The Gray Tree Problem
How some comics showed me a sliver or reality.
Comics for Joy and Profit
During the Covid lockdown in 2020, with our family crammed into our little house in Belmont, Jen and I made one of our desultory stabs at good parenting by taping a bedtime schedule on the wall. At the bottom I drew a little cartoon kid snug in a bed smiling in hopes this would convince our 8-year-old daughter that being in bed early was something worth smiling about. The schedule didn’t help the sleeping, but Ellie loved the cartoon kid, and once—probably at bedtime because she knew it would distract me—told me I could have been an artist, and asked if I’d ever tried to be. I remembered suddenly that I’d drawn a comic strip when I was only a few years older than her. It was about a small tree, a big tree, some owls and a turtle. I’d finished several pages of strips before sensing in the fibers of my being it needed squirrels and I couldn’t draw squirrels no matter how hard I tried, so I quit my comics career, and went to be the success I am today.
When Ellie gets interested in something, she really gets interested, and she got interested in Sprout (the name of the little tree and the strip itself). She asked me about the characters and brought paper for me to draw them, and I was shocked that I still could draw them all. So I gave Ellie some sketches, told her the strip was hers to do with as she wanted. For a couple days she wanted to think, talk, and ask about Sprout. She peppered me with questions. What was Big Tree like? What were the owls like? If it was something I hadn’t made up when I was a kid, she wanted us to figure it out now together. Finally, she proudly presented me with The Ultimate Sprout Collection, six pages bound in yarn with a dozen strips, many of them quite funny.
But even that wasn’t the end of Sprout. Ellie knew that decades ago many kids read the newspaper comic pages every day, and on Sundays devoured multi-page color comic inserts. She’d seen the current Sunday comics in the Washington Post and Daily Progress but said they seemed mostly pitched to adults. There was almost nothing to entertain both kids and adults, nothing to get kids hooked on newspapers—so maybe that was why newspapers were in decline.
Sprout would be the answer! Ellie wanted us both to draw new strips. Since my theater company was shut down due to Covid, I had free time and we needed things to do. So we started regularly trading ideas and creating comics. I even learned to draw squirrels. (Thanks internet!) And Ellie’s frustrations with kids and life became comic material:
Eventually, we had enough strips for a packet to submit to the syndicates. (Comic strips are sold to newspapers by three major syndicates.) Because it isn’t legal for a 8-year-old to sign a contract, and since 8-year-olds can’t work to a deadline, my daughter accepted that I should draw the final, finished strips so it would all have a professional style. Also did I mention she was 8?
We didn’t take it very seriously but it was fun to dream of getting kids excited about something in the newspaper, something we made today, and Ellie was excited about licensing what would be famous characters to Virginia state parks, and merch—lots of merch! And I dreamed the part-time-job-comics money could take the edge off my theater unemployment. I quickly had the daily strips done, so all we needed were a few Sunday color strips.
A Discovery
For the color comics I halfway learned to use graphic-design software, scanning in some comics and filled the trees with brown because trees, as we all know, are brown. But I found that no matter what browns I used the trees came out looking like minstrel characters, pudding pops, or poop emojis. Horrible. Maybe it was because real trees don’t have eyes, but no, you can stick google eyes on anything. I figured I must be imagining the wrong browns, so I went outside. But I found that none of the trees in my neighborhood were actually brown. They were all different shades of gray. I thought I was crazy.
During Covid we often would stay out at Misty Mountain Campground. (Yes, that’s a plug!) So on my next trip out there, I spent a couple of days staring at trees and trying to match colors to a set of color pencils that I bought. But out at Misty Mountain, just in my neighborhood, all the trees were gray. Some were reddish gray and when they were wet many became charcoal gray, but not one tree was the color of any of the brown color pencils. Trees, it turned out, just aren’t brown. They’re gray.
Don’t take my word for it. Go outside and see for yourself. I’ll wait.
…
See? Finally, I went back to the graphic-design program and colored some trees gray and instantly they looked like trees. Comic-versions of trees anyway.
The Gray Tree Problem
This friends, is The Gray Tree Problem. Sometimes a person becomes aware that what they thought was true, what other people seem to think is true, isn’t true. I learned that trees are actually gray. And now you know it too!
So what, if anything, do we do about it? What different does it make? It’s important to point out I don’t call this The Brown Tree Problem. The problem isn’t that ‘society’ believes something that isn’t true. All individuals, groups, and communities believe things that aren’t true. Every religion contradicts other religions in some ways. They can’t all be true. Every citizen disagrees with other citizens on politics. They can’t all be true. Every scientist supports different theories than other scientists. They can’t all be true. I believed trees were brown until 2020, and it didn’t cause me a single problem. Most people aren’t coloring trees past elementary school, so what difference does it make what color they are?
No, our problem is very much our problem. What do we do knowing trees are gray? Probably nothing! Would could we do? Hang around the Brown Tree People and try to convert them? Hang around the Brown Tree People and keep our mouths shut? The first seems rude and the second dishonest. Maybe we hang around with the motley dissenters who agree that trees aren’t brown, but that probably includes people who believe trees are actually purple, or trees have no color, or there are no trees—it’s an illusion created to manipulate us.
My daughter, when school was back and she was 9, mentioned to her classmates one day that trees weren’t brown. Her classmates mostly either didn’t care or didn’t believe her. One, however, took her to the window, pointed at some distant (gray) trees and condescendingly said, “See? Brown!” Someday that kid will probably be a crypto billionaire or run the International Monetary Fund.
I didn’t see the color of the trees correctly by being smart. I saw the color of the trees correctly by being idiotic enough to be creating a submission packet for a dying industry.
The truth is we are all Gray Tree Seers in our own realms. Plumber, beautician, auto mechanic, we all see how things are in certain ways that our customers and friends don’t. We all have to figure out when to ignore ignorance, when to challenge it, and when to abandon our ignorant friends, neighbors, and family for new friends, neighbors, and family with a different perspective. Maybe that begins with subscribing to Substacks (hint hint)…
Four Tree Rings Later
Sadly, Sprout never found his way into print. None of the syndicates were interested, though I don’t know how much of the rejection was the strip and how much was my faults in drawing or submitting it.
Since I’d drawn a lot of daily strips in the packet, I offered them to the Cville Weekly to run for free for a half a year. The editor Richard DiCicco was very responsive and pleasant. We had a nice email exchange, but he said they already had a comic and didn’t have room for another. (Maybe he was just being nice.) I sent it to a couple of other publications and no one replied. Maybe they’re Brown Tree seers who don’t see the actual value of a comic strip. Or maybe I’m the Brown Tree seer who thinks something’s funny when no one else does.
But Ellie and I had a great time dreaming up and working on Sprout. She’s twelve now and it’s one of our favorite father-daughter projects. Sprout still returns on Father’s Day cards or doodles or Christmas gifts. Secretly, I dream that when newspapers make a comeback, Ellie will have a pile of material ready to go.
We’ll be back Tuesday with the continuation of Welcome to Charlottesville. Thanks for reading and please subscribe and share!
