from the Omaha Reader

from the Lincoln Journal Star

I haven’t really thought about Michael Jackson in years. I just told my wife that I think I was always hoping he’d get normal again and return with some awesome comeback album. But when I was a kid, I was a huge Michael Jackson fan, and there’s actually a Michael Jackson tie to when I first started drawing for the amusement of others.

I was simultaneously fascinated and horrified by Thriller. Back when I was in probably kindergarten and first grade, watching the “Thriller” video was pretty much a staple of every birthday party. And for whatever reason, during every viewing, I started drawing what was basically a comic storyboard adaptation of the werewolf transformation from the opening scene. Eventually, we stopped watching the video, but people kept requesting that I draw my panel-by-panel version of the werewolf scene. I’m sure I loved the attention at the time, but in hindsight, that seems really weird. There may be dozens of original Neal Obermeyer drawings of that in shoeboxes and landfills across southeast Nebraska.

Other than that, pretty much my strongest memories of Michael Jackson involve being extremely embarrassed that I received two copies of Thriller on vinyl for my birthday one year, and watching my cousin Wade lip-sync and dance to “Bad” for everyone at an Obermeyer family Christmas, replacing the traditional nativity play.

from the Omaha Reader

from the Lincoln Journal Star

At the risk of opening him up to abuse from the usual gang of commenting idiots, my dad has a guest column in today’s Lincoln Journal Star supporting the proposed changes in the LPS calendar. It ran alongside the cartoon below. I told my editor it reflects the intellectual extremes in the Obermeyer men.

from the Lincoln Journal Star

To give you a little insight into what cartoonists go through to get an idea into the newspaper, the original sketch of this cartoon included the zombie organist demanding more brains — not hot dogs — in his bucket. My editor was concerned that the average reader was not as big of a dork as I am, and would thus not understand why the zombie wanted brains in a bucket. I swore that people would understand, using the SAT analogy that brains are to zombies as blood is to vampires. He was not convinced of the pop culture permeation of this sci-fi / horror dietary staple, so I was confident enough to declare that a newsroom survey would prove my theory.

I told him to ask Brian Christopherson — a Journal Star sports reporter, former pop culture reporter, clever man and cool guy, and normal enough to pass as a representative of “regular people” — what zombies eat. He had no idea. The second person shook her head no before the question could even be uttered. The third person didn’t fail me, giving both “brains” and “people” as answers (I argued that “brains” was a subset of “people” when you’re talking about food). Knowing I was down 1-2, I tried to put all my chips on L. Kent Wolgamott, but he was sadly out of the office at the time. So I lost, and the cartoon says “hot dogs” as a result.

from the Omaha Reader

from the Lincoln Journal Star

The above cartoon was inspired by this ridiculous column from Mike Johanns, which is worth a read.

from the Lincoln Journal Star