HOW TO DRESS A CARTOON CHARACTER

All my thrift store jackets are either too small or too big. I wish I could show you a picture of the miniature Uncle Eddie jacket John gave me a long time ago, but I don't have it anymore and I think I'll take a minute to tell you why. It spotlights an age-old wives trick that men need to know about.

It works like this: the wife waits til her husband is busy with something then asks him a few questions that have an obvious "no" answer, questions like: "Are you saving this ball of lint?""Do want this pencil stub?""This used Kleenex?" She gets a nice litany of automatic"no's" going" then casually throws in the important item, in this case: "Do you want to save this ugly old Uncle Eddie jacket?" The first ten times my wife tried this I reacted with horror that she could even think of such a thing, but she persisted and one day when I was seriously distracted she popped the question again and I found myself saying, "Huh... oh, yeah...sure...whatever..." and that was the last time I ever saw my jacket. Now I live in fear that my more-precious-than-rubies Wrinkle Jacket will suffer the same fate.

But I digress.


 I like one-of-a-kind outfits myself. Cartoonists should be fashion leaders, not fashion followers.


I also like suit jackets (above) that flare out and stay flared.


What kind of dress shirt? My own preference (for cartoon characters) is for bulky one-size-fits-all shirts that always look ironed and new, like they just came out of the wrapper.
Cartoon characters should tuck in their shirts even though that's not the style now. In real life tucking them in requires constant adjustment and that's a great bit of business for a character with OCD.


Besides, tucked in shirts look great when they're pulled out (above) and allowed to hang loose. They retain their beautiful tucked in wrinkles at the shirt's bottom.

BTW, how do you like the crumpled forearm fabric and long cuffs?


Dress shirts come with all sorts of biases. This one is tight at the shoulders and loose everywhere else.

I wish I could have found a picture of a ballooning "parachute" backed tuck-in but, Alas!, it was not meant to be. Maybe next time.