Friday celebrates National Comic Book Day at Gibson Memorial Library

Every year on Sept. 25, National Comic Book Day celebrates the art, artists and the stories of comic books. It’s on this day fans, collectors and artists celebrate the day with events across the country. This year, Gibson Memorial Library Director Aric Bishop invited local comic artist and Union County Supervisor Rick Friday to demonstrate and discuss his comic as he brings his ideas to life through his art.

Friday’s start in comics

Friday’s first published cartoon, “Harvest in Iowa” was Oct. 22, 1993, for the Creston News Advertiser. The cartoon featured a farmer, up to his waist in water, holding up a cob of corn. The caption, “Hey! Hey! Fellas I found one!” which depicted the issues area farmers were experiencing with flooding at the time.

The comics Friday produces are often inspired by his life as a fifth-generation farmer in Lorimor. Aside from the CNA, Friday’s work has been featured in Wallace’s Farmer, Farm News, and now appears in Countryside Magazine, Backyard Poultry, The Princess Anne Independent News and Farm News. He contributes written content, too.

A lesson in comic creation

“I’m not used to drawing in front of anyone over three foot tall,” Friday said as he sketched out a comic in front of Bishop, referring to his grandchildren he fondly refers to as “The Sippy Cup Gang.”

During his visit to Gibson Memorial Library, Friday showed Bishop what’s in his art box – pens and pencils of varying colors and line weights and erasers.

Friday said the most important part of cartoon is to “get your spelling right.”

“I have got my E before my I before ... didn’t put my apostrophe in the right spot,” said Friday.

As he erases, he said, “This is very important – eraser.”

“This is part of it,” Friday says as he extracts unwanted lines from his sketch.

Friday’s process involves a rough pencil sketch that he then edits digitally. But for the sake of demonstrating his cartooning in person, he completed his library-themed sketch “the old-fashioned way.”

“I prefer the online edit because I can check the spelling and everything and I can fit it right into the cartoon and I can add a few things,” he said.”

As Friday gets partially through his cartoon, he makes a copy of it.

“In case I mess up, It’s a lot easier to take the copy (than to revise the original),” said Friday.

As Friday continues to draw, he uses a ruler to add lines, adding the illusion of depth to his drawing.

Perspective

“What’s your favorite comic?” Bishop asked.

“One got me fired,” said Friday. “It’s not my best work ... but, that’s where I said, ‘Sometimes your caption is as important as your work.”

On Apr. 24, 2016, Friday hit the ‘send’ button on his keyboard, emailing his weekly cartoon to his editor. The cartoon, titled “Profit,” poked fun at big ag companies as it depicted two farmers leaning on a fence discussing farm profits.

“I wish there was more profit in farming,” one farmer says to the other.

“There is. In year 2015 the CEOs of Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer and John Deere combined made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers,” his farmer friend replies.

Following the publication of Friday’s “Profit” cartoon, his phone started to ring “off the hook” with interview requests from news outlets ranging from the Des Moines Register to the New York Times. His story was picked by KCCI, the Boston Globe, Iowa Public Radio, Columbia Journalism Review, Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes and was the No. 1 story on Reddit. His termination also made headlines in Denmark, Russia, Japan and Australia.

In 2017, Friday’s “Profit” cartoon also became a conversation piece about corporate control in Elizabeth Warren’s latest book, “This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class,” and is used as a lesson on free speech, human rights and freedom of the press in more than 200 South American schools.

“That particularly cartoon launched my profession in cartooning,” Friday said.

Friday said, just because he draws a cartoon, it does not mean it is his opinion. For Bishop, he demonstrated his point by drawing a line down a piece of paper.

“This is the world we live in today. If I was to draw a line, I see it as horizontal, what do you see it as?” he asked Bishop.

“Vertical,” Bishop said.

Then Friday turned the page 45 degrees, which flipped their viewpoints of the line he drew.

“We just have to change our opinion just a little bit so now I see it (as vertical) and you see it, horizontal,” he said. “It’s that simple.”

Friday Cartoons

After Friday traces over his pencil sketch with an ink pen, he erases his excess pencil lines he doesn’t want in his drawing before applying the color.

“It’s like it’s all reborn again,” he said.

Friday points out the importance of having good pens, as the humidity in the summer can result in smeared ink.

As a natural story teller, Friday tells Bishop about his grandmother, who would watch her grandchildren color.

“She was very, very particular about staying in the lines,” he said. “So I think about my grandmother quite a bit. She was pretty talented.”

Friday mentions he draws in the evenings, but sometimes during the night he’ll have ideas and draw them out first thing in the morning.

“Drawing is really the easy work,” he said. “It’s coming up with the caption and trying to get it all in one frame (that can be challenging).

Some of Friday’s comics can be found online at fridaycartoons.com and on his personal Facebook page, where he shares daily comics and stories.