Mary and Gussie Sketches
Shaenon: Early doodles of Mary and Gussie. I was really going for that Diane Arbus vibe on some of these.
Channing: It’s weird that I specifically included a giraffe in my scripts despite having no memory of having seen this doodle page. I must have processed this character subconsciously or something.
Shaenon, Mary and Gussie had stirred a vague memory (besides Mary Blair), and your bottom picture brought it back. I had a set of paper dolls that I just loved, where the outfits were mirror images of each other, but with reversed colors. They greatly influenced my wardrobe to this day.
Does that ring a bell for you? I’m a lot older than you, but I’ve never stopped playing with paper dolls (including Narbonic), so this may have been a set from my teens.
That one doesn’t ring a bell, sorry.
They’re not mirrored, and this probably isn’t quite what you’re saying anyway, but might this be it? https://img1.etsystatic.com/036/0/5197769/il_340x270.526662623_qds8.jpg
It probably isn’t, but if you ever figure out what it was, PLEASE post it here. This stuff drives me crazy when left unresolved.
Blargh. The giraffe! The cuteness, it burns!!!1!!
(TUNE: “Make ‘Em Laugh”, Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed)
A giraffe! A giraffe!
Yes, it seemed
We both dreamed
A giraffe!
When Shaenon sketched some Whimsical ‘bots,
Seems Jeff was reading her thoughts!
What a laugh! What a joke!
Drawing two little robots who smoke!
There’s Mary and there’s Gussie, dressed in white and in black!
And Unity is havin’ her a cuteness attack!
There’s fairies, kitties, elephants, and there in the back,
Some giraffe!
Dumb giraffe!
Some giraffe!
Flapper Gussie up there is pretty great. These really feel like bits from lost cartoons from the ’20s or something…
Is that the (now deceased) Mender-Fairy just to the left of the giraffe?
The windup-key of the one at the top (Mary?) makes me think of butterfly-style fairy wings.