PRINTIf you give a mouse a suitcase
Local artist creates comic featuring a traveling rodent
Courtesy of JB Winter
Columbian JB Winter drew Izzy the roaming rodent in 50 poses on blank backgrounds and sent the drawings to each state for artists such as Jon Murakami from Hawaii to fill in Izzy’s adventures. Winter completed the Missouri panel.
January 22, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
You might not know Izzy, but this mouse is well-traveled. Izzy has faced down a grizzly, performed tai chi with antelope and hit the biggest tourist trap built by a mouse. And Izzy didn’t even leave the confines of the page. Izzy is a character created by local comic artist JB Winter, who drew the intrepid mouse in 50 poses and sent the panels to each state so different artists could add a background. The large-scale collaboration produced a comic, 50 States Jam: Izzy Tours America, all about Izzy’s excursion.
Izzy’s journey began in Columbia a little more than a year and a half ago when Winter went to see improv comedy. The show included a game called “Slideshow,” during which two actors pretend to be watching slides while two other actors freeze in weird positions. The comedy comes in when the actors watching have to explain the positions. Winter thought this might be a good idea for a comic, and to add a twist, he’d send it to a different artist in every state and have each explain the position of his character, Izzy. However, the transition from idea to reality was tricky.
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“This one was intense,” Winter says, “The scope of it was pretty huge.” The Internet played an important role in the artist search. Also, coordinating the efforts of those 49 artists he found proved complex. Winter had to make sure he had only one artist from each state, and sometimes people would fall through.
Once Winter had people lined up, he sent out his Izzy panels, which he had prepared a few months earlier.
Winter drew 50 panels of his character in different poses with no background. It was up to the artists to fill in the background and finish the caption “When I was in …” The artists had a month to complete their panels and a set of guidelines: Content should be for all ages and doesn’t have to be state-specific. Some erasing of Izzy was OK.
Winter says he chose Izzy the mouse for this challenge because the character is a blank slate. Izzy has no discernable personality and is in fact genderless. These factors allow other artists to create whatever they want around the character. And each artist brought his or her own interpretation.
Venturing to all parts of the country, this mouse hit all the hot spots. When Izzy traveled to Colorado, cartoonist Tom Motley asked himself, “As the cartoon ambassador for Colorado, what is it about my home state that interests me?” He has a favorite bar in Denver and decided that Izzy should kickback in style.
Deserting the Mile High City and braving the Rockies, the mouse reached Indiana where Tom Cherry added a twist to the tale: the brain drain. Izzy slides down the panel surrounded by several slippery brains. Cherry explains that it’s relevant to the state. “It’s always said that Indiana is known for college students to get educated in Indiana and then they leave,” he says. The daring rodent took his learning and skedaddled out of the state.
Izzy’s newfound smarts came in handy when facing the Montana frontier. Cartoonist Jason Jam wanted to show what he likes most about Montana: the wilderness. While berry picking, Izzy confronts a grizzly and manages to escape, tail intact. Jam faced his own challenge when creating the panel. “I guess what was challenging was melding the two different styles to make a cohesive image,” he says.
After fleeing Montana, Izzy thought to hit up New Orleans for some partying. “I said, ‘You know, let’s do the French Quarter,’” artist Jason Reeves says. “It’s what a lot of people expect. Plus, I never really drew it before.” But Izzy didn’t get to party on Bourbon Street; instead the mouse lost a contact lens and missed out on the historic scenery.
The little mouse completed the trip to each state and returned home to Missouri and Winter, who then had the daunting task of putting the panels of Izzy’s adventures into a cohesive comic. His creation looks much like a travel photo album with panels drawn to look like Polaroids, complete with tape at the edges.
The little mouse is taking a much-needed rest now, but Izzy still has reminders of the amazing trek (just check the back cover of the comic), and readers can share the adventures at Get Lost Bookshop, MU Bookstore and Rock Bottom Comics.
