Dink and Duff

When I put together a collage of some of my biggest artistic influences a couple years ago [link], I made a gross oversight in neglecting to include cartoonist Tom Eaton, who I'm mainly familiar with through his work in Boy's Life magazine. Unfortunately, a cursory Google search doesn't seem to yield much information about him. Apparently, there's another cartoonist with the same name, so that makes it a bit more confusing.

For the record, I did not especially enjoy being a Scout, but when you're a kid, your parents force you to do stuff like that, and if you're like me, you don't really question it. A completely miserable week at Scout camp was kind of a dealbreaker for me, however, and when I put my foot down about going back the following year, that was pretty much the end of my association with that organization.

Perhaps the only thing I really liked about being in Scouts was getting Boy's Life every month, and that was almost entirely due to the comics featured in the middle of each issue- specifically, those done by Tom Eaton: Tiger, Webelos Woody, Pedro and Dink and Duff. Those comics were always at their best when Mr. Eaton's imagination was allowed to run wild; he clearly loves filling his panels with as many surreal backgrounds and creatures as he can get away with. A while back, I happened to get my hands on a few somewhat more current issues of that magazine and found that Tom Eaton is still cartooning for them and based on the sampling I viewed, if anything, his comics have gotten even zanier. I'd wager that Mr. Eaton would be in seventh heaven if he were allowed to draw nothing but crazy aliens and other sci-fi stuff.

If you've noticed that I've drawn these characters holding hands, you may have guessed that this small tribute to the art of Tom Eaton also serves the dual purpose of being a subtle reference to the relatively recent news about the Boy Scouts partially amending their policy on who they will or will not admit. I was unaware of the organization's stance on homosexuality while I was a member, but then, being somewhat naive and sheltered, I didn't even have an inkling that there was such a thing as gay people until I was about fourteen or so. I imagine that if I had been better informed back then, that policy would have been one more thing for me to dislike about being a part of that group.