartoon strip, "Maakies" (www.maakies.com) and also writes and illustrates children's books. The thing is, both the kid's books and the adult strip portray the same characters.

There is a Sock Monkey, who in the adult strip is always called Uncle Gabby;
There's a Crow, who is called Drinky Crow in the adult strip. The two are friends. In Maakies, they are sailors on a ship named Maak and they are terrible alcoholics.

In the children's books, they are stuffed animals belonging to a little girl. They came to life because tiny bits of real animals accidentally became part of them. When the sock monkey was being sewn, a real monkey's tooth fell into his stuffing; and in the crow's case, a feather was stuck into his hat and it pierced him.

The kids' books are beautiful, and the adult strip is often disgusting. Really disgusting. One of the cartoons expresses this mix of his focus pretty well: Drinky Crow is sitting on a street curb, hung over. He's staring down into the yucky gutter. Then in the next panel, he's lifted his glance up to the buildings around him. They're cathedrals, and gorgeous.

That one is titled, "You Can Look Down, Or You Can Look Up."